Media consolidation (2011)

Blogger Frugal Dad breaks it down and lays it out for us.

Source: Frugal dad

Bad Banks on LeShow

On the October 2, 2011 episode of LeShow, Harry Shearer's interviews Yves Smith, a financial expert w/ experience at companies such as McKinsey & Co., Goldman Sachs, and Sumitomo Bank. If you appreciate the smart and straightforward perspective Elizabeth Warren brings to credit- and debt-related issues, you must listen to Smith's insights into the U.S. and European banking crisis. She's the author of ECONned and the blog Naked Capitalism. Her earlier conversation with Shearer about U.S. housing foreclosures ("the new F-bomb") is also worth checking out.

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LeShow has earned a regular spot in my podcast rotation. The weekly radio program occasionally centers on an expert like Smith or perhaps a jazz musician; more often, however, it consist of Shearer reading choice excerpts from the week's news. He's a satirist (not nearly as broad as you'll find on the Comedy Central "news" programs), and has a knack for highlighting details or entire stories that have been given short shrift in the popular press. Two of his regular features are called "The Buried Lead" and "News from Outside the Bubble." KCRW describes the show as a "romp through the worlds of media, politics, sports and show business, leavened with an eclectic mix of mysterious music." LeShow is broadcast on many NPR stations and available on the internet and via podcast.

In addition to LeShow and his roles on The Simpsons, Shearer produced The Big Uneasy, a documentary film about levy system in New Orleans (his adopted home) during hurricane Katrina.

Papa's got a brand new mag

I like to read and I'm not adverse to new gadgets, but ebook readers (the Kindle, the Nook, and the like) have left me cold. Unconsciously, I must have been holding out for something similar to the demos below.


Sports Illustrated - Tablet Demo 1.5 from The Wonderfactory


Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo

Thanks to MP for the Bonnier link.

Update 1/4/10: NYT blogger, David Carr, looks ahead to what sort of tablet offerings Apple and Microsoft might have in the works.

Sirleaf's Daily Talk

Daily Talk, a news service in Monrovia, Liberia, was brought to my attention by The Monocle. Alfred J. Sirleaf is Daily Talk's founder and managing editor.


A 2006 The New York Times article summarizes Sirleaf's motivation this way.

Mr. Sirleaf is something of an information evangelist, fervent in his belief that a well-informed citizenry is the key to the rebirth of his homeland, ravaged by 14 years of civil war. As the nation slowly comes back from the brink of annihilation, he said, he wants to make sure every Liberian can keep up with the news and play a part in the country’s young democratic government.

Herwigphoto has posted some pictures of Sirleaf's operation on Flickr.

Paying for The WSJ

Via Nieman Journalism Lab



Alan Murray, Executive Editor of The Wall Street Journal Online, April 4, 2009
The WSJ is credited (and it seems rightly so) with creating a successful pay wall around select content. Its example may not be applicable to other services, though. It would be interesting to know how many WSJ subscribers personally pay for the content and how many subscribe through work. I suspect a large slice are reading on the bossman's dime. In general, if readers don't perceive a service as unique and professionally/financially valuable, then it may not rate the expense.

My take-away from this interview: news companies should stop insisting consumers pay for services that are currently free and create something perceived to be indispensable.

Profitable newspapers

Google the sentence "the business model for newspapers is broken" (in quotes) and you'll get 19,000+ results. This statement has become widely accepted as true, and it's now used as a jumping-off point for a discussion of what comes next for journalism. We may be moving too quickly, though. There seems to be plenty of value left in the newspaper industry.

This Advertising Age article from last February reveals that most daily papers are still making a profit, and it’s the parent companies that are posting losses because of high debt.

A few highlights:

“Not a lot of papers are operating at a loss,” said John Morton, the veteran industry analyst. “There are roughly 1,400 daily newspapers. We only hear about the top markets That leaves at least 1.300 papers out there.”

Publicly owned newspapers averaged an operating profit of 10.8% in the first three quarters of last year [2008], Mr. Morton said. That’s not the margin enjoyed by newspapers when they were monopolies, but it’s not nothing either.

The owners, on the other hand, are variously posting huge losses, at least on paper; watching their stock prices plunge; and crucially, struggling to make payments on debt they took on under projections that didn’t pan out.

Some owners even borrowed that money to double down on newspapers, which aren’t engines of growth even when their balance sheets are healthy.

...Take a look at Lee Enterprises, which operates papers primarily in midsize markets but reported an $899 million net loss for the 12 months ended Sept. 28. Its loss primarily reflected a huge acccounting write-down as the company adjusted its estimated value. It’s not that $899 million of cash flowed from the coffers just to make payroll and keep the presses running.

...In a similar fashion, McClatchy is freezing pensions and hunting another $100 million in budget cuts. The company, publisher of papers including the Sacramento Bee and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is struggling under more than $2 billion in debt, much of which it assumed in 2006 to buy Knight Ridder--doubling down on newspapers at a cost of $4.6 billion.

But look past the interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and charges such as severance; they matter, but they affect the owner’s balance sheet more than they reflect newspapers’ viability. McClatchy’s underlying newspaper portfolio just delivered a 21.5% operating profit margin.

Before Congress allows anti-trust exceptions for papers, or philanthropic dollars begin to prop-up news operations, let's not overlook this lesson: poor business decisions can break any model.

The wasted half

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

This quip from department store pioneer John Wanamaker (1838-1922) has come to mind a lot lately. I'm wondering if the increasing sophistication of online metrics is providing the insight Wanamaker wished for, and, if so, is the 'wasted half' of advertiser expense/ad seller revenue being wrung from various business models? More specifically, I'm curious about the implications for the news industry. More to come...

Sound off, 1, 2, Sound off, 3, 4

Highlights from the Craigslist Foundation Nonprofit Boot Camp 2009

All for Good. Google has provided this new org with a nifty gadget/widget for distributing volunteer opportunities around the web. It aggregates listings from many well-established sites. This effort seems inspired by, but not officially part of, the Obama administration's serve.gov. I'm not sure non-profits have had trouble recruiting volunteers in recent years, but these folks have their heart in the right place.

YouTube will try to connect video-makers with non-profits via the newly launched Video Volunteers service, another off-shoot of All for Good. Other YouTube benefits for non-profits can be found here.

Mozilla, the outfit behind the Firefox browser, is organizing a service week (September 14-21, 2009) and asking tech-savvy individuals to sign up to teach senior citizens how to use the web, install a wireless network at a school, refurbish hardware for a local computer center, etc. Non-profits and the like can register on the same site to receive such support. (No group has a better rep for friendly customer service than IT pros, am I right? Here's hoping the most smug and surly geeks sit this one out.)

NTen is a membership organization of nonprofit technology professionals that shares information, provides professional development opportunities, and conducts research. NTen partners with The Port, offering "social media solutions."

Computer Recycling Center. Teachers, community non-profits, plus Bay Area groups that serve foster youth and home-bound elderly can apply for refurbished hardware, available for the price of a reasonable service contract. For those looking to put their old gear to good use, CRC either places with it at a worthy site or recycles it responsibly.

The Boot Camp wasn't focused exclusively on technology, but much of what I took in was. After a full day of rah-rah for the geeks, I thought it was important that Ari Dar, the founder and executive director of Action Without Borders/Idealist.org, reminded attendees during the closing session that Rome was built before facebook and that technology is merely a tool, not the end-all.

The issue many of the non-techy, non-profiters were wrestling with seemed to be how much time, money, etc. should be invested in new tools as they continue to provide their core, often in-person services. Each org will have a unique answer to that question, if they have time to adequately address it. This year's Boot Camp was a star-studded infomercial for some of the shiniest tools currently available, but I found little guidance on how to evaluate the various opportunities.

Beyond camp
Groundswell, a book and blog, is a great resource for groups struggling with their 2.0 strategy. A number of talks by the book's co-author, Charlene Li, can be found online, if you prefer to watch rather than read.

And as you may know, there's more to volunteer management than getting people to turn out. Not all activities are as simple as stuffing envelopes. If expectations on both sides aren't met, the two parties who just wanted to do some good leave unsatisfied, if not disgruntled. Idealist's Volunteer Management Resource Center could prove useful on this front.

* * *If you're looking for a volunteer opportunity, you might peruse Volunteer Match or Idealist for gigs all over, including the Bay Area. SF residents might have luck with The Volunteer Center, One Brick, or Hands On Bay Area. And ReServe, based in NYC, is doing some interesting work with highly skilled retirees.

The people's library

The Library of Congress has added 3,000 images to Flickr, a Yahoo-owned photo-sharing web site. The images include color pics from the 1930s and 1940s and news photos from the early 1900s. All seem to be from the U.S. None have no known copyright restrictions. Flickr has created a special section within their site, The Commons, to house such collections.

The assembly of a B-17 tail fuselage. October 1942.

The LoC offers over a million pictures in its own online archive, so why join the rabble on Flickr?

As Flickr's blog reminds us, "many hands make light work." The LoC blog admits that tagging each of these images (adding descriptive key words to pictures making the photos searchable) would be a daunting task. The Flickr community will do this tagging for free, contributing hundred of person-hours to the archive in short order, and I suspect the LoC will be pleased with the results.

Syndicating the images on Flickr also allows the LoC to better fulfill its mission "to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people." According to Alexa, Flickr draws 50-times more visitors than LoC's site.

Librarians are smarties. While some may wince at displaying publicly-held photos on a for-profit platform, I applaud the move and hope other governmental archives and non-profits take note.

Update: The LoC has released a report on this project (12/11/08).