Print publishing is seen as a lot more authoritative than blogs because of the investment put into it.

With a blog, you just write and publish. With a piece of print, someone was hired to assign the story/beat to someone who was hired to write it, and when the writer files it, it’s then vetted by people who were hired to proof it, fact check it, and edit it for length and tone. And then, the publishers pays to have it printed and distributed to points-of-sale and subscribers.

A lot of capital is invested in bringing a piece of printed content to market, and that’s a cue for consumers that that content is at least worth considering. This also goes for both consumer magazine, which do less editing and fact checking, and online newspapers, which have all the same costs minus the actual printing/distribution ones.

The content may be good or bad, but a lot of paid professionals were involved in creating it. And that says something to the audience.

The way that interwebs have eroded the barriers to publishing, it has also eroded the gage that consumers use to gage authority and credibility. To publish now requires no capital beyond an internet connection.

Publishers don’t need to focus on ROI anymore. They can be hobbyists or activists or sycophants, and their content can still be very well trafficked. They can game the game, and consumers are left with fewer and fewer ways to gage what content is worth trusting.

This is a problem for everyone: consumers, publishers, advertisers, and PR folks.

An over-saturated publishing market is drowning authoritative content. Consumers are less sure who to trust. Advertisers are losing the consumer reach that authority channels once offered. And PR folks have less and less access to authoritative, unbiased third-parties.

Over all, there’s just a lost less beach front mind share than there used to be. Attention spans are fleeting, so even if you can measure the effectiveness of an online campaign much more accurately than you can an offline one, it doesn’t run as deep.

Realtime life in the stream is just a little too fast paced to make an enduring impression. Brands end up having to run a rat-race, and as Lily Tomlin put it: “The problem with winning the rat race is you’re still a rat.”

The more we vie for consumers’ attention, the more we might be pushing them toward entrenched cynicism, apathy, and possibly outright nihilism. So the question becomes, what can brands do to prevent their consumers from losing faith and interest, and falling victim to social media exhaustion.

Credit: Messiaen

The root problem facing newspapers (and other mainstream publishers) isn’t so much falling ad revenues. That’s just a symptom of a greater problem. The bigger problem facing mainstream publishers is that ad technology hasn’t caught up with content technology.

Right now, there are so many ways to publish and distribute content. But there really aren’t that many way to distribute and target advertising. The result is that the ad space that’s up for sale is worth a whole lot less than the content it appears alongside, and that means that publishers have to operate at a loss and advertisers have a demand for ad space that no one’s offering.

The upside to this, of course, is that there’s a considerable market opportunity for anyone who figures out how to fill this unmet demand (and, in turn, possibly save mainstream publishers). And that oppotunity isn’t that far out of reach because everything needed to fill that demand is readily available. There is so much user data floating around the social web that cloudvertising might just be a viable solution to help publishers help advertisers reach audiences that’ll actually convert.

Between the data that a portal can collect directly from their users and the data trail that those users leave all over the world wide web, everything that advertisers need to hyper-target consumers is already in the cloud. All that’s needed is a reliable way to aggregate and mine it so that users can be shown advertising they actually give a sh*t about.

Cloudvertising

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“Mining the cloud” is part and parcel of what social news organizations (SNO) will do as they evolve. By integrating social media features into its content, both internally and through third party APIs (such as sharing features via Twitter and Facebook), an SNO can actually use users to target advertisers.

The idea behind cloudvertising is that publishers approach readers as users, and then collect data (1) directly from their activity on their site and (2) indirectly from their activity elsewhere on the social web. In a nutshell, publishers leverage third party APIs so that they can profile users/readers and make sure they show them offers that are relevant to them. Although it offers the advertiser less control to pick and choose their audience, it does offer them better targeting and refined results.

By leveraging third party, social media APIs, publishers can develop more comprehensive profiles of their users because they can more easily monitor their users’ activity on social networks. While some APIs will offer them direct access to user data, all APIs will help them (1) identify user profiles, (2) index the activity and content on those profiles, (3) read users’ cookies when they return, and (4) hyper-target offers according to users’ actual interests and recent behavior.

Mining the Cloud

An ad platform that could hyper-target according to both an internal user database and user-data aggregated via a third party APIs is something that could rival Google (or maybe even only be developed by them). So it’s unlikely to be developed by a content organization, so matter how social they are, or what kind of R&D ad lab they have.

What publishers can do, however, is start (1) replacing their ad-sales departments with a comprehensive, internal marketing agencies (like Vice Magazine has) that can (2) start mining user data, (3) diversify ad offerings accordingly, and then (4) collaborate with editorial to develop symbiotic content model.

