Happily I did not spot this in the International Herald Tribune

This from Mediabistro, ever vigilant for a chance to knock MSM (from which they make their living and derive most of their content). But I have to agree with them on this one....





New York Times Trend Piece Tackles the Vital Role of Wristbands in the NFL

Scout's honor, we're trying to believe in newspapers. But wow, sometimes they make it hard. Case in point, today's The New York Times in-depth trend piece about how players in the National Football League are wearing wristbands... on their forearms.

Some football players, like Jets defensive end David Bowens, pull fat 2-inch wristbands up into the crook of the elbows. Some, like Giants defensive end Dave Tollefson, use scissors to cut a skinny edge from the elastic band for a thin strand. Some even use sliced old socks, swatches of stretchy material or athletic tape to create the wrap-around look.
Some wear the bands at the elbow. Some wear them across the middle of the biceps. Some, like Jets cornerback Dwight Lowery, wear them over the top of a long-sleeved shirt.

They paid someone to write this? Did NYT forget to tell us it was combining the Sports and Styles section?
But don't worry, there's more. 895 words more, to be exact.

Wristbands, like their stretchy ringed cousin, the headband, have long performed dual (if not dueling) roles of form and function for athletes. Depending on the sport, the era and the hipness of the wearer, they have not always been worn to good reviews.

This article performs the dual role of being vapid and sucking.

[Giants tight end Kevin Boss] looked over at tight end Michael Matthews, who was wearing wristbands, too.
"I always make fun of Mike for wearing them on his wrist," Boss said. "That's old school."

Just like newspapers.

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/newspapers/new_york_times_trend_piece_tackles_the_vital_role_of_wristbands_in_the_nfl_94875.asp

A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE

International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Vacation /Business Trip Furnished Apartment in Paris

Election 2008: Shining a Light on the (Ir)relevance of Print? (Media Bistro)

I ran a post yesterday about the relevance of print as exposed by the news cycle in the U.S elections. Seems I am not alone in my concerns or thinking.

The is a comment from Media Bistro, quoting on Bill Keller in the NYO.

Election 2008: Shining a Light on the (Ir)relevance of Print? (Media Bistro)
The fallout from this election season is being felt in many different corners of our lives: feminism, such as it is, is once again on the front-burner, SNL may actually be relevant again, and the merits of the caucus vs. primary, may no longer qualify as a bonus question on a civics test, so common a topic did it become last spring. But for our purposes it all comes down to, you guessed it, whether print journalism is still relevant in this election cycle. Not so much, Bill Keller tells the NYO.

"The news outlets that aim to be aggressive, serious and impartial — don't dominate the conversation the way we once did, and that's fine, except it means some excellent hard work gets a little muffled."

But is it really fine?

Actually we think so. And since we still turn to the NYT (online) as a main source of news the fact we rarely see it in print has had very little effect on its relevance in our lives. However! The parts of the paper that pack a punch may be what is shifting. We only have a vague memory of the Johnny Apple days (though, one suspects he's the sort of person that might have made the transition to online life rather smoothly), but Keller points out that the Times investigative pieces appear to be losing their staying power:
One of the casualties, I think, is that powerfully reported and written stories, especially investigative and accountability ones, do not land with the impact they once did, they might still turns heads — and thankfully at times change things — but usually they get pushed aside as the new-media machine moves to the next 'thing.'

(Or they get picked up and carried (or fisked) by the blogosphere.)

Keller uses the Times recent Palin article as an example:

"Even a meaty, damning, 3,100-word, three-bylined front-page Sept. 14 Times piece on Sarah Palin's management style doesn't appear to have the same sort of impact on the campaign trail that it might once have."

But, as we all know, size does not matter in these new media lands the way it once did — perhaps the Times investigative team should consider reporting its next piece via Twitter, we bet that would carry.
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/newspapers/election_2008_shining_a_light_on_the_irrelevance_of_print_94735.asp



What I like about the NYO Observer piece is its similarity to the article in the NYT that I posted yesterday as an illustration of the problem. It's not as is if the NYT and MSM is blind to the problem?



