Life After Newspapers: Editor, John Yemma, Checks-in a Year After the Christian Science Monitor Became the CSMonitor.com

There is a very thoughtful column over at Paid Content from the editor of the Christian Science Monitor, John Yemma, that should resonate with the media experts. It’s a companion piece of sorts to the observations that other people have been making, such as Rupert Murdoch or Pete Blackshaw, regarding our infatuation with the razzle dazzle of new media technology - not with regards to advertising, but with regard to content and editorial.

Mr. Yemma has a pretty good vantage point from which to cast his views upon us: the Christian Science Monitor, after all, passed the gulp test last year when, after 100 years, it ceased publishing as a daily newspaper to become a web-based international news outlet supported by a weekly magazine. (CSMonitor.com is a Burst Media customer.)

Today, Mr. Yemma says:

“…there’s no evidence that [consumers] want, for instance, a thoughtful interactive map/video/database mashup on Afghanistan or global warming on which they can comment. There’s no evidence that users love these things so much that they flock to them, stay around, and convert to a news site’s brand because of cool multimedia.

So here’s my position: There is no future in a pay wall. No salvation in digital razzle dazzle.

There is, however, a bold future in relevant content.”

He makes other observations in his article that reveal a year of living dangerously online, such as:

“As for interactivity, we typically don’t invite readers to comment at the bottom of our stories. Don’t get me wrong, we want thoughtful comments. But comment-happy sites that don’t moderate often allow a brilliant piece to be followed by a string of rotten tomatoes thrown by—how can I put this delicately?—comment jerks.”

(Jeff Jarvis was thinking deeply about “comment jerks”, recently - or, he would say, about the “level of discourse on the internet”. Whichever.  As a sidebar note I’ll say I’m ready for broad-based, civic action against “jerk discourse.”)

But the essence of John Yemma’s report is this, as he says at the end:

“The multimedia debate needs a new question: How are we using technology to create a more relevant product? We’re not going to “save” media by out-featuring each other. We can and will re-cement media by using the technology to deliver the experience consumers want most: intelligent, meaningful news that’s accessible where they are in the moment.”

“Intelligent, meaningful news that’s accessible where they are in the moment.”

Ahhh. Out of chaos, simplicity.

A New Media Generation Slowly Taking Charge: JWT Names its Worldwide Digital Director as CEO, North America.

Per a report in the Wall Street Journal, JWT has named its Worldwide Digital Director, David Eastman, North American CEO. He will keep his worldwide digital job. David is 46. That’s important. He was 30 when the Internet came upon the world commercially and he (thus digital) is now the heir apparent.

Change is coming to the media world pretty much on schedule. It takes 20 years and it doesn’t happen because the people in the corner offices suddenly go “Oh, right, now I get it”; it happens because the people in the corner offices change.

It did not take the Wall Street Journal 20 years (April 2002) after USA Today broke the four-color barrier in newspapers (September 1982) to finally start printing in color because it took them 20 years to figure-out that four-color could create content and advertising opportunities. It took 20 years for people who had grown-up with four-colored newspapers to finally be in charge.

It did not take Cable TV 20 years to appear at the top of the advertising food chain because it took that long for people to ”want their MTV”. It took 20 years for people who didn’t want their MTV to finally disappear from the building.

It is a curious thing about media change that for consumers it can happen overnight (the first issue of USA Today sold out), but for the rest of us assigned to watch them it can take a generation.

Separate But Equal: Michael Kinsley is Elected to The American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame, Bringing Digital Media Along Behind Him

For no clear reason I latched on to Michael Kinsley’s career when he was Managing Editor at The Washington Monthly, a position he held while still a student in the ’70s (I believe). His stops along the way include some of the world’s most engaging publications, such as Harper’s, The New Republic and The Economist, and some of the biggest, such as Time, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. He developed a television persona as co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire” with Pat Buchanan and as moderator of William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line” which displayed his quick wit and intellect, and his measured and reasoned approach to political argument. In that regard, Michael Kinsley was to the political discourse of the country everything that the talking heads of cable and radio programming today are not: a real-life pundit, not a circus entertainer.

