News on a printed page?
News on a printed page is a product in tremendous transition, and vital signs are not strong. Several recent headlines (only a few them printed):
– The French government is going to “rescue” that nation’s newspaper industry by providing 18 year olds with state-subsidized free subscriptions.
– Hearst Corp. without warning announces plans to close the Seattle Post Intelligencer if a buyer cannot be found.
– Carlos Slim’s financial “rescue” of the New York Times Co. involves extending the company $250 million at 14% interest at the same time as the company is selling interests in real estate and other assets to raise new cash.
– Fewer and fewer people are getting their news from the printed page as other sources (of course the internet first among them) become more widely used sources of news.
As a longtime newsman, I have been struck by these and other signs of the impending apocalypse long predicted for printed news, and I am hopeful the imminent demise is exaggerated.
But there is one big paradox that is worth pointing out:
For many years, our quality printed news sources (The Times, The WSJ, The Economist and many, many others) have confused tradition with staying power.
Tradition is core to their brands, and maintaining journalistic quality has long been a pre-eminent goal of these companies, as it should be. But for too long, the proprietors and executives who have run these companies have allowed tradition to cloud their vision in looking forward. In many cases, business planning for the coming year was not much more than applying a percentage increase (in advertising rates, in circulation base, in readership) to the prior year performance, and holding a team accountable to achieving those results.
That model is forever broken, I am afraid. Craigslist, Ebay, Yahoo! News, The Daily Show and SMS news alerts are barricades to the future ever being as simple as the past for newspapers and newspapermen. It may be that 2009 is the year that this truth finally becomes self-evident for the industry. It has clearly dawned on a few of the more forward-thinking proprietors. And it long ago was clear to investors, who have driven stock prices for newspaper companies to historic lows.
Recognition by the industry of this situation would be a good thing. The sooner it becomes clear, the more rapidly those companies may be able to focus on new products and new ways of reaching and engaging an audience that is as hungry for news today as it ever has been.
Just not news on the printed page.
CES 2009
I love the ‘green’-tech focus of this year’s CES, including the windup power charger for Nick Negroponte’s inexpensive laptop and the LG Skycharger wind-and-solar powered battery bank. There is also a slew of drop-dead demos (better than in some previous years): Intel demoed a 3D TV film by Dreamworks that (when viewed with a pair of Wayfarer knockoffs) gave an amazingly realistic depth-of-view that would profoundly change the way we watch sports (think football, autoracing or tennis)…And Sony’s flexible OLED display (which bends and flexes like a playing card while remaining incredibly bright and well-defined) is also stunning.
So, what’s the hang up? With the economic doldrums overhanging this CES, these stunning displays of new technology raise the obvious question of who might possibly have enough werewithall to buy them when and if they finally get to market? While I am personally as confident as anyone that some day the economic bounceback will be underway, right now all signs point to the recovery being some distance off. It’s impossible to know how long the current doldrums will continue, and their impact on the adoption of this cool new stuff can only be predictable in one direction: it will take more time, effort and money to get anyone to buy this stuff than was previously expected.
That’s a pity, because many of the breakthroughs on display here — especially the self-powered windup radios, GPSs and computers, actually could benefit people immediately.
TechCrunch Comment
Not everyday you get commented on in TechCrunch (albeit, comment #92 – not exactly right at the top) : www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/19/tracking-former-yahoo-execs-so-many-have-left/#comment-2384187
Actually, this comment was a few days before the recent Yahoo! reorg…No doubt, Yahoo! and Yahoos have been through a lot in the past several years. And in this industry, it would be ridiculous to assume the pace will slow down.
Online Video
Just noticed this flattering post from my former colleague Peter Weiss, who was one of the original online video producers, having pioneered a lot of streaming techniques at MyPrimeTime….Nice to see Peter is still pushing the envelope with online video –> http://justplays.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/helen-whelan-craig-forman-and-donald-van-de-mark/
Dinner with Bill Gates
The ‘D’ Conference is always filled with surprises, and a nice one came last night when Microsoft founder Bill Gates came to our table and joined us for dinner. It was already an interesting group (Esther Dyson, Gordon Crovitz, Don Graham, Craig Mundie, Ann Winblad were there and others (such as Nathan Myhrvold and Tim O’Reilly) joined us off and on as the dinner progressed.
Staci blogged about it here –> http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-d6-serendipity-supper/
It’s true that during the two and a half hours we covered in detail everything from malaria in Africa to monetizing paid search with stops on nuclear power and childhood education in between. Gates may not have technically finished college (yet), but there is no doubt that his brainpower is hard to equal.
Rupert Murdoch and Wapping
In a tour de force performance much blogged about, Rupert Murdoch wrapped up the second day of the ‘D ‘Conference this evening. Some highlights from Bloomberg here –> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aTVbDsf.hq6g
I won’t repeat here most of what he said — except what he just told me exclusively (because only he, I and his security guard rode downstairs in the elevator together).
It will interest now only those who were there — as I was — when he opened his Wapping printing plant in the 1980s and basically crushed the trade unions that were then all-powerful on Fleet Street, England’s newspaper publishing center. His move, coming as the Thatcher government faced tough labor protests in the coal, steel and power industry could have toppled the then-young Thatcher government. Instead, the Thatcher government totally backed his initiative to bring in new technology and thus began the end of traditional labor’s strong role at the center of the British economy.
I asked him if any other person could have pulled off what Thatcher did. “No,” he said. “No one else. And – I never once talked to her about it. Not during, and not after,” he said.
Surprising.
Does Watching TV Make You Unhappy?
That’s the electrifying implication of an unassuming piece today by the WSJ’s Jonathan Clements (Journal subscribers can read it here : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120709012659781613.html?mod=hps_us_editors_picks).
Citing research from Princeton’s prize-winning professor Daniel Kahneman and colleagues, the piece suggests that being actively ‘engaged’ in a variety of activities (including leisure and spiritual pursuits) is a major determinant of happiness. Moreover, of three components to ‘happiness’: how you spend your time, your basic disposition (sunny? optimistic?) and your life circumstances (age, health, income, etc.) — the choice of time spent is one over which you can exert the most control. These academics say many people spend this time in a relatively unengaged state, watching television (17% of men’s waking hours; 15% of women’s)
There’s long been a debate about the utility of time spent watching the tube. But the notion that watching television can contribute to unhappiness is step beyond simply wasting time…it will be interesting to see what happens next with this research.
Kara on the clash of technology engineering and media cultures…
Kara had a very interesting post today from the SIIA conference where Gordon Crovitz and others were due to speak. The post, here : http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080131/engineers-are-from-mars-media-moguls-are-from-venus/#comments focuses on the skills gap between technology and media executive leadership.
There is a lot of evidence about this gap, but as I mentioned in my comment on her post, it is being bridged by 1. diligent attention to the underlying core innovation and skills that build the products that work, 2. a fundamental understanding of the blocking-and-tackling of consumer engagement and managing large-scale consumer technology supply/demand and 3. real understanding of the ROI and IRR on investments required to take something new and innovative and make it a business success.
It’s hard, but I believe since the mid-1990s and my first foray into Silicon Valley (Infoseek – ah, those were the days) we have come a long way, Baby!
CES 2008
Busy next week at CES…lots of meetings, people, new gadgets….Focus of the conference appears to be heavy on mobility — devices, automotive, always connected…But I am sure there will also be the world’s largest flat-screen TV….
Should be fun — let me know if you plan to be there….