Amid 2008 Campaign Cacophony on the Web, Print Reverts to Hobbesian State

Does print journalism matter in this election?
“It’s obvious, and no crime against humanity, that the world has many, many places to turn for information, misinformation, analysis, rants, etc,” wrote Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, in an e-mail. “We—The Times, The Washington Post, Politico, the news outlets that aim to be aggressive, serious and impartial—don’t dominate the conversation the way we once did, and that’s fine, except it means some excellent hard work gets a little muffled.
“But we do want our work to be noticed,” he wrote, “and I’ve been repeatedly surprised at the rich, important stories that fail to resonate the way they deserve.”
On one level, more people read The Times, albeit in digital form, than ever. The pipeline piece did a brisk business as an e-mail forward. But so did everything else anyone had to say that day about the campaign—whether it was true or false, reported or simply asserted, fact or opinion. In-boxes crammed with New York Times articles and Huffington Post hyperlinks do not advertise their relative value or importance. Everything is equal, everything is a tie and nothing, it seems, is important anymore.
Nobody has felt this more acutely than the Newspapers and Magazines of Record in the United States. The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time: all over the world of “quality” journalism, there is a feeling of decline.
“There can no longer be a Johnny Apple—a single political reporter who can set the agenda as he did when he discovered Jimmy Carter,” said Frank Rich, columnist for The New York Times. “Whether in print or on the Internet or on television.”
“At Politico we often talk about winning the morning, not just winning the day,” said Jim VandeHei, the editor of Politico. “Because the news cycle is no longer 24 hours—it might be 16 hours or even shorter.”
It works well for Politico, but if everyone is readjusting to that breakneck pace, how much real news is left? And who’s there to suss out the real from the junk?
“The story burns more intensely and then it burns out more quickly,” said Jonathan Alter, the Newsweek writer, musing about the life cycle of pieces. “And there’s so much information and so much political coverage that it’s easy for good stories to be lost entirely in that register.”
“Very few of these stories have a long finish,” said Michael Duffy, the nation editor for Time. “The gong dissipates quickly.”
“My instinct is that there is such cacophony of commentary that it does sometimes drown out ideas from good and deeply reported journalism,” said Marcus Brauchli, the executive editor of The Washington Post.
“In the Internet age, the cycle is constant and people don’t really have time to reflect all day on a single story in the newspaper,” he added. “And it’s more difficult to set the agenda for very long.”
Mr. VandeHei agrees.
“One of the casualties, I think, is that powerfully reported and written stories, especially investigative and accountability ones, do not land with the impact they once did,” he said. “They might still turns heads—and thankfully at times change things—but usually they get pushed aside as the new-media machine moves to the next ‘thing.’”
But such are the pressures of trying to produce material all day—even if it’s unclear what’s actually being absorbed from the information that’s being produced.
Mr. Keller, for one, wonders what happened to the big stories The Times reported during the election cycle.
There was a Jo Becker and Don Van Natta investigative piece of Bill Clinton’s relationship with Kazakhstan—barely noticed. There was a piece in the spring by David Kirkpatrick and Jim Rutenberg about John McCain’s relationship with Donald Trump in Arizona—hardly a word.
Even a meaty, damning, 3,100-word, three-bylined front-page Sept. 14 Times piece on Sarah Palin’s management style doesn’t appear to have the same sort of impact on the campaign trail that it might once have, Mr. Keller said.
“And it’s not just us,” said Mr. Keller. “The Washington Post did an impressive review of Cindy McCain’s drug addiction the other day, and I didn’t hear an echo. I could go on, and so could you. This kind of rigorous, intricate reporting is a major contribution to the public debate, and it certainly gets read. (Our Sunday Palin piece is still number one on the most e-mailed list.) But this kind of work doesn’t dominate the discussion the way it might have in elections past.”
That Palin piece, as of Tuesday morning, was still the second most e-mailed story on the Times Web site, and it had more than 1,050 comments.
Doesn’t 1,050 comments mean something? Doesn’t that suggest an even more meaningful impact than in the old days?
“The answer is no,” said Michael Powell, one of the three authors of The Times’ Palin piece. “It doesn’t get picked up the same way.”
That is, it gets picked up, but only by people who seem to refuse to break the tie between the journalism coming from The New York Times, the spin coming from the campaign trail, and the white noise of punditry and Web-ready opinionizing.
Despite its popularity, the Palin piece appears ready for the inevitable lifetime of a print story these days: It’s hot one second, gone and forgotten the next.
“I say this from a cultural point of view, not a political point of view or journalistic point of view—but bubble gum music just fades and leaves no trace,” said Mr. Rich. “We’re in a laboratory right now and we don’t know what’s really landing with voters.”
There is, of course, good old television.
Keith Olbermann isn’t sitting in his office with the morning papers weighing which lead-all from which major paper will drive the news for the night—in a way that, say, Uncle Walter would do before the CBS Evening News. Instead, you might get a nice anecdote from an Adam Nagourney story in The Times, a response from the McCain camp—and then it’s up to you, the viewer, to break the tie! If you can.
“Everybody knows that if it takes more than five seconds to explain the story, it’s not going to make a lot of noise on the campaign trail,” said Matt Taibbi, a columnist for Rolling Stone.
Mr. Keller, for his part, said that television “seems to shy away from complicated stories, and these big stories tend to be complicated.
“The simple-minded silliness of lipstick-on-a-pig filled at least one cable news cycle, but the question of what kind of executive Sarah Palin has been as mayor and governor didn’t lend itself to the bite-sized format of the nightly news or the constant low-grade babble of cable,” he continued.
In addition to the increased competition from blogs and electronic media, major print news outfits are, of course, indulging in all that the modern-day media environment offers: quick items, videocasts, online chats.
And, if you talk to the dinosaurs, it doesn’t help any.
“The big change for all of us is that we’re all multimedia players now and it means that we’re much busier writing and being on TV or Webcasts, and that can often leave less time for reporting,” said Mr. Alter. “That’s the real problem.”
“I think what’s changed mostly is that we are working every day in three or four dimensions—plotting stories for the Web today, the magazine tomorrow and long investigative pieces three or four weeks from now,” said Mr. Duffy, an editor at Time. “Maybe there’s a fourth dimension, too, and folks are blogging stuff every hour.”
“There’s so much content to fill,” said Mr. Taibbi. “People who write for news magazines like Newsweek and Time, in the old days, they’d be writing one feature a week. Now they have to file every single day for Web sites, and do video hits, appear on TV shows, and that’s in addition to writing their features. The same people are doing four and five times as much work and, obviously, they’re not going to have a great deal of depth on any subject.”
“Hobbes talked about the war of all against all,” said Mr. Alter. “Now it’s the punditry of all against all.”
http://www.observer.com/2008/media/amid-2008-campaign-cacophony-web-print-reverts-hobbesian-state?page=0%2C1


My response to all this is nothing more than
a) newspapers are increasingly demonstrating and even admitting to their increasing irrelevance (or rather Newspaper 1.0 is)
b) time to move to Newspaper 2.o


As I've said before: print needs to change.



A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Vacation /Business Trip Furnished Apartment in Paris

Time for the NYT times to get out of the Newspaper 1.O business.

If you ever want just one example to quote, when discussing the fate of newspapers and why the Newspaper 1.o model isn't working, and isn't fixable without moving to Newspaper 2.0, then just read this. How an Internet tabloid, Dealbreaker, blew the NYT, WSJ and just about everyone else out of the water over the investment bank meltdown. (Internet tabloid is short hand for a glorified blog. Get it?)



Black Sunday on Wall St.? Someone Who Knows What They're Talking About Explains it to Us
Phew. So, along with everyone else, we woke up this morning, or went to bed last night depending on how you get your news, to word that the Lehman Brothers was filing for bankruptcy protection and Merrill Lynch was being sold to Bank of America. It's no secret around these parts the we are not financial experts, or even reasonably knowledgeable, but when "In one of the most dramatic days in Wall St. history" is the lede of the front page story in the NYT we know it's really bad. Fortunately Dealbreaker's John Carney — who, by the way, continually scooped the MSM on the Lehman's Bros. story all last week — was available to walk us through. And yes, it's really, really, once-in-a century bad. Maybe when we can no longer afford groceries Sarah Palin can teach us how to hunt wolves.