Mining tends to be a dirty (and dangerous) business that doesn’t yield returns until considerable investment have been made. But it’s also the only way to access critical resources. So while ad technology companies might want to start thinking about cloudvertising so that they don’t end up in a plight similar to where publishers are now, publishers might consider doing what little small-scale mining that they can manage on their own.

Credit: Gina Argentina

Considering how the New York Times is coping with the the plight of the publishing industry and news media better than most, it’s not surprising to see that they might be pursuing a more symbiotic editorial model. Granted, when it comes to weathering the storm, the NYT is a lot larger in both scope and scale (size, authority, and audience) than many of its contemporaries, so it has a definite edge. But its continual efforts to reinvent its content model are plain.

In addition to everything it’s done with blogs and Times Wire (a real time news feed), it seems to be pursuing all three facets of a symbiotic editorial model. Most recently, not only has it started thinking of its readers as users, but it’s implemented a diversified ad-revenue model to go with it. As Adage reports:

[...] Derek Gottfrid, senior software architect and product technologist at The New York Times, said the company has quit calling online readers “readers,” instead referring to them as users. [...]

“When we think traditionally about creation [at The New York Times] it was limited to people within the Times,” [said Derek Gottfrid, senior software architect and product technologist at NYT]. “We created for readers … [for whom] it was a passive experience. But as we moved online, we wanted to move people from readers to users.”

This shift to users-instead-of-readers is an important part of the transition toward becoming a social news organization. As Alan Rusbridger, the Editor-in-Chief of an equally auhtoritative newspaper, The Guardian, noted in a recent interview, there is a blurring between the reader and the journalist, so it’s become necessary to involve the reader more and create a community around your journalist core.

But more importantly, the NYT’s shift toward users-instead-of-readers is also seen in its integration of apps and what those apps might mean for its revenues. Overall, it looks to be evolving into a veritable social news organization. As the AdAge article elaborates, to coax people from being readers to being users:

[...] the company has opened up its [APIs]. The Times has taken content and data — both internally created material, such as movie reviews and best-seller lists, and external data, such as campaign-finance and legislative information — and opened up the APIs so that outside developers can create tools for its consumers.

Among the results: Instantwatcher mashes up the “Watch Instantly” program from online movie-rental service Netflix with Times movie critics’ top choices. Another app, called NYTExplorer, provides an alternative article-search function to the one that exists on NYTimes.com.

These apps demonstrate how the NYT is diversifying their ad-revenue model. The “Watch Instantly” app, for instance, seems a lot like an affiliate marketing tactic — i.e. a performance-based referral marketing model.

Purusing this kind of ad-revenue diversification and the technology to implement it is 2/3 of the symbiotic editorial equation. The reaming third is integrating a full-sevice marketing agency into your organization (as Vice Magazine has), and as the Nieman Journalism Lab recently documented, the NYT has an advertising R&D lab that seems poised to evolve into just such a full-sevice marketing agency.

Credit: OliverAlex

First, a publication provides two products: content and a medium. The content is for your readers/consumers/users, and the medium is for advertisers looking to reach them.

Your editorial becomes symbiotic when you cross-sell those two products, and you do that by strategically develop content items that complement the offers of advertisers that you proactively scouted. But it’s not about churning out biased content that will help advertisers sell their products. Rather, it’s about having an editorial format, knowing your readers demographics, and understanding what kind of consumers they also happen to be. So a big part of it is making sure that your advertisers actually have product offers that appeal to your readers’ consumer interests.

This, of course, raises the question of how you figure that out. It’s one thing to replace your ad-sales department with a fully integrated marketing agency, like Vice Magazine does, but it’s quite another to analyze your readers in a non-intrusive, non-obstructive way. And that’s where understanding them as users comes in.

Credit: Alex Glickman

But then there’s the technology side to treating your readers as users. Basically, if you’re going to provider your readers with the content that they each find most relevant, you’re going to have to collect data on them. And you do that by becoming a social news organization (or just plain-ol’ social content organization).

By leveraging popular APIs so that your readers can seamlessly aggregate, syndicate, and share your content, you achieve so much more than just increasing page views. You also gain insight into their behavior as users and consumers. Integrated with personal profiles/logins within your portal, this allows you target them with the most relevant content.

More importantly, it allows you to target them with offers that actually appeal to them. And when you do that, you not only increase conversions and value of your ad-space; you also build trust with your readers by demonstrating that you understand and appreciate their interests (as consumers and users). In a word, you use your users to target advertisers.

