Facebook is essentially running a payola scam where you have to pay them if you want your own fans to see your content. If you run a large publishing company and you make a big piece of content that you feel proud of, you put it up on Facebook. From there, their algorithm takes over, with no transparency. So, not only is the website not getting ad revenue they used to get, they have to pay Facebook to push it out to their own subscribers.
Matt Klinman — How Facebook Is Killing Comedy
Building the Perfect Bootstrapped Business on WordPress
Building the Perfect Bootstrapped Business on WordPress. Inspiring talk on so many levels. Where to find recurring value: business cycles; ongoing, value-generating costs; highly dynamic environments.
How much should a custom WordPress website cost?
How much should a custom WordPress website cost? Excellent piece by Brian Krogsgard — every paragraph rings with truth.
The inevitable collision of journalism and everything else
Journalistic entities are moving towards becoming product companies, offering products that turn content into marketing. As a side effect, this creates businesses that follow Jack White’s theory of control: vertically integrated, creating content that markets a product that markets the content that markets the product all over again.
Like USA Today selling its data, POLITICO making a bookstore, my local public radio station selling membership or TechCrunch launching Disrupt. Publishers that successfully turn their content into brand building and marketing for a product are the ones that are surviving.
Sean Blanda — The inevitable collision of journalism and everything else
Give me a strategy and I’ll show you a success
Give me a strategy and I’ll show you a success. Stijn outlines a smattering of the different ways publications are approaching their niche.
Thoughts on journalists using Facebook
First, Brian Boyer wrote: “Craigslist takes the classifieds, fool me once. Groupon takes the coupons, fool me twice. Good thing nobody else is selling display ads!”
Then, Nieman Journalism let Vadim Lavrusik publish essentially marketing copy about how journalists can use Facebook’s Pages product. For free. In exchange for the ability to run ads against your content.
To this, I said: “I’m sorry, but journalists getting in bed with Facebook is the mother of all bad ideas. See: http://db.ly/103 Shame on you @niemanlab”
And: “Newspapers sell display ads, last I checked. Facebook has a many billion $ valuation from its display ad biz. Therefore = ?”
And: “‘Here’s the problem: journalists just don’t understand their business.’ I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
And: “Yo journos: How much cash will Facebook give you when it goes public with a $50+ billion valuation? My bet: a lot less than Arianna did.”
Now Paul Bradshaw, a prominent journo-blogger in the UK, has decided to use Facebook’s Notes product exclusively for a month. Vadim, under the Facebook for Journalists moniker, explains:
But to answer your question, you should reference the terms. You own your content. Facebook gets a license so that we can put ads next to it. Not dissimilar from other companies.
Ah, referencing ever-changing terms of service. If you aren’t the customer, you’re the product. Writing these points out on territory I control so I can point to it later.
Business Class: Freemium for News?
Business Class: Freemium for News? Upsell your readership on a better experience, not more information. Absolutely the right idea. Plus, when your CMS has a fully accessible API, it’s free* for the hackers and designers in your newsroom, to experiment with new packages on the fly.
* people cost a lot less than printing presses
Future of News roundtable, Eugene-style
The lunch session at SPJ’s Building a Better Journalist conference today was YAPOTFON, or Yet Another Panel On The Future Of News. Conversation was facilitated by President-elect Hagit Limor (@hlimor).
DJ Wilson is the President and General Manager of the KGW Media Group in Portland. “More than ever, people are consuming media.” Part of it is the 24/7, anytime, anywhere demand from consumers. KGW is a content business that works to meet that demand.
Rita Hibbard (@rthibbard) is the executive director and editor of InvestigateWest, a reporting non-profit in Seattle started by ex-Seattle Post-Intelligencer staffers. The bad news is the sheer number of journalists that have been laid off; the number of credentialed reporters in Olympia, Washington has gone from 25 to 6. [Ed note 10/25: This may also be due to waning interest in covering government] “Readers and news consumers are starting to wake up to what’s being lost out there.” We’re not replacing the investigative troops, but figuring out new ways to get the job done. InvestigateWest is brand new; incorporated in May, website launched in July, and first story will be out next month. It’s a piece on the misuse of public lands. They generate original, high-level investigative content. The business model is to syndicate it to as many media partners as possible, not build up their website. The first grant InvestigateWest received was from the Bullitt Foundation, which hasn’t traditionally funded journalism.
“Collaboration is a big part of this new media ecosystem.” InvestigateWest is working with a number of media partners in ways that would not have happened five or ten years ago. “The era of one dominant media source in a community is over.” News will now be an ecosystem of many parts.
News entrepreneurship session at Digital Journalism Camp
Arrived a few minutes late to Digital Journalism Camp, organized by Abraham Hyatt, and these are my notes from the first session about news entrepreneurship in Portland. Steve Woodward and Carolyn Duncan, of the Portland Ten, led the session.
Steve Woodward of Nozzl Media argues that the drop in newspaper revenue is a metrics problem. Newspapers need to work more with metrics and be able to prove their value such that they can reengage their advertisers. The tools for metrics in print are much less than the tools for metrics online.
Discussion about Perez Hilton. Carolyn Duncan asks “who the hell was this guy three years ago?” Chuckles from the audience as someone asks “who the hell is this guy now?” The same guy asking that question follows up with “if you want to be in this business, trust is the word. If you don’t have trust, you’re not going to make a dollar.”
Pete Forsyth on trust and citing sources on Wikipedia: “you want to have a clear, transparent editorial process.” The producer of the content has to adhere to a published set of standards that others can audit.
Continue reading “News entrepreneurship session at Digital Journalism Camp”
Newsroom as a cafe
David Cohn pegs a newsroom as a cafe where people can hang out and, through food and drink purchase, provide an alternate source of revenue for reporting. Twenty percent of every coffee you bought might go to reporting in your local community, or something like that. For Steve Outing, the newsroom as a cafe is a place for your people to connect so that you can have greater access to your community. Both of these are pieces of a bigger picture that’s been stewing in me for a couple of months; dessert and beer at the Pied Cow on Belmont last night provided a photograph to illustrate my idea.
It’s not just about using a different industry to add to reporting revenue, but rather repositioning the news organization as the information hub for the community. The newsroom as a cafe should be an 18th century salon, or space for the leading discussions of the day to take place, ferment, and spawn action.
Mark this idea as incomplete until I can start working on it. At the moment, I think it would include: