"web content" entries
The Economic Realities of Digital-Only Newspapers
Alan Mutter has an incisive analysis explaining why an all-digital strategy would be unacceptably painful for the majority of established newspapers: Because newspapers on average derive approximately 90% of their sales from print advertising, the only ink-on-paper newspapers that can afford to attempt digital-only publishing are the ones that are irreversibly losing money. Moving to digital publishing is the…
New York Times Settles Linking Suit
In what many of us thought was a slightly bizarre case, the New York Times Co. has settled with GateHouse Media in a suit attempting to cease the automated aggregation of Gatehouse content on Boston.com's affiliated properties (Boston.com is owned by the Times Co.). It is not clear why the settlement was reached, since precedence was on the side…
"None of this is good or bad; it just is"
Lev Grossman takes a pragmatic look at the changing state of authors, readers, and the definition of publishing: Self-publishing has gone from being the last resort of the desperate and talentless to something more like out-of-town tryouts for theater or the farm system in baseball. It's the last ripple of the Web 2.0 vibe finally washing up on publishing's…
"Amazon Tax" Moves Forward in New York
A judge has dismissed lawsuits from Amazon and Overstock.com challenging New York's "Amazon tax," which was enacted last year. From the Associated Press: The law applies to companies that don't have offices in New York, but have at least one person in the state who works as an online agent — someone who links to a Web site and receives…
Google Doesn't Have Answers for Newspapers
Fortune Magazine has an interesting interview with Eric Schmidt about Google's relationship with newspapers: Maybe their time [newspapers'] has just come and gone? No. They don't have a problem of demand for their product, the news. People love the news. They love reading, discussing it, adding to it, annotating it. The Internet has made the news more accessible. There's…
Newspapers Pursued New Tech with Wrong Intentions
In a column at Slate, Jack Schafer says newspapers' overcommitment to form and content lock-in led to the industry missing Web opportunities: From the beginning, newspapers sought to invent the Web in their own image by repurposing the copy, values, and temperament found in their ink-and-paper editions. Despite being early arrivals, despite having spent millions on manpower and hardware,…
The Realities of Big Web Traffic and Advertising
Major news sites that rely on advertising as their primary revenue stream need to log hundreds of millions of page views per month to attract significant attention from advertisers, according to a new report from Lauren Rich Fine, research director of ContentNext. From Advertising Age: "Based on our research, the conversation [with advertisers] gets interesting at 200 million page views…
PC Magazine Goes Web Only
PC Magazine's January 2009 edition will mark the end of its print run. A reduced staff will focus on the PCMag Digital Network. From paidContent.org: The magazine, which was started in 1982, has a storied history, but its print base eroded over the years as its core brand of journalism — news you can use while shopping for computers…
Why Blogging and Social Media Shouldn't be Ignored
Consistent blogging and Web-based interaction often fall by the wayside when other projects demand attention, but venture capitalist Fred Wilson makes a compelling argument for keeping connectivity on the front burner. He charts the trajectory of a recent post focusing on Boxee, one of his investment companies: it went from a blog, to Techmeme, and then looped back into…
Webcast Video: Why Publishers Should Care About SEO
See the full video from the TOC Webcast: "Why Publishers Should Care About SEO," with SEO expert Jamie Low.