Of course, doing so effectively require that you (1) have a fully integrated marketing agency in-house (like Vice Magazine) that can (2) help you understand your users, (3) collaborate with your editorial to develop symbiotic content, (4) scout appropriate advertisers, and (5) diversify your ad-revenue stream so that you’re not relying on a single, limited model that might coax you into compromising user-experience. In other words, your in-house marketing agency has to market your editorial product first, and your advertisers second.

"Discarded Vice" by Henry Faber

This would, of course, entail a much more proactive approach than offered by traditional ad departments. In fact, it would require that publications have their own “in-house agencies” that are capable undertaking database mining, sourcing sponsors that are appropriate for their audience, and managing a much more precise and diversified revenue model than is offered by current impression- or print-based ad models.

Well, it seems that the full-gloss, free hipster publication, Vice Magazine has already started moving in this direction. As Andrew Adam Newman of the NY Times reports:

Vice magazine has its own antonymous agency, Virtue, which serves as an advertising firm, Web site developer and branding partner. In what may rankle media traditionalists who favor a bright line between advertising and editorial, Virtue’s approach includes using editorial staff at Vice to help develop marketing plans for clients.
[...]
Vice, which started humbly as a free newspaper in Montreal, is now a publishing juggernaut, a glossy magazine based in the hipster center of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. It publishes editions in 13 other countries, including Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Australia. During the next two years, it plans to introduce editions in a dozen more, including Brazil in June and Argentina in September.

So while so many other print-based publications are struggling and folding, Vice is actually expanding, with plans to enter a dozen new markets. Part of this, of course, has to do with what Vice co-founder, Shane Smith, calls a “recession-proof demographic” (aged 18 to 30, and 65 percent male). But there are a few other cues the rest of the print-based publishing industry could probably take from them (and adapt to their own audiences).

First, and foremost, is their brand of “symbiotic editorial.” Journalism outlets obviously have a lot less leeway here than a lifestyle publication such as Vice, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t make vast improvements in their efforts to (1) build databases of user info, (2) mine them, (3) more proactively target sponsors, and (4) diversify and refine their ad offerings.

Second, Vice‘s physical print product is free and entirely ad-supported. More tabloid-like newspapers such as Metro News and 24 Hours are already doing this, so there’s no reason why top-tier local papers shouldn’t be competing on this front with a “free edition.”

Third, Vice has used their print product to drive online traffic. In addition to advertising online-exclusives in their print edition, they also offer expanded and supplemental content online.

Finally, once Vice brings a reader online, they keep them there. As the NYT article pointed out, their video site, VBS.tv, was realized through a partnership with Viacom, and now draws 3.5 million monthly unique visitors, who spend an average of nearly 15 minutes on the site. That is mother f**king stickiness, my friend, and I’m sure that their “own antonymous agency, Virtue,” is working on technology to target these users with engaging offers.

Well I woke up Sunday morning, with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.
–Kris Kristofferson

Credit: Valerie Everett

Saturday morning, I woke up feeling like two 3L towers of beer had fallen on my head — and for good reason. On my way to get a a greasy breakfast to help settle the mercury bouncing between my lobes, I stopped by a magazine store to buy a newspaper. And I got to thinking: “maybe newspapers aren’t as screwed as everyone thinks, after all.”

You see, my preference for new is pretty much international, business, and then maybe national news (i.e. Canada). And in this magazine store I had my pick of papers. I could’ve bought a copy of the New York Times (NYT), or stayed a bit closer to home with the Globe and Mail, but instead I opted for the Montreal Gazette.

Why? Well, it wasn’t for the editorial or the coverage. The paper has a grade seven reading level, is infamous for typos and grammatical errors, and most of the national and international coverage is syndicated from newswires such as the Associated Press or Canadian Press.

But I chose a copy of the Montreal Gazette because it’s familiar to me. The NYT is an authoritative expert, but it’s also a complete stranger. And The Globe: well, we’ve met, and maybe even shaken hands, but we’ve never even gone for a drink together.

But The Gazette, I grew up with The Gazette. We’re not the closest of friends, but we know each other, and if I’m going to share my Saturday morning with someone, I’d rather be someone I’m comfortable with than a complete stranger.

And there might be something there that local papers can use to reinvent themselves. When you think about how both national and local papers are having more and more trouble justifying their weekday print editions, you have to wonder whether they might be better off saving forest 5 days a week.

