The Center for Excellence in Journalism has released its annual state of journalism report. This is a link to the online section which points out, correctly, that while the trend is the friend for online growth, the lack of a viable economic model with the margins seen historically on the old media side is limiting spending and development despite the ad renaissance.
Author: David Churbuck
Cape Codder with an itch to write
Online Publishers Association: Paid Content Sales Rise in 2004
Online Publishers Association: Press Releases
The news here is the decline in the sale of business/investment content — down 6.3% from 2003. Bear market? Beardstown Ladies out of the market? Not likely. More plausible is the general realization by consumers that little business/investment content is truly unique and if not available from one source, can be located elsewhere.
Research is up 6% but still a relatively small market at $115.1 million.
Here’s the list of what I pay for:
- Accuweather Premium: because I am a weather freak
- WSJ.com: because I always have and probably always will.
- Highbeam Research: because I need good research capabilities for my freelance writing
- Vault.com: because I’m looking for a job and need access to employer profiles
- Mediabistro: because I freelance and need access to a marketplace for assignments
- Morningstar: because I do a lot of mutual fund related freelancing and need access to premium level research (and which I just cancelled).
The Surveillance Society
Drivers charged in plow scheme (March 12, 2005)
This rocket scientist driving a snow plow had to carry a GPS equipped phone so the state highway department could track his whereabouts. What does he do? Ditch the phone in a paper bag at a coffee shop while he does a private plowing gig at a nursing home, return, and gets nailed by the state police.
Internet Ad Spending Numbers
Numbers released earlier this week show a 21% gain in Internet advertising from 2003 to 2004. Placing the category sixth — after a steep fall off behind cable TV — at $7.4 billion.
Although elections and the Olympics helped the surge, the general comeback of ad spending and the nearly 10 percent increase is directly correlated to the economy stabilizing out of its two-years of softness from 2001 through 2004.
The big issue is sustainability and how the next business cycle will affect advertising allocations from the Big Five of newspapers ($24.5 bn), network television ($22.5 bn), consumer mags ($21.2 bn), spot tv ($17.3 bn) and cable ($14.2 bn).
Given Google’s report that it did $1 billion in ad sales — I infer from Adsense — in Q4 2004, and extrapolating a ramp up across 2004 to $3 billion for the year, I wonder if ad word sales constitute the majority of the Internet spend as opposed to ad units and sponsorships sold directly by site ad sales staffs.
Some breakouts of the Internet ad spend are needed. The category is big enough and credible enough to deserve more parsing.
Digital Deliverance: The Digital Edition Dirigibles
Digital Deliverance: The Digital Edition Dirigibles
A good piece on why PDF-based publications stink and are the Zeppelins of our age.
While I am at it, does anyone think Zinio is a good idea? I subscribe to the MIT Tech review via the format and honestly think the technology is rotten. Hard to believe anyone is serious about preserving print design in a digital format.
Ray Ozzie goes to MSFT
Not too surprising to see Microsoft acquire Groove Networks — Microsoft was an investor in Ray Ozzie’s p2p project — and it makes sense to see Ray ascend to the triumverate of CTOs. Ozzie’s invention of Lotus Notes was hailed, justifiably, as a great leap forward and created the new category of "Groupware."
I hate Lotus Notes. I loathe it. I think, all other things being equal, if I had to chose between working at two companies — one running Notes, the other running Microsoft Exchange — I would go with the Exchange environment every day.
Notes was the ugliest, most user-unfriendly application I’ve ever endured. This is not surprising given Lotus’ brain-dead approach to user-interfaces in the early 90s, when CCMail — it’s evil email client — had icons that were drawn by participants in a split-brain experiment.
Don’t take my word for it. Notes sucks.
Google News Customization
In my morning crawl of the news sites I see that Google News — the perdurable beta news aggregator — has initiated a customization function. It seems a little more useful and less inbox-crushing than the old model of email alerts off of keywords. In the end, it’s just an old "My Yahoo" customization tool driven by keywords.
How to trap an MBA
Top News Article | Reuters.com: 119 Would-be Harvard Biz-School Applicants Dinged for Peeking
This would be a perfect sting operation if an MBA program wanted to prove its devotion to teaching business ethics (one of the world’s better oxymorons). I love the quote from the guy at Duke’s MBA program (how does one pronounce the word "Fuqua?" "Phuq-yeah?") who said the lone moron who went trolling shouldn’t be investing in any Duke sweatshirts.
The Tenth Anniversary of Reel-Time
David Churbuck’s Reel-Time FLog » Blog Archive » The Tenth Anniversary of Reel-Time
"In the beginning was the name Real-Time. It was to be the name of an online news project to be run by me and funded by Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus. Mitch was my Internet mentor in the early 90s when I was a technology reporter for Forbes Magazine. He had the first commercial net connection in the state — a T1 line from his Cambridgeport office to Software Tool and Die, the first commercial ISP which was based in Brookline. Mitch invited me to his office and showed me some of the pre-Web Internet technologies such as WAIS, Veronica, Archie, Gopher and USENET. I had been an online community geek beginning in the mid-80s, had really first experienced the first community at a Grateful Dead BBS called "Brokedown Palace" where Deadheads posted lists of their bootleg collections and arranged trades of 90-minute Maxell tapes. That led to the WELL, the first big online community based in Sausalito, California …"