Predicate, LLC | Editorial + Content Strategy» Predicate, LLC | Editorial + Content Strategy

Publishers Need Popcorn, Not Paywalls

Jeffrey — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:00:45 +0000

The challenge is to really understand that audience and identify the way that compelling content can build a strong relationship, creating new opportunities for monetization elsewhere. In this respect, passion-based products such as Times Plus (or Guardian Extra) that reward keen readers with additional content and offers represent a smarter long-term solution than a simple paywall that drives users into the welcoming arms of your (free) rivals.

via Nick Thomas, Publishers Need Popcorn, Not Paywalls | paidContent:UK.

Slate Makes a Case for Long-Form on the Web

Jeffrey — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:00:40 +0000

[F]or Slate, long-form [content]’s value proposition is also reputational, rather than strictly financial.

via Megan Garber, “Smart editorial, smart readers, and smart ad solutions”: Slate makes a case for long-form on the web » Nieman Journalism Lab.

David Eun Puts AOL On A URL Diet

Jeffrey — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:00:35 +0000

Eun will present the new AOL content structure—a slimmed-down 30-plus sites channeled into 17 “super” networks—at an all-hands meeting today. That’s a major change from the previous URL-based approach with more than 80 distinct sites. Eun explained the strategy and the thinking behind it to paidContent in one of his first interviews.

The new structure is like a newspaper in some respects with the super nets divvied up into our groups—AOL News & Info, AOL Entertainment, AOL Life, and AOL Commerce (plus the AOL.com front page as its own)—but with a TV-like emphasis on programming and production. Nearly all of the content remains but the branding is changing.

via Staci D. Kramer, David Eun Puts AOL On A URL Diet With ‘Super Net’ Strategy | paidContent.

Welchman on Web Execution

Jeffrey — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:00:27 +0000

Web Execution is the definition, coordination, and support of all the tactics required to produce and maintain a high-quality Web presence.

There are two core sub-functions of Web Execution:

Product Management
Program Management

via Lisa Welchman, Web Execution (Web Team): A Definition | WelchmanPierpoint.

The Riddle of Paid Content

Jeffrey — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:00:06 +0000

“The App Store must rank among the most carefully policed software platforms in history,” the technology writer Steven Johnson recently noted in The Times. Policed why? To maintain the App Store’s separateness from the open Web, of course, and to drive up the perceived value of the store’s offerings. Perception, after all, is everything: many apps are to the Web as bottled water is to tap — an inventive and proprietary new way of decanting, packaging and pricing something that could once be had free.

via Virginia Heffernan, The Death of the Open Web – NYTimes.com.

Game-Changing Advice for NYTimes.com

Jeffrey — Wed, 26 May 2010 16:00:50 +0000

Ideally the New York Times would come out with their own SDK, based on HTML5, for agencies to create rich, immersive, engaging ads for NYTimes.com, and new analytical tools to describe (and price) engagement. In time, they could move up the value chain to create their own creative material for advertisers, as Condé Nast, Vice, Monocle and others are doing.

via Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, Hey, New York Times: You Can Change The Game In Online Advertising.

How HuffPo “Pays” Unpaid Contributors

Jeffrey — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:00:54 +0000

We pay them in visibility. We pay them in that we provide the infrastructure, the community, the civil environment into which their work appears. The traffic. And then also the fact that many in the media have the site bookmarked means that they’re going to be seen, not just by many people, but many of the people they may want to reach to go on TV, to get a book contract. We love it. We all love it on the site when we get a call from an agent saying “Can you get us in touch with so-and-so blogger?” In many ways, it becomes like an addition platform.

via Arianna Huffington, Huffington talks convergence, and “monetizeable free” » Nieman Journalism Lab.

15 Ways Publishers Are Tabletizing

Jeffrey — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:25:45 +0000

Print shovelware: Those that merely recreate the page-turning experience on the digital screen.
Interactive editions: They’re recognisably a magazine, but navigation and animation really take advantage of what is essentially a screen.
Motion-heavy mags: Co-produced by film makers, they’re as much a video narrative as a magazine.
Web shells: Lazy apps that merely funnel through a publication’s existing website.
Live info: Divorced from monthly print cycle, an article can take advantage of the real-time web.

Robert Andrews, Taking The Tablet: 15 Ways Publishers Are Re-Imagining The Magazine | paidContent.

Editorial’s iPad Problem

Jeffrey — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:00:42 +0000

[E]verything iPad is clearly being driven by the design team, much more than by the editors and journalists, whose job is still to write and wrangle text.

via Felix Salmon, Magazines on the iPad | Analysis & Opinion | Reuters.

Business models versus editorial models

Jeffrey — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:00:05 +0000

For years ad revenue has slid downward. But the decrease in money doesn’t correlate with a decrease in audience. Hence the discord over what, if anything, should be done about it.

The opinions are many and varied:

No one will pay for online publishing because value is associated with the medium. Paper is what’s expensive.

Devices or dedicated platforms might be the only way to elicit payment for online content (eg iTunes, Kindle)

Charging for content is at odds with journalism’s evolution as a collaborative and public endeavor

Online content should never have been free in the first place: charging for it will simply break the bad habit.

What to do depends on what the publication is: some should be free, some paid for and some publicly funded.

The two sides of the fence in this argument have business people on one side and journalists and online analysts on the other. That in itself, I think, should guide us towards some consensus.

via Randall Snare, Business models versus editorial models: the online content dilemma – iQ Blog.