thenewnewmedia.com

Ray Hartley, Editor of The Times, has finally penned some logical thoughts about the “newspapers are dying” mania that resurfaces every few months/weeks/days.

The concise summaries of the arguments everyone has an opinion about:
“They’ll be gone in five years.”
“They’ll exist forever.”

It cannot be this simplictic. Nor will it ever be.

All of the evidence so far comes from very established newspaper groups in the US and (western) Europe. Most of these companies run dozens of newspapers across multiple states and countries, with massively inflated staff numbers, vice presidents of all sorts of things, and very badly managed editorial processes (bureaux all over the place). Layoffs, pension fund mismanagement and employee buyouts have meant a massive financial overhang for these companies.

Of course the financial, auto industry and real estate slump in the US and UK isn’t helping at all.

Hartley offers three thoughts on how newspapers can survive/flourish:

• The first is that they must speak to the growing visual intelligence of their readers by giving pictures the same status as words in presentation. This is not an easy battle to win in an industry where words have always dominated. Words that do not attract and retain the attention of readers through presentation will be ignored.
• The second rule is that newspapers must offer interactivity. They must do so within their pages, but this will always be limited by space. The internet has no such limitation. A close relationship with a news website opens the way for much greater participation by a newspaper’s readers.
• The third is that newspapers must chart a course through the sea of information. If they add to the clutter, they will have no place in a world where attention is in short supply.

Couldn’t have said it much better…

Despite the hype, a local idea - Eyeballs - could end up cracking it and becoming a world leader in cellphone advertising…

It’s not often that an inventor of a product cries at its public launch. Nathan Levin, founder and inventor of Eyeballs cried at the product’s flashy launch at Sandton Isle’s Aston Martin dealership last week. He says he cried the night before in Cape Town too. Levin had a reason to cry. For as long as he can remember, he’s been trying to crack “it”. He’s an inventor in the old-mould. His work started around a decade ago with an idea based on displaying ads while people dialled-up to the internet. After years of research, reworking, brainstorms and tireless effort, Levin seemed to have actually cracked it. It took a few more months of all-nighters, seven-day weeks and some chance encounters with people like Larry Katz (now MD of the company) to actually bring Eyeballs to market.

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So there I had it. Perched on the corner of my bed at 5:30 this morning… Yesterday’s ‘first’ (or rather first test) edition of The Times. Some might say that flipping through a (new) paper and forming an opinion of it during the morning getting-ready-for-work routine may not be the best way to go about it. But hey, that’s how we consume media now… isn’t it? I’m sure Ray wrote about attention spans as well… Just battled to find it.

I like the front page.

Strong identity.

I’m hoping the Page 2 content about online and multimedia doesn’t feel as static when the team start producing.

Can we stop with all the Bullard?

Pictures. Pictures. Pictures. The Times has brilliant ones. And they’re used well. Mostly. Not too sure about the big ones at the bottom of pages.

The Star and The Citizen need better pics.

What’s with The Times‘ (and Sunday Times‘) obsession with Facebook?

An op-ed piece about Facebook???

Are four pages of business sustainable?

Nice to see integration of CareerJunction in job supplement. Very good move. People are thinking.

Dr Carr on the motoring page?!

Readers are going to want a condensed TV guide. Surely.

Why the L-shaped ads everywhere? Yellow pages a la This Day soon?

The news hole on pages with L-shaped ads looks like its exactly that. An afterthought.

BBK rocks.

Relatively bland sport section. Good photos though.

Where’s all the promised integration with online? Rip page two out and suddenly you’re left with a newspaper. Nothing more. Nothing less.

A different newspaper. But somehow not that different.

Over the past six months, its userbase has more than doubled to 23 million users
It expects to generate $150 million in revenue this year
It is addiing 100 000 new users a day

Fahk. Those are scary numbers…

I’m planning to write something about this later this week. Hoping.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine offers this interesting, but incredibly long-winded, feature on blogging and the indie rocker lifestyle. An interesting story, especially the parts which focus on Jonathan Coulton. Go on. Read it. Now.

Also, you couldn’t hope for a better headline.

The new Do Broadband bundles from Telkom are not Telkom Media. And Telkom Media has (very very very little) to do with Do Broadband. Contrary to speculation.

The ads on Webmail’s seemingly disastrous “blogging” platform have been booked there by clueless media planners. Do Broadband bundles are exactly that. Bundled internet access from Telkom Internet.

Suffice to say though, that I have seen Telkom Media’s IPTV platform. It works. The platform is incredibly powerful and is world-class (I’m sure a some will be surprised at this). I am also aware of some of their plans for content and social media (including video). Telkom Media is going to have so much content, it’ll hardly know what to do with it.

I have spoken to execs involved at Telkom Media and I wouldn’t be shocked if they give some existing players in the media space (not just pay TV) a serious run for their money. And Telkom Media has deep pockets.

Wits Journ Professor Anton Harber has more details (and dummy pages) from soon-to-be-launched newspaper, The Times.

I agree with his point about the Berlin-type format:

Pity they have not been able to go for the new compact size (somewhere between tabloid and broadsheet, like The Weekender).

Their choice of the two columnists who appear in the dummy (Justice Malala and David Shapiro), is impressive. Ray Hartley (el editoristo) has confirmed they are part of the line-up. I know David, and it’ll be interesting to read what he writes about.

There’s some comment around advertising, the business model behind the new paper, as well as more thoughts around the production process:

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Ok. You’re a biggish news-type site in a developing country like South Africa. Video is everywhere on US news sites, and the future does seem to be headed that way. You need video. Don’t you?

The problem with video and multimedia, especially in this country, is its cost. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking around this lately, and the main questions I can’t answer are:
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Marketing expert Chris Moerdyk has written about The Times on bizcommunity.com saying that the hundred-year-old Sunday Times has finally leveraged its most valuable asset. There’s not much we don’t already know. Some interesting opinions and thoughts, which Moerdyk summed up at the end:

But, while everything looks rosy for this venture, everything will depend entirely on whether those 127 000 subscribers are receptive to a daily newspaper. On whether they are people who are currently buying, subscribing to or occasionally reading existing dailies.

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YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Local sports website SuperSport has gotten rid of the awful “SignMeIn” log-in system which (previously) restricted access to MWEB and DStv subscribers. Hardly bulk traffic. And with a walled-content strategy, they were always going to lose out on search engine traffic.

SuperSport.co.za has about 150 000 unique browsers with just over 1m impressions a month, but these figures don’t account for all the traffic the site gets. (more…)