NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
For years now, the line between the software business and the media
business has been blurring. Software applications used to take the form
of packaged goods, sold through retail outlets at set prices. Today, as a
result of cloud computing and other advances, applications look more
and more like media products. They’re ad-supported, subscribed to,
continually updated, and the content they incorporate is often as
important as the functions they provide. As traditional media companies
have moved to distribute their wares in digital form — as code, in other
words — they’ve come to resemble software companies. They provide not
only original content, but an array of online tools and functions that
allow customers to view, manipulate, and add to the content in myriad
ways.
...Appification promises to be the major force reshaping media in general
and news media in particular during 2012. The influence will be exerted
directly, through a proliferation of specialized media apps, as well as
indirectly, through changes in consumer attitudes, expectations, and
purchasing habits. There are all sorts of implications for newspapers,
but perhaps the most important is that the app explosion makes it much
easier to charge for online news and other content. That’s true not only
when the content is delivered through formal apps but also when it is
delivered through traditional websites, which may themselves come to be
viewed by customers as a form of app. In the old world of the open web,
paying for online content seemed at best weird and at worst repugnant.
In the new world of the app, paying for online content suddenly seems
normal. What’s an app store but a series of paywalls?...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/12/nicholas-carr-2012-will-bring-the-appification-of-media/?fromfloater
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
For French news site Owni, ebooks aren’t just a side project
NiemanJournalismLab reporting: Owni “doesn’t carry advertisements and publishes all of its content
under a Creative Commons license. Selling products — including e-books —
is its big bet.”
Visit Owni.fr and adjacent to its logo, among French words and enticing graphics, is its English tagline: News, Augmented. The words reflect the website’s ambitious spirit, its dictum, and manifesto: to present news with an added layer of digital bonuses — maps and apps and interactive infographics. An intriguing red circle on a tiny pull string hangs from the top of our homepage. Scroll over the circle and the OwniShop logo appears. Move it away, and the logo vanishes.
This understated, almost coy advertising strategy mirrors Owni’s tentative ebook sales strategy. Though ebook sales in France are rapidly picking up, especially with the Kindle store opening this past October, Owni is the first media outlet in France to sell ebooks as part of its core editorial output.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/12/from-nieman-reports-for-french-news-site-owni-ebooks-arent-just-a-side-project/?fromfloater
Visit Owni.fr and adjacent to its logo, among French words and enticing graphics, is its English tagline: News, Augmented. The words reflect the website’s ambitious spirit, its dictum, and manifesto: to present news with an added layer of digital bonuses — maps and apps and interactive infographics. An intriguing red circle on a tiny pull string hangs from the top of our homepage. Scroll over the circle and the OwniShop logo appears. Move it away, and the logo vanishes.
This understated, almost coy advertising strategy mirrors Owni’s tentative ebook sales strategy. Though ebook sales in France are rapidly picking up, especially with the Kindle store opening this past October, Owni is the first media outlet in France to sell ebooks as part of its core editorial output.
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/12/from-nieman-reports-for-french-news-site-owni-ebooks-arent-just-a-side-project/?fromfloater
Dan Gillmor: 2012 will be the year of the content-controller oligopoly
NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
Journalists will start paying serious attention to an issue that will ultimately determine whether they can participate in the digital world: control.
We are moving rapidly from an era of an oligopoly of content providers to an oligopoly of content controllers: new choke points. This is not media consolidation in the traditional sense, where a few huge conglomerates used economies of scale to dominate journalism by dominating the local and national agendas. This consolidation, to a very few companies plus increasing government intervention, is even more dangerous — and information providers of all kinds are finally starting to grasp what’s happening.
The choke points include (among others):
Journalists will start paying serious attention to an issue that will ultimately determine whether they can participate in the digital world: control.
We are moving rapidly from an era of an oligopoly of content providers to an oligopoly of content controllers: new choke points. This is not media consolidation in the traditional sense, where a few huge conglomerates used economies of scale to dominate journalism by dominating the local and national agendas. This consolidation, to a very few companies plus increasing government intervention, is even more dangerous — and information providers of all kinds are finally starting to grasp what’s happening.
