Journalism is too important to be locked behind a paywall
When I hear newspaper industry veterans talk about getting paid for content, it makes me want to cry. Case in point, this speech from Bill Monroe to the Midwest Newspaper Summit in Des …
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Content Is Not Your Product: Why Newspapers Fail
Your newspaper is Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae — full of valuable stuff, but not a product anyone wants to buy. I hear the same sentiment from executives all over the media industry, …
NYT’s Freemium Paywall Plan is (maybe) Good Business
Last week, the New York Times announced plans to start charging certain readers for access to their web site. Reaction was predictable: Jeff Jarvis complained, TechCrunch ran some …
Why News Archived Behind Paywall Fails
One business model for online news that has been suggested, tried, and failed, is to make the news free for some short time, and then archive it behind a pay-wall. There is more than one reason …
The Tablet Fallacy (or, Old Media is Screwed)
"Help me, Obi-wan Tablet. You're my only hope!" says old media. But these are not the droids they are looking for. There has been so much hand waving in the last month about 2010 being …
The Three C's of New Media: Creation, Curation, and Compilation
Every media business is built around at least one of three key content activities: creation of content, curation of content, and compilation of data into content. Many media businesses, especially the …
The Real Value of Social Media is its Weakness
Many still doubt the utility of social media. I myself was among the doubters until I was forced onto Twitter and Facebook to test the social media integration for a web site I was developing. …
How Newspapers Lost the Classifieds Business (and how to get it back)
Time was, newspapers owned the local classified ads business, and it was their cash cow. Many people bought the paper just for the classifieds, and it was by far the most valuable real estate of …