Eubie's notes

MediaWeek: Time Mag: Buy by Audience or by Slashed Rate Base — Time magazine announced late today that it will implement sweeping changes to the way it sells advertising. Rather than the standard sale of ad pages by circulation, the newsweekly will offer media buyers either a dramatically reduced rate base of 3.25 million (a drop of 750,000) or an audience-based model (of 19.5 million readers per issue) that emulates the television selling process. The magazine will be the first publisher ever to make use of MRI’s new Issue Accumulation Study as a foundation for this new sales approach.

Wired News: Gannett to Crowdsource News — The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.. Also Editor and Publisher: Gannett to Revamp All Newsrooms for New Age and Washington Post: Gannett To Change Its Papers’ Approach

Wired News: Six Apart Leads With Vox — Of all the contenders promising to up the ante on MySpace, few sites have emerged as serious threats. But a new offering from Mena Trott’s Six Apart might have what it takes to become the biggest player in social networks.. Good piece about Vox, which moved out of beta last month. I’m a fan of Six Apart and I’m enjoying Vox.

NY Times: Mars Rover Visits Crater, Then Poses for a Picture — Scientists said that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had photographed the golf-cart-size rover sitting on the side of Victoria Crater on Mars.

Washington Post: Google to Try Selling Advertisements for Newspapers — Google Inc. is expanding its footprint as an advertising broker with a test program that will allow businesses to click to Google and buy ad space in The Washington Post, the New York Times and other papers, sources confirmed last night. NY Times: Newspapers to Test Plan to Sell Ads on Google — The three-month test may open up new revenue to hurting papers, but would risk making Google even stronger.

From Rexblog:

Here’s what I think: As I wrote over and over when Google was trying out the same model for magazines (it hasn’t worked so far, but one day, I believe Google will figure that market out also), this business model is an old and easy-to-understand role in the publishing industry: it is called “independent sales rep.” If Google finds a way to aggregate advertising and sell it for newspapers (probably, the classified variety) and keep a 20% commission on the transaction, then they can rearrange the market share of advertising sales brokering — and be a threat to some independent and in-house advertising sales folks. But it should only be a net positive for newspapers, who spend that much already in sales-related costs.

Newspapers sure as heck were never going to figure it out on their own.

Scott Karp: Handing the reigns over to Google’s efficient direct response advertising machine will only hasten the realization that the Web is much more efficient than print at driving action and response.

Another from WSJ: Papers Aim to Widen Ad Base With Google — When 50 daily newspapers begin selling their ads through Google’s site this week, they’ll be confronting the Achilles’ heel of their industry: It is too hard for small advertisers to buy ads.

NY Times: What?s Online: Reading Between the Lines — There?s no question the newspaper industry is ?under siege,? as some say. But how bad are things, really?
and
(N)ewspapers still haven’t figured out how to make a healthy profit from Internet readership. Cluttered, hard-to-navigate newspaper sites proliferate. And many sites force readers to register, which Internet types say is counterproductive, when those readers can so easily go elsewhere for their news. In terms of the content itself, Louis Hau of Forbes.com thinks he has the answer: Look to New York City’s dueling tabloids, The Post and The Daily News. Even as most other papers had circulation declines, both tabloids picked up readers. The gains, Mr. Hau said, can be attributed to the fact that both papers “emphasize local coverage,” “offer stories you can’t get anywhere else,” “keep it short,” and present the news with “attitude” and “a point of view.”

Journalism.org: A Closer Look at Plunging Circulation — (F)ully paid circulation is typically falling even faster than the overall totals reported this week. Apparently, newspaper companies trying to bolster the numbers either pushed deeply discounted introductory offers at readers or extended discounts they were already offering many subscribers rather than trying to convert them to fully paid.

Journalism.org: Not Much Good News in the New Circulation Numbers — Confirming speculation that 2006 has been a difficult year, the six-month statistics from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC)—from March 30 to Sept. 30—reveal the steepest average decline in at least 15 years.

WSJ: Older Consoles Lift Game Publishers — The buzz in videogames is all about next-generation machines, but the biggest money for publishers like Electronic Arts is coming from software for older hardware. PS2 still outsell xBox360. Makes economic sense since Sony also cut the price of the PS2.

It’s been around awhile, but it’s a classic.

NY Times: American Album: As the Jobs Go South, the Hope Goes With Them — Left behind in McMinnville, Tenn., are thousands of people who once had a piece of the American middle class, including Don Rackley.

WSJ: Baseball Shrugs Off Low Playoff Ratings — Baseball is shrugging off its lack of postseason punch, including the lowest-ever TV ratings for the World Series, because so many other parts of its business are thriving. I’m used to this when the Cardinals are in the World Series.