The choke points include (among others):
- Search engines. Google, for example, has enormous power to decide who is visible, and has collected staggering amounts of data on our individual preferences and how we use the Internet. So far, the company has behaved in mostly benign ways. But will not always be in the hands of people who take seriously the “don’t be evil” mantra the founders established at the beginning.
- Wire-line Internet service providers. In most American communities there are, at most, two “broadband” service providers: the cable and phone companies, monopolies established with government protection. Cable is vastly superior due to the lack of fiber investment by the phone industry, and is rapidly becoming the de facto broadband provider. Meanwhile, the carriers are demanding the right to decide what bits get delivered in what order and at what speed, if they get delivered at all, to the customer requesting them. With these companies taking on more and more of a content role — Comcast’s buyout of NBC Universal the prime example — fair service provision, also known as Network Neutrality, is a bigger issue than ever.
- Mobile carriers. With the FCC’s assent, this oligopoly doesn’t even offer a nod to fair network practices. Their bandwidth caps make the wired-line carriers’ own caps (a totally unneeded “fix” that appears designed to favor their own content) look generous, and they’re deploying what amounts to spyware, such as the now-infamous Carrier IQ, to watch everything we’re doing.
- Apple. The news industry’s love affair with one of the most valuable companies on Earth has only expanded with the death of Steve Jobs. Yet Apple’s censorious control-freakery has never been greater, and its business tactics are no less brutal and predatory than Microsoft’s were in the 1990s — and they have been, and are continuing to be, applied to information providers who wish to use Apple’s increasingly powerful marketplace. (Journalists have barely begun to wake up to this threat, sadly.)
- The copyright cartel. Hollywood and its allies do not like anything they cannot control, and they are working harder than ever to control the Internet. They’ve come close this year to getting Congress to pass an Internet censorship regime, via “SOPA” in the House and “ProtectIP” in the Senate — legislation that is on the fast track. Broadcast media conglomerates have all but ignored the issue in their coverage, to no surprise, and traditional print coverage of it has been weak. Late in the game, journalists started to understand the threat, but even if the bill doesn’t pass this year it will certainly be near the top of Congress’ agenda in 2012.
- Government. Not only is Congress working on Hollywood’s behalf, but the Obama administration has been a regressive force inside the United States ....http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/12/dan-gillmor-2012-will-be-the-year-of-the-content-controller-oligopoly/?fromfloater
In 2012 we will see a growing gap between newsrooms that are innovating and those that are…not.
NiemanJournalismLab reporting:
2011 saw a number of promising examples news organizations going beyond “digital first” platitudes to actually trying things and making it work, and I’m optimistic we will see this trend continue. For example, The Journal Register Co.’s open newsrooms and other efforts garnered a fivefold rise in digital revenue in just two years; the Chicago Tribune continues to hire news developers to work with reporters to build new tools for making sense of and accessing information; the Wall Street Journal has had surprising success with its investments in online video, earning $200,000 in revenue per month.
However, other newsrooms seem to be going in the opposite direction, continuing to lay off staff and limit their ability not only to innovate but even to maintain bare-bones levels of basic reporting, including 165 recently let go in Tampa and ongoing attrition at various Scripps properties, which included the kind of digital staffers, like an online video producer and a programmer, that one might expect to be especially crucial to moving forward in the digital space. I expect we’ll see this gap between digital news haves and have-nots widen, perhaps hastening the demise of print in some markets.
2012 will be a good year for local television...
...2012 *might* see a bursting of the social media bubble, or at least convince us that it is harder game to play than we thought....
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/12/carrie-brown-smith-the-social-media-bubble-may-burst-and-more-predictions-for-2012/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=0781b75080-DAILY_EMAIL
2011 saw a number of promising examples news organizations going beyond “digital first” platitudes to actually trying things and making it work, and I’m optimistic we will see this trend continue. For example, The Journal Register Co.’s open newsrooms and other efforts garnered a fivefold rise in digital revenue in just two years; the Chicago Tribune continues to hire news developers to work with reporters to build new tools for making sense of and accessing information; the Wall Street Journal has had surprising success with its investments in online video, earning $200,000 in revenue per month.