Of relevance to us here is that in 1995 Kinsley was the founding Editor of Slate Magazine. It was early days online, but there went Kinsley - caretaker of some of magazine’s most significant legacies - west (literally, to Seattle) in the direction (figuratively) of the New Media World.

Michael Kinsley was voted into the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) Hall of Fame this week. Accepting the honor he spoke as a member of the digital community. Said he:

“And it’s very cool to get this award in the year that online journalism is finally recognized as fully equal to that other kind in the eyes of our trade association, ASME. We’ve been given our own collection of awards– congratulations to all the winners– and our own luncheon. Somebody has already referred to the delicious food. I know that ASME has struggled for years over what to do about the Internet, and the rules have changed every year. But now we are basically…well, I think the Supreme Court said it best in Plessy v. Ferguson: separate but equal.”

The list of winners of ASME’s first ever digital magazine awards reads like a Who’s Who of traditional media, of course. There was only one, online-only web site. But it’s a start, which, for his part, Michael Kinsley deservedly won a prize.

Audiences Don’t Pay for Content

[Note: This is a response (below) to Mark McLaughlin's post at The Huffington Post, "Audiences Don't Pay for Content." He echoes the argument of Michael Kinsley back in 2001 that, at most, audiences pay for distribution.

The Internet hasn't done anything to change the paying dynamic around content, as McLaughlin goes on to say. But, that may start to change, as per the post in this space yesterday.

All that is free about content on the Internet may spur media companies to re-evaluate all that is free about content, generally. In the process, they may decide on the wisdom of aiming at smaller, more dedicated audiences willing to pay for what they most desire - which should strike us as bringing them in-line with New Media's central value proposition.]

* * * * *

Mark:

Michael Kinsley made this observation at Slate.com. In 2001 he wrote:

“…let’s look again at this notion that in every medium except the Internet people pay for the content they consume. It’s not really true.

“…A few weeks ago a producer from Nightline contacted Slate while researching a possible show on the crisis of content on the Internet. He wanted to know how on earth we could ever be a going business if we gave away our content for free. I asked how many people pay to watch Nightline. Answer: none. People pay for their cable or satellite hookup, and they pay for content on HBO, but Nightline and other broadcast programs thrive without a penny directly from viewers.”

But, I’m not sure what you mean by saying in your piece, “We need solutions that improve the relevance of content for individual consumers without expecting individual consumers to be able to predict exactly what they want.”

It strikes me that the Internet IS the solution for relevant content when consumers know what they want and need. What do you believe needs to be different or improved about the Internet to make it more relevant?

Regardless, I agree: “Advertising works. In the digital era, the consumer finds it very easy to ignore irrelevant advertising but they are quicker to engage with relevant advertising than ever before because the Internet makes engagement easy.”

The relevance of Internet content represents the advantage to consumers and advertisers.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Rebekah Brooks Sees Into the Future

The MPA’s daily news feed spots a post in the Guardian’s “Organ Grinder” blog about Rebekah Brooks, Chief Executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, talking about pay walls. She says:

“Of course we expect to see the numbers of unique users of our websites come down dramatically…The industry is making the mistake of chasing millions of users by giving the audience more and more content for free – an obsession with traffic that just doesn’t pay.”

Everyone should stare at that last bit for a while: “An obsession with traffic that just doesn’t pay.”

Here is a prediction: when the history of the Internet is written it will be observed that it did two things of significance for the media and advertising world (both fabulously ironic):

Thing One: It brought to a close years of misadventure searching for Wanamaker’s famous other 50% and inspired a new generation of brand marketers to put intuition and creativity first;

Thing Two: It brought to a close the media’s obsession with traffic (i.e., audience for audience sake) thereby eliminating media waste, which will have been the very thing, of course, to put things right for Thing One.

Tom Hinkes Lands a Few Punches for the Importance of Marketing Intuition

It’s always a contest between data and intuition. In the “CMO Strategy” corner at Ad Age today Tom Hinkes lands many blows for the power and importance of intuition.

First with the right:

“Marketers with the ability to identify an unmet consumer need, develop a product to meet it, create a brand, and then lead it to market dominance are missing. Product managers with a fear of ambiguity have replaced the creative, forward-thinking brand builders.”

