Content’s monetary value determined by content, audience, source segmentations

Perusing the voluminous material on the paid online content debate during a lengthy flight last night, I couldn't help but be struck by the gap among experts who seem to view segmentation as some kind of disease.

On one extreme are the newspaper-phobes who hate virtually everything our industry does, believes we are going to die, and therefore advocate that all of our worthless content be free and open to consumers.

On the other extreme are the newspaper-philes who are in love with themselves, believe we are misunderstood and under-valued, and therefore advocate that all of our valuable content should have a price tag for consumers.

Bet on the guy in the middle – if and when a middle emerges. Trust me on this one.

One of the news industry challenges is that we remain governed by people who see audiences and institutions as one-size-fits-all. That goes for the people in the boardrooms and the people ...[more]

Memo to publishers: show advertisers that newspapers work by practicing what you preach

It's not difficult to understand the irony of an industry that suggests its advertisers spend 5% of their revenues on marketing themselves in the pages of newspapers that, themselves, are marketed with often only one-third of the firepower.

In short, newspapers don't practice what they preach when it comes to marketing.

This is a shame because marketing works. And there's plenty of evidence to support it – especially during recessions.

One of the best resources for marketing knowledge is the Strategic Planning Institute in the United States, which maintains a database of more than 3,000 strategic experiences dating back more than 40 years. PIMS (Profit Impact of Market Strategy) measures the relationship between business actions and business results.

Simon McDonald, research manager of the Financial Times, drew from this database in a recent conference speech to draw a correlation between “share of voice” and “perception of quality” for products by consumers. In short, ...[more]

2 decades of circulation trends re-write global newspaper landscape

For 20 years, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) – in its various incarnations – has published World Press Trends in conjunction with ZenithOptimedia, a true gem of a report on country-by-country data of the global newspaper industry.

For those same 20 years, I've used this report to augment my private chronicling of circulation trends among paid-for daily newspapers. I take the circulation data and chop it up in different ways to see our industry in unique ways.

The circulation data, over time, tells me less about the health of newspapers or of newsmedia companies and more about consumer buying habits of news on paper.

Here's what the just-released 2008 data shows me:

Mature vs. emerging: Global circulation data hides huge performance gaps between mature and emerging countries. While global circulation may be up nearly four-tenths of 1% in the past year, that is entirely on the backs of South Asia, China, Brazil, ...[more]

10 questions newspaper CEOs must confront about their transformation

In my previous blog posting, I celebrated the return to profitability of newsmedia companies – a step back from the abyss. I noticed a few comments in the blogosphere that I was celebrating a return to normalcy.

Quite the contrary.

Saving a company from death is a first step and should be applauded. The follow-up question is what these re-scaled media companies will do with their profits.

Will they continue sinking resources into black holes such as editorial department coverage of topics that are irrelevant to today's consumer, big printing monstrosities, preservation of departmental silos, payouts of enormous dividends, and the pursuit of large advertisers at the expense of the small?

No, the big companies have a lot to prove before a prolonged celebration.

Here are 10 questions newsmedia industry CEOs should be asking themselves about the reformulation of their budgets and plans over the next 18 months:

1. Are you shifting capital expenditures to ...[more]