Archive for the ‘old media’ Category

2 Big Myths that are Killing Newspapers

Posted by tom.altman on February 24th, 2010
newspapers (Tehrān)

From a post I found over at SimsBlog with some really good thoughts:

…is how journalists “spent nearly a century denying responsibility and involvement in business decisions”.

…

The result of this siloed newsroom is that a large chunk of the organization has no real understanding of how the business works.

That is a very real idea.  In fact, I think they are still running from the business end today.

But let’s not let the advertising department off the hook!

The Big Advertising Department Myth: We sell eyeballs

Not really.

Eyeballs are about mass and placement in the form reader demographics, circulation numbers, lines, columns, colour and position requests.

What advertising departments actually sell is connection and context that lead to sales results.

The article has more interesting information, but it really talking about as newspapers are making excuses and fussing…it’s time to take some responsibility.

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Posted in business, new media, old media Tags: , , , No Comments »

80% of US Consumers Won't Pay For Online Content

Posted by tom.altman on November 16th, 2009

“But, I’msure the newspaper I work for is different.”

I hope I don’t that quote after the people I work with read this.

80% of US Consumers Won’t Pay For Online Content.

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Why content sites are getting ripped off — cdixon.org – chris dixon's blog

Posted by tom.altman on September 29th, 2009

Some of the best meat to this article is in the comments:

A commenter on my blog the other day (Tim Ogilvie) mentioned a distinction that I found really interesting between intent generation and intent harvesting.

via Why content sites are getting ripped off — cdixon.org – chris dixon’s blog.

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Stop Giving the Newspapers Your Advice – They Don’t Need It – O'Reilly Radar

Posted by tom.altman on September 15th, 2009

Word.

Stop Giving the Newspapers Your Advice – They Don’t Need It – O’Reilly Radar.

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GM hopes to sell cars on eBay – Jul. 10, 2009

Posted by tom.altman on July 10th, 2009

GM hopes to sell cars on eBay – Jul. 10, 2009.

What?  Leverage a semi-new technology for increasing sales?  Preposterous.

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Google Maps Finally Ready to Tell You "What's Here" for Any Point on a Map… Almost

Posted by tom.altman on June 22nd, 2009

Google Maps Finally Ready to Tell You “What’s Here” for Any Point on a Map… Almost.

Attention media companies – please make sure to encode geo locations with your new stories.  Everyone in the world would like to mash them up for you.

Thank you.

Posted in Quick Post, api, new media, old media Tags: , , Comments Off

What’s black and white and evolving?

Posted by tom.altman on June 3rd, 2009

What’s black and white and evolving? « Roadies of the C3.

My boss Mike drops a lot of things to ponder about newspapers and Zebras.

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Building a niche swine flu site with mainstream power | Old Media, New Tricks

Posted by tom.altman on May 18th, 2009
Looking at Ford Field the night of Super Bowl XL
Image via Wikipedia

Building a niche swine flu site with mainstream power | Old Media, New Tricks.

This reminds me of a site we did at our “old media company” during the Super Bowl time frame.  Local Cedar Rapids Iowa boy Kurt Warner was playing in yet another Super Bowl.

We had a group of advertising focus people take a look at the concept and they passed, they didn’t think it was something we could sell.

The content guys (Jason) said – well, I think I can give it a shot.  WebDev (the tech boys) talk with content and picked a template from our WordPress respository. We put it on the server and then turned the keys over to content.

Less than 20 hours of work total – and we had it working.  It was a great team effort and not a bad result.  (kurtwarner.gazetteonline.com)

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AT&T – big, bad and high tech

Posted by tom.altman on May 10th, 2009
Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

After reading my CEO’s blog today – it made me think about my “call” with AT&T on Saturday.  I’ve recently signed up for an iPhone from AT&T.

Onto the story – I took a motorcycle ride on Saturday to meet a friend’s son for lunch.  When we arrived at the restaurant, I checked the and had two voice messages.  One was a friend and the other was AT&T.  I had not set-up my payments on my online billpay yet, so I had not made a payment.  I was basically behind.  Not intentionally – but I really just not gotten around to it.

So I called the 800 number and 2:31 (two minutes – thirty second later, I checked) I was done.  I had made a bank transfer of funds.  Now some will get a bit freaked out – but I’m saying thank you.

Firstly – you can take the iPhone when you pry it out of my cold dead hands.  The iPhone is awesome.  Seriously – 10x better than any other phone I’ve used.  Secondly – 2:31 seconds for me to pay my bill – COME ON!

Now – what does that have to do with newspapers and media?  Well – it goes back to what Chuck said in the blog post.

I do not believe that human nature is changing. However, we are learning new behaviors, using new tools.

Exactly.  I felt too busy to pay the phone bill.  I could have, but just chose not to.  But AT&T was cool with that and changed their behavior to adapt to my crappy ways.

So – what have we (as media companies) done to change what we do for people?  Do we even know who the people are?  What they do? What they want?  We have no clue what our people want or desire.

Just think what we could do if we knew the audience.  We have tens of sites, if we had all that data – plus the TV station, plus the newspaper and it was all available.  We could really know who they are and what they do and why they do what they do and that they may want you to let them pay the bill over a text message.

That would be good…but we don’t.  And we need to figure that out too.

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Posted in community, gen y, iPhone, old media, technology, wedia Tags: , , , , 2 Comments »

The TenXFactor: He who owns the Data Wins

Posted by tom.altman on March 29th, 2009
Emergency Exit: Semantic Web (White on Green)
Image by semanticwebcompany via Flickr

The TenXFactor: He who owns the Data Wins.

This is a great blog post which backs up what Jason and I have been trying to get across at our company – The Gazette.  Please – some read this and decide that it is true, great post.

CONTENT IS STILL KING.

As I had discussed in a post last year, He who owns the data Wins. What is critical with any media company whose primary asset is content is to leverage the deep silos of content. But this is NOT happening. What is happening is that the industry is turning all reporters into bloggers and/or targeting vertical market segments to increase the advertising reach. Lets stop there. There is no intrinsic value. You are reducing your assets to the lowest common denominator. Very few blog posts have a long shelf life. Stickiness (which drives market reach) is driven by the community, not by the merits of journalism and as the universe as demonstrated, anyone can run a blog.

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