Then with the left:

“The quantitative “MBA aspects” of brand management are vitally important. Ignoring the numbers and just “going with our gut” can be an even worse sin, and result in … frankly, almost every one of this year’s Super Bowl spots. But the pendulum has clearly swung too far. The result is today’s brand manager who (paraphrasing David Ogilvy) uses data, “the way a drunk man uses a lamp post, for support rather than illumination.”

Then, pow, right in the kisser:

“Great brand marketers are comfortable with ambiguity. They realize marketing is a balancing act — it’s numbers and detail, but it’s also flair and vision. It’s qualitative and quantitative; analysis and intuition; perspiration and inspiration. Great marketing requires the balance of both sides of the brain. But the balance has been lost.”

 

Quite. Enough upper cuts to the head will do that to the balance. Here’s hoping that marketing is fighting back.

Doug Weaver Gets Real About Micro sites in a Box

It strikes me that nothing stupid has ever come from the mouth or pen (or keyboard) of Doug Weaver, which is a remarkable record given his 15 years as an Internet sales activist and pundit. This is a more emphatic way of saying that Doug is always saying smart things; but emphatic matters here because what Doug says today in his blog, “The Drift” (“I Got My Micro Site in a Box”), should be pinned, like idiot mittens, to the sleeve of everyone in the Internet business each morning before they head out to wait for the bus to work.

Here’s his opener:

“For the last three years I’ve been on a mission to bury the micro site.  The whole idea of building these little Potemkin marketing villages, bolting them onto our domains and then coaxing and cajoling consumers to visit them would be quaint if it weren’t so destructive.”

Further in Doug says:

“In just about every workshop I conduct I urge — plead with! — sellers to end the madness.  “There’s no reason to do these anymore,” says I.  “Take the visual assets of your media brand, fold in some creative and product messaging from the sponsor, dump it all into a Flash ad unit and distribute it!” 

The part about “distribute it” made instant sense to me but I had to call Doug to make sure I understood who the “Potemkin village” builders were in his description. Publishers, it seemed. But why?

Well, it turns out that online publishers are in the habit of retro-fitting content to meet the special needs of advertisers by building custom environments more suitable to a product’s context. Advertisers desiring more on the subject of, say, acne skin treatments for teenage girls, 12 – 15 years old, against which to match their acne skin treatment advertisements, could prevail upon the publishers to create a “micro site” for that purpose to be buried among all the music and entertainment content (for instance) to which the teenage girls were first and foremost attracted, thus establishing an ancillary requirement to build traffic to that micro site.

(Exhausting.)

There is precedent for this sort of “Please, maybe you like something else?” practice of selling advertising. The editorial calendar in magazines and newspapers comes to mind. Once upon a time destination travel advertisers the world over would freely buy pages in the Sunday Travel sections of newspapers. Then, under pressure from advertisers for better access to their best customers, newspapers began to create special destination sections that eventually had the effect of training advertisers to anticipate and wait for those sections. Which leads to the question of how many sections on Hawaii one newspaper can reasonably run per year without undermining its coverage of the travel world for readers? Two?

“Fine!” the Hawaiian advertisers responded in those days. “We’ll take two pages. We can use the savings on the other four pages we use to buy from you elsewhere.”

This is what happens when we chicken-out on selling value.

Save that point for a rainy day and worry about the fact that in a new media world that provides for the limitless availability of contextual opportunities, we’re still building Potemkin villages – by definition, impressive but fake.

All the while Google has amassed a fortune on the genuine article: the distributed, contextual power of the Internet – the fact that the editorial circumstances exist in real time to satisfy almost every conceivable advertising objective. Online there is always a right time and place that is suitable (as suitable as every fake village) to host the right message.

Which should be the whole point of Internet media buying because, after all, we are sympathetic to our Hawaii travel and acne skin treatment customers who desire to reach their best customers, and who found it increasingly difficult to do so offline, enough so that they started to revolt against the waste of traditional media and advertising.

Doug Weaver wants to help publishers with his post; mostly brand publishers that he may be worrying aloud are taking short cuts on the value of their inventory and swimming against the tide of media distribution, which is away from the center. They have a chance using the creative resources available today to bundle their authentic selves with advertising and distribute it together, beyond their borders, to where the people are.

This post is for buyers. Listen to Doug and take the message to the people - now that the chance to do so is real, and not from a box.