We mentioned last week how Dealbreaker beat the MSM to the initial Lehman Bros. story, but this happened more than once as the week progressed, yes?
Yes. First, we scooped everyone with the story that the Fed and Treasury were working on the Lehman problem. The Washington Post reported this story five hours later. Second, we were first, I believe, to report that there would be no government funding for a Lehman rescue. Third, not quite reporting, the we did explore the possibility of there being no deal to rescue or acquire Lehman on Friday, when everyone was still assuming the deal would happen.

So, other than the coffee man, how did you do it?
We've built a network of readers at both the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department and on Wall Street. Basically, these readers have come to trust us to provide information to them quickly. It's kind of your basic Web 2.0 strategy, where an involved online community creates two-way communications of information. They send us emails and text messages about the developments, while we post to the Web site. The directness and immediacy of the Web have allowed us to build up the kind of reporter-source relationships that might otherwise take years.

These headlines are very scary. How bad is this really? Are we looking at soup kitchens? Should we put what little money we have under the pillow?
We're already calling it Black Sunday. It's very, very, bad, and things may deteriorate further. This is as bad as anyone alive has ever seen it. Wall Street is broken, the independent investment banks that have existed since the Great Depression are passing from the scene and we may never see their kind again. Your money is safe if it's in an FDIC insured account [one day readers, we will figure out what that is], although even there it is threatened by inflation. There aren't many places to hide. I'm sorry that's so negative but these are dark times.

How come the government didn't do a bailout this time the way they did for Fannie and Freddie?
Fannie and Freddie were different from Lehman in five ways. First, Fannie and Freddie were much bigger. Second, Fannie and Freddie were far more deeply connected to the political machinery in Washington. Third, the government decided that Lehman could be allowed to fail without bringing down the rest of the financial system while Fannie and Freddie were seen as more central to our financial and real estate economies. Fourth, internationally, Fannie and Freddie were widely viewed as pseudo-arms of the US government and their bonds were heavily owned by foreign governments. Their failure was viewed a possibly sparking a foreign policy crisis.
Finally, Lehman's timing was wrong. The sense was that the bailouts were creating "moral hazard," encouraging risky behavior by shielding Wall Street from the consequences of risk. The government was looking for an opportunity to show that we're still a free market society, where those who profit from good times feel the pain from the bad times. Allowing failure was seen as a necessary act of creative destruction.

Do you have anything good to tell us?
The best thing we have going for us is that most Americans were not heavily invested in financial stocks, don't have outrageous mortgages and have largely sat out the latest financial bubble. Provided we don't make things worse with ill-advised government meddling, this could be a terrific re-evaluation about where wealth should be invested in our country. In short, unwinding the Wall Street boom should make us a healthier, better country.

What's next?
The story rolls on. Now people are asking if the last big two independent investment banks, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, will be able to survive without teaming up with a major depository bank. On a more macro level, if you want to know where the next boom-bust cycle will run, look to "green" technology: solar, wind, biofuels. There's a broad political consensus in favor of these things, they are increasingly heavily subsidized and trendy among investors. It's the real estate boom of the next decade.
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/media_people/black_sunday_on_wall_st_someone_who_knows_what_theyre_talking_about_explains_it_to_us_94469.asp#more




A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE
International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT
Vacation /Business Trip Furnished Apartment in Paris

Blogosphere Beats MSM to the Lehman Bros. Punch (Media Bistro)

Part of Newspaper 2.0 might mean MSM getting out of the on-the-news Main Stream Stories business.

Print sure can't compete with the online competition, and it seems even their own Internet sites can't compete with the blogosphere.

Witness Lehman Brother's today, or rather yesterday, and this remark from Media Bistro:

Mark down another point for the blogosphere! By now you've all seen the stories about the bad things happening at Lehman Bros. (which we will not attempt to explain here). Perhaps you read about it in the NYT this morning [Wednesday, 10th September, 2008). Or maybe if you are, say, a regular reader of Dealbreaker, this story was already old news to you because Dealbreaker reported on it yesterday, a full sixteen hours ahead of the mainstream media. Not bad.
http://www.mediabistro.com:80/fishbowlny/new_media/blogosphere_beats_msm_to_the_lehman_bros_punch_94131.asp


Bring on Newspaper 2.0.