However, other newsrooms seem to be going in the opposite direction, continuing to lay off staff and limit their ability not only to innovate but even to maintain bare-bones levels of basic reporting, including 165 recently let go in Tampa and ongoing attrition at various Scripps properties, which included the kind of digital staffers, like an online video producer and a programmer, that one might expect to be especially crucial to moving forward in the digital space. I expect we’ll see this gap between digital news haves and have-nots widen, perhaps hastening the demise of print in some markets.
2012 will be a good year for local television...
...2012 *might* see a bursting of the social media bubble, or at least convince us that it is harder game to play than we thought....
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/12/carrie-brown-smith-the-social-media-bubble-may-burst-and-more-predictions-for-2012/?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=0781b75080-DAILY_EMAIL
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Increased e-book interactivity set to revolutionise revenue streams for publishers
Future ebook reporting: As readers of this blog will no doubt be aware there are massive
changes happening in the way that we interact with traditional book
content. High consumer expectations of digital reading came from Apple
and then Android Apps. Apps have meant that readers and publishers no
longer simply thought just about text and images but came to expect
greater functionality and interactivity from content. However the main
issue with Apps was how expensive they were to produce. But the recent
announcement from Apple that iBooks 1.5 now supports Javascript is set
to change all that. Interactivity is set to increase and costs of
production reduce.
A great example of this new functionality can be seen in The Beatles: Yellow Submarine, which is free to download from the iBookstore. The introduction of Javascript to this Fixed Layout means that animation and interaction are now fully supported within eBooks on the iBookstore. For example within this book you can do things that were only previously possible in bespoke applications such as touching the screen to change the colour of Sergeant Peppers Band’s clothes or watch embedded video.
This is incredibly exciting for the illustrated eBook world. Over the coming months we’ll no doubt see increasing experimentation with this new functionality that the inclusion javascript enables. Not only will traditional revenue streams be supported but cross revenue will also be opened up; for example with the Yellow Submarine book, readers can purchase music from within the application. Who knows what opportunities there may be in the various forms of illustrated books such as selling ingredients in recipe books or toys within children’s books?
http://www.futurebook.net/content/increased-e-book-interactivity-set-revolutionise-revenue-streams-publishers
A great example of this new functionality can be seen in The Beatles: Yellow Submarine, which is free to download from the iBookstore. The introduction of Javascript to this Fixed Layout means that animation and interaction are now fully supported within eBooks on the iBookstore. For example within this book you can do things that were only previously possible in bespoke applications such as touching the screen to change the colour of Sergeant Peppers Band’s clothes or watch embedded video.
This is incredibly exciting for the illustrated eBook world. Over the coming months we’ll no doubt see increasing experimentation with this new functionality that the inclusion javascript enables. Not only will traditional revenue streams be supported but cross revenue will also be opened up; for example with the Yellow Submarine book, readers can purchase music from within the application. Who knows what opportunities there may be in the various forms of illustrated books such as selling ingredients in recipe books or toys within children’s books?
http://www.futurebook.net/content/increased-e-book-interactivity-set-revolutionise-revenue-streams-publishers
Journalism as service
A discussion paper by Melanie Sill, Executive in Residence, USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, December 2011. “The Case for Open Journalism Now” is a hopeful yet pragmatic argument for journalism’s future as a public good. It addresses a basic question of the digital age: with information flowing everywhere, how does journalism provide value? The answers lie in a new orienting idea for journalism that is transparent, responsive and enriched through vibrant two-way connections with a networked universe.
Happily, open journalism is more than a notion. It is a set of practices fast gaining traction and earning notice. Some advances focus on social media interaction, in-person convening and contributed content. Others are making news work more transparent and responsive. These experiments point the way to greater trust and accountability for news providers, who after all seek to hold others accountable.Yet, to bring real change, we must reorder the fundamental processes of journalism toward the goal of serving communities—readers, viewers, listeners and customers. We must focus first on service and only then on platform or product.