Magazines Are Up and iPadding Around

By itself is was going to be worth saying something about the panel discussion at the SXSW conference in Austin titled, “Could the iPad have saved Gourmet?” (i.e. Gourmet Magazine), that was reported by VentureBeat and picked-up by the MPA’s Daily News Round-up. But, then, how to address that story without addressing the four related iPad stories that showed up in the same MPA Round-up, bang, bang, bang, bang, one after the other?

The most revealing part of the “Saving Gourmet” story was courtesy of panelist Rachel Sklar, Mediaite Editor at Large, who reportedly told attendees that she had proposed a session on the future of magazines to conference organizers and was denied (to the accompanying sound of many groans, I’m sure; as in, “Please (groan), can we give the whole suffering and dying magazine thing a rest!”). Then, Ms. Sklar explained, Apple’s iPad debuted and suddenly – my interpretation – it’s not a story about the tortuous end of magazines, but about new beginnings.

It’s clear the magazine industry is sitting up and taking iPad for nourishment. The MPA’s Daily News Round-up makes that very clear. Bang, bang, bang, bang.

TLC’s “Addicted” Issues a Desperate Cry for Help

TLC will debut a new reality show on Wednesday, to go head to head with A & E’s “Intervention,” called “Addicted.” For the kick-off episode, according to a report in the Sunday Boston Globe, we can look forward to watching a young woman named Amanda shoot heroin in her bathroom.

I am not a media critic. This is not a media critic’s blog. I am not a doctor or a social worker or therapist, nor a recovering addict with an ability to understand. I do not watch much reality TV, have never watched “Intervention”, and will not be tuning-in to watch poor Amanda fall under the spell of the cameras, lights and “action” shooting through her veins.

So, for the sake of anyone that wants to jump-in on behalf of TLC’s better intentions (TLC President, Eileen O’Neill, calls Addicted “…a series about family, change and hope”), or the tragedy that is Amanda and countless other victims of substance abuse, or the good that might come from bringing their stories to light in an insensitive world, I am here to say only, fine. Sure. If you think so.

For anyone else that may be driving up and down the  broad boulevards of television staring out the window, wondering what ever happened to the old neighborhood that was once lined by trees and decorative front yards, “Addicted” is a good metaphor. The answer is that people moved away and the place got too expensive for those that remained. And, inevitably, this is what happens.

It can remain an open question whether TV can help Amanda - or New Jersey housewives, or hoarders, or top models, or anyone else issuing a desperate cry for help. Let’s hope so. In the meantime, their voices mingle with desperate cries from the media world - and, not unfittingly, it is sometimes hard to tell the cries apart.

Nothing to Snore at: Pete Blackshaw Urges we “Get Back to Boring”

Good column in Ad Age from Pete Blackshaw, EVP of Online Digital Strategic Services at Neilsen, which echoes what Rupert Murdoch had to say about the blinding effects of all the technology razzle-dazzle in new media today. Says Pete: “We’ve got too much sizzle in the system right now.”

Pete has been looking back at “timeless truths” in advertising in connection with his efforts to help found a Museum of Advertising in Cincinnati. Cincinnati, of course, is home to Proctor & Gamble which has been the source of many advertising truths. He is reminded that the very first Ivory Soap ad invited participation from consumers and that Bill Cosby refused a script for his first commercial in order to be more authentic. It leads him to suggest that “Maybe things haven’t changed that much at all,” and, further, to propose that:

“Social media and digital marketing will only succeed — and sell through the organizational layers — if we ground it in deeper, more established marketing truths, not ephemeral campaigns, one-trick pony moments, or hypocritical oaths or proclamations.”

Commentors to the post heartily agree:

“Couldn’t agree more Mr. Blackshaw. If I hear one more brand person say that their brand needs to start having a “dialogue” with its consumers, I am going to lose it!!”

And,

“I’m sick to death of the marketing media’s obsession with the latest shiny new object, Social Media, and grateful that someone with your impressive and relevant credentials has had the guts to point out that there’s a certain element of “Emperor’s New Clothes.”

Pete Blackshaw and the supporting crowd are predominantly about social media and marketing. His comments and the others resonate across the new media landscape, however, as Murdoch’s comments earlier in the week from Abu Dhabi confirm.