Credit: LondonSLR

On weekends, however, we’re looking for something other than news. We’re looking for an experience, and on the weekends we have time for that to be more than just a user experience. We have the time to sit down have a physical experience, sharing sections with family and friends over the breakfast table.

So maybe the answer for newspapers is to ditch the print edition — 5 days a week. Maybe they should be cutting overhead and becoming hyper-local social news organizations from Monday to Friday and focus their print efforts on producing a kick-ass weekend editions that’s like a weekly digest of everything their local communities need/want to know.

It’s been a busy week in the world of newspapers. While publishers continue to watch their revenue streams dry up, entrepreneur Steve Brill, former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz and cable guy-turned-investor Leo Hindery, Jr. think they have the answer: an online paid-content model.

In any case, both these events have generated a considerable amount of opinionated dribble, and wading through it all, I’ve come across a few perspectives worth considering.

• Newspapers must grow their online news market share. Can they?: Writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, Martin Langeveld explores how news consumption patterns have shifted online, but newspapers are in no position to charge for online content, so they’re just going to have to become “digital enterprises.”
• Don’t blame Google for newspaper woes: A former newspaper man himself, Alan D. Mutter puts the newspapers who repine about Google in their place by reminding us that “newspapers actually had a head start over Google. But Google “got” the web. And newspapers didn’t. That’s not Google’s fault.”
• Steve Brill wants to try charging for content online… again: Also writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, Matthew Ingram of the Globe and Mail casts serious doubt on Steven Brill’s proposed paid-content model by asking “whether readers want to pay for any of the content that Brill and his partners want to lock up, regardless of how easy they make it.”
• Why Newspapers Shouldn’t Buy What Steven Brill Is Selling: Ryan Tate of Gawker points out that Steven Brill’s paid-content model isn’t so much about publishing as it is about micro payments, and companies like PayPal are already doing a very good job of handling that (suggesting that if micropayments could save newspapers, PayPal would be even richer than it already is).
• Should Newspapers Charge for Online Content? To Answer This Question, You Have to Consult a Lawyer: Peter Scheer looks at the Steven Brill’s paid content model from an even more practical standpoint, noting that “Copyright does not protect ideas or facts, just the way they are presented” — suggesting that it wouldn’t be worth it because newspapers would have to entangle themselves in litigative mire to fully protect their paid content.
• Newspapers: No Bottom in Sight: Ashkan has a great little clip from CNN about newspaper ad revenues, putting all the debate above back into context.
• This Sounds Familiar: The Death Of Newspapers… 91 Years Ago: A poignant reminder how this isn’t the first time newspapers have been in trouble, and it probably won’t be the last — suggesting that the sky might not be falling on the presses after all.

This guy (Jacek Utko) thinks that design can help save newspapers, which is weird because he also says that “There’s no practical reason for newspaper to survive.” How you save something that has no practical reason to exist is beyond me. But I’m not so sure about design saving newspapers or that newspapers have no practical reason to exist.

Hat tip to Patrick Tanguay for the video.

First, Utko’s talking about reinventing the actual physical print editions of newspapers, and as much as that might increase their circulation, it will only buy them time. Newsworthy information just moves much faster than can the production of a physical product, such as a print edition.

And I’m not so sure about newspapers having no practical reason to exist for two reasons: (1) they are very, very valuable in a democracy, because (2) they’re in the business of providing authoritative information so that they can sell subscriptions and ads. As long as there is a demand/need for that kind of information, there are very practical reasons (both economic and political) for newspapers to exist.

So it’s not that newspapers have to change their product, it’s that they have to change their business model, their revenue model, becoming less of a newspaper and more of news organizations. As Clay Shirky puts it:

It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.

They probably won’t be able to sell subscriptions the way they used to, but they can definitely sell ads better than they ever have. That’s where their revenue model has to change, in the delivery of advertising. They have to start phasing out (or at least stop relying on) print editions, and start thinking of better ways to deliver both their authoritative information and the ads that appear alongside it.

And it’s not rocket science, either. It’s something that plenty of A-list bloggers and affiliate marketers have already figured out on a much smaller level. All newspapers have to do is increase the scale and scope.

As for this Utko fella, it seems to me that he’s just running is mouth off about how highly he regards himself. I think it’s awesome that he was able to turn around so many Eastern European newspapers — really, I do.

But as online technologies achieve the same penetration rates in Eastern Europe as they have in the West, those publications are to face all of the same challenges as the the Chicago Sun Times and the Rocky Mountain News. And the only design that’s going to help them get past that will be the schools of information architecture and business modeling.