Open practices can also increase journalism capacity. For instance, the collaborative and problem-solving mentality of open-source software has connected with the established knowledge-sharing of investigative reporting specialists, extending the reporting’s reach. Collaboration is being embraced by small enterprises serving communities in valuable new ways and by large organizations that once ignored each other’s work. News providers are taking tiny steps toward networking with non-journalism organizations that see information as part of their public mission.
http://www.annenberginnovationlab.org/OpenJournalism/overview
21st-century publishing builds on a healthy radical tradition
The Guardian reporting: Far from killing off the book, the digital age is proving a boon to
innovative publishers and authors, many of whom are using new technology
to breathe life back into old ideas. Here, we survey four of the most
interesting ventures,,
...From the yoking together of these two ideas – online pledging in the music business, and old-fashioned subscription publishing – Unbound Books was born. The site, launched last May, acts as a forum for authors to pitch books directly to readers, who, if they like the sound of a project, commit money right away, before the book has even been written. Each book has a target number of pledges it must receive to be viable (generally between 500 and 1,000). When you click on a book on the site, you are shown how many pledges it needs in total, and the percentage it has so far received. You can then pledge your support at a number of levels: from buying the ebook (generally £10), through purchasing the hardback (usually £20) or a signed copy (£50), all the way up to being invited to the launch party (typically £150) or, sometimes, going on an excursion with the author.
...
The company's first priority, then, was to build up a healthy flow of traffic – which is why, as their first author, they recruited ex-Python Terry Jones, who successfully pitched Evil Machines, a collection of dark, surreal stories. Jones was followed by other well-known names: Tibor Fischer, Jonathan Meades, Kate Mosse – all of whom made their targets.
So far, the company has had nine books funded (of which only Jones's and Fischer's have actually been published), with another 10 in the pledging phase, including a sci-fi novel by Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn. Traffic has been impressive: last month, the site attracted more than 200,000 unique users. Pollard reports that interest from authors has been "huge". And, surprisingly, agents have been enthusiastic.
"We initially thought agents would be wary, because they wouldn't want to anger other publishers. But they have come to us offering all sorts of things, especially books by authors who have some following but could be established a bit further, or well-known authors who have a left-hand project," he says....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/18/book-publishing-digital-radical-pioneers
...From the yoking together of these two ideas – online pledging in the music business, and old-fashioned subscription publishing – Unbound Books was born. The site, launched last May, acts as a forum for authors to pitch books directly to readers, who, if they like the sound of a project, commit money right away, before the book has even been written. Each book has a target number of pledges it must receive to be viable (generally between 500 and 1,000). When you click on a book on the site, you are shown how many pledges it needs in total, and the percentage it has so far received. You can then pledge your support at a number of levels: from buying the ebook (generally £10), through purchasing the hardback (usually £20) or a signed copy (£50), all the way up to being invited to the launch party (typically £150) or, sometimes, going on an excursion with the author.
...
The company's first priority, then, was to build up a healthy flow of traffic – which is why, as their first author, they recruited ex-Python Terry Jones, who successfully pitched Evil Machines, a collection of dark, surreal stories. Jones was followed by other well-known names: Tibor Fischer, Jonathan Meades, Kate Mosse – all of whom made their targets.
So far, the company has had nine books funded (of which only Jones's and Fischer's have actually been published), with another 10 in the pledging phase, including a sci-fi novel by Red Dwarf star Robert Llewellyn. Traffic has been impressive: last month, the site attracted more than 200,000 unique users. Pollard reports that interest from authors has been "huge". And, surprisingly, agents have been enthusiastic.
"We initially thought agents would be wary, because they wouldn't want to anger other publishers. But they have come to us offering all sorts of things, especially books by authors who have some following but could be established a bit further, or well-known authors who have a left-hand project," he says....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/18/book-publishing-digital-radical-pioneers
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