Newspapers: It's Officially, Officially, Very, Very Bad

More cheery views from Media Bistro:

We're just going to assume that everyone who reads FBNY is acutely aware (more than a number of you probably first-hand) that the newspaper industry is in a free fall. It's a rare day that at least one of our posts does not cover some lay-off here, or some shuttering there. And today is no different. Just worse. In fact it's possible that the future of newspapers glass is still a bit too full. According to the Observer this may be the "worst year in modern newspaper history."
But as bad as newspapers have been doing — it's been conventional wisdom for a few years now — the industry is actually doing much worse than most ever anticipated, and that's become painfully clear over the past two months.

Which brings us to the just reported New York Times Co. second-quarter earnings. Times Co. stocks have fallen 82% from last year. Here's the numbers per the AP: "Net income dropped to $21.1 million, or 15 cents per share, from $118.4 million, or 82 cents per share, a year ago." However! (despite everything we happen to be glass-half-full people) the company does report a gain in revenue from its internet properties, which "jumped 13 percent to $91.3 million and accounted for about 12 percent of total revenue."
All this talk of dropping brings us to Sam Zell, current agent-of-doom for all things Tribune Co., and he's not apologizing.

We're looking at some of the worst advertising numbers in the history of the world. I have a responsibility ... to keep this business alive when cash flow has eroded at a prodigious level. We're not interested in trial by torture, not interested in dying by a thousand cuts...We're doing everything we can to make this downsizing happen as quickly and as painlessly as possible."

Quick? Frighteningly so. Painless? Not so much
http://www.mediabistro.com:80/fishbowlny/newspapers/newspapers_its_officially_officially_very_very_bad_89946.asp



www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT

Expect a price hike?

If you think you're already paying a fair whack for your IHT every day...then you should subscribe.

But if you still find that pricey....then you should pay by monthly direct debit (very reasonable).

But if you still find that a little heavy on your wallet then I should be ready to expect a price increase.

The NYT seems to be following a popular trend which is this: daily newspaper readers may be declining, no one will pay for online content (witness TimesSelect), but they can still milk the loyal cash cow readers.

Which, if you are reading this blog, is probably you.

Here's this from Media Bistro (Wednesday 23rd July, 2008)

Up, Up, and Away: NYT to Raise Newsstand Price

That was fast. Just this morning the Times released its (demoralizing) second quarter earnings and shortly thereafter on a conference call to discuss the report New York Times Co. president and CEO Janet Robinson announced that as of Aug. 18 the paper would be raising its newsstand prices from $1.25 to $1.50.
Newsstand price hikes are all the rage these days, it seems. Just last week the WSJ announced it was upping its price by fifty cents, and this past May the NYPost doubled its price. We're not schooled in the background economics of these decisions, however, is it really a good idea to make something that less people want that much harder to get?


Quite. MediaBistro are not schooled in the background economics of these decisions, but actually, to my mind, it is a good idea. If 25cents is going to lose a reader, they will migrate to the web where their 25cents will probably be earned back in page views.

Plus, the more they charge the reader the more they can go on to advertisers about core readers/loyalty/real page impressions. In short even a smaller circulation can earn more money if the CPMs go up (cost per thousands) and the demographic of the print product moves up-scale. Plus they save money on print and circulation costs. NB Circulation revenues for the NYT rose 1.2% (if my memory serves me) in Q2 and the woman in charge of their marketing is a circulation genius who will almost certainly one day be the head honcho of the NYT newspaper, and eventually, company. Yasmin Namini is the name and a very bright spark.

So in short the NYT moves towards an existing IHT model - you might not be a HNWI (Hight Net Worth Individual) but that's sure what the ad sales team are telling the print advertisers, most of whom now are either 'green energy' advertisers OR luxury goods.



www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

Interational Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
NYT

'NYT Offering You the Chance to be Even More LinkedIn'

FROM MEDIA BISTRO

More social networking news to report. The NYTimes.com announced today that it's forming a "strategic relationship" with LinkedIn that will give LinkedIn members a "more focused and personalized experience on the Business and Technology pages of NYTimes.com." According to the press release LinkedIn users will be able to have news "relevant to their professional industries (based on "non-personally identifiable attributes") recommended to them on the Business and Technology pages of NYTimes.com."
Sounds great, right? We know, we know, streamlined social networking is the wave of the future. But still, there's something about all this strategic targeting, and relevant information that makes us nervous. Would it really be so bad if one were "recommended" articles that had nothing whatsoever to do with one's personalized interests? (or "non-personally identifiable attributes"). You know like how newspapers used to be printed all willy-nilly without specific sections. If someone were able to develop a newspaper reader like that online we bet we'd have a lot better understanding of Wall St. and a little less awareness of Upper East Side weddings. Anyway! Considering that LinkedIn has 25 million users, in the grand scheme of things this is probably a good plan for the Times.
http://www.mediabistro.com:80/fishbowlny/newspapers/nyt_offering_you_the_chance_to_be_even_more_linkedin_89875.asp





www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

Punch is not a 'business visionary'

Far be it from me to say it, but over at AdAge, that's the word....

Print Journalism Officially in a Crisis, Or, Put Your Hand in the Hand of Your Strongest Competitor?

Maybe just to make it all official, a recent study was conducted on the effects that recent layoffs and budgets cuts are having on the country's newsrooms (spoiler alert: it's bad). The study concluded that newsrooms are smaller despite a greater online need for content, there is less foreign news now than there was three years ago (Lara Logan fans will already be aware of this), and there is even less national news (though as New Yorkers one wonders how long it would take for us to notice this). The good news? Well, there isn't much except that smaller papers seem to be doing better than larger ones.
Meanwhile, over at AdAge Arthur "Punch" Sulzberger Jr. is talking to Nat Ives about how the New York Times is navigating these treacherous waters. In a word, co-operation. Starting this fall the Times plans on "automatically displaying links to competitors' takes on big news" on its home page, no less (how very HuffPo) as well as expanding its online business coverage a la Andrew Sorkin's DealBook model: "each one will include original reporting and commentary from a dedicated staffer, news aggregated from elsewhere, relevant tools, e-mail newsletters, mobile applications and more." And while Sulzberger has been the recipient of much criticism of late, particularly after NYT stocks fell to a record ten-year low last week, he has garnered some praise for keeping the Times in the family, "The fecklessness of the Bancrofts reflected that Arthur had sharp values...He may not be a business visionary, but he is stalwart in a way that they were not."
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/newspapers/print_journalism_officially_in_a_crisis_or_put_your_hand_in_the_hand_of_your_strongest_competitor__89740.asp



Just a note on this: the solution doesn't lie in aggregating other people's content, it lies in aggregating your own. Not that anyone really gets this. It's called STORY.



www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

Spelling at the Global Edition of the New York Times

As an Englishman, I did like this from Mediabistro:

The English Have Such a Delicious Sense of Humor
Oh the British and their sense of humor. MenuPages relayed to us this fun little diddy: Seems as though last week over at the NYT Freakonomics blog Stephen Dubner (the book's author) may have had his mind a bit in the gutter. According to the story, in a July 8 post Dubner called out the Economist for a perceived spelling mistake.
Consider this lead from a recent article about a huge Mexican mining company called Fresnillo, which was recently listed on the London Stock Exchange: In the hills north east of Mexico City it is not uncommon to find Cornish pasties for sale....They meant to write "pastries" but, considering that miners work really hard, they might also be hoping to encounter the kind of people who go shopping for pasties.
As it turns out, the Economist meant what it said; they were, in fact, referring to the meat-filled British turnovers known as a Cornish Pasty. And just to make sure Dubner never confused the two again, generous folk that they are, they sent Dubner the real thing in the mail. After this we intend to keep a sharp eye out for any perceived "whiskey" misspellings.
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/magazines/the_english_have_such_a_delicious_sense_of_humor_89630.asp




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