Crudele on marketing: PR is riskier than ads

John Crudele, business columnist for the NYPost disagrees with the recent book The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. "At best, if the sun is shining and a journalist happens to have gotten a good night's sleep, a company has a 50/50 shot at producing positive PR. Create an ad and the chance of a positive message getting out is 100 percent."

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Pierce to LAT: hire me!

Noting that "i would have loved to read Royko several times a day, and at night, and on the weekends even if he just wrote a little blurb on a sunday night saying 'i just watched the sopranos. wtf was that?'" Tony Pierce suggests the LATimes hire him as its resident blogger. He writes: "imagine what would happen if readers from around the world finally had a chance to see los angeles, the city of their dreams, through a tiny little window of happiness and love. and sarcasm. and celebrity interviews. and photo essays. via a young single man who takes a bus to work who finally was given a break by his hometown paper. i bet you in a month i could get 1,000 links and the entire web will be abuzz from the groundbreaking move the LA Times made by signing up one of the web's most loved and innovative and creative bloggers." (Via Amy Langfield.)

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Magazines forgotten on the dustheap of history

"'The sad thing is,' says Katherine Rosman, former Brill's Content senior writer and frequent New York Times Sunday Styles contributor, 'as proud as I am of the time I put into Brill's and what Brill's tried to do, I don't think anyone gives a [expletive] that they --Talk, Brill's, Industry Standard -- don't exist today.'" More than anything else I've read, this quote demonstrates the difference between blogs and magazines. I bet not many of hiatusing Ken Layne's 5000 readers feel the same way. What media methadone would slake the craving for Obscure Store, Instapundit, Sullivan or Scripting News? (Via Media News.)

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Orbitz pushes programming stratosphere

Seems travel site Orbitz is beginning to add (in a small way) analytics to their ticket sales aggregation. I requested possible flights to London. The resulting menu of possible flights came back, topped by this new factoid: "Lowest fare below beats this trip's 30-day average by $15." This isn't much on its own, since we don't know whether the average is calculated from a) what people have paid b) the lowest offers or c) all ticket prices. (My bet is b.) In any case, the calculation represents Orbitz' first step beyond pure reitteration of traditional travel functionality.

Application service providers start off selling an Internet enabled version of a traditional software service, but really come into their own when they leverage their meta view and massive data stream and layer automated consulting on top of the traditional service.

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Sparteneity: no blog, no site

Sparteneity: "We do websites. Small ones. For 'low-end' clients, such as minor non-profits, musicians, artists, writers, and even (yes) local political candidates. But only if you are ready and willing to have a weblog as a central part of your site."

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Pay extra to pay with paper

Jennifer Bayot: "Krista S. Boughey of Hanford, Calif., recently learned that she and her husband, Britt, would have to pay $8 a month to receive paper invoices for their auto and student loans from USAA. Online statements and automatic payments would be free." And "A number of studies and surveys show that the average company saves about $1 a bill by moving from a paper-based system to an electronic system." Other companies are joining the pay-for-paper herd. The trend should deepen other online habits and suck more people into e-life. Once you are compelled to pay two bills online, why not do them all there?

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Elderly Afghan ladies to top web demographics?

Ever angered by web-stupidity, Olivier Travers, "Since there's absolutely no value for me to give real information about myself to 99% of web sites that ask for it, I've made it a policy to feed them with the less credible bullshit I could come up with. I understand publishers want to profile users to answer advertiser requests, [but]... I have yet to see a site which does anything even remotely useful to me with my personal profile... Join me and make Afghan rich old ladies the fastest growing segment in online demographics. You need to make $200K or more a year."

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Google 'Swiss-army knife'

You've already read it, but for the record, here's the fanstastic interview about Google's UI approach. They've got eight people working full-time on UI.

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Cashets for micropayments

Cashets "are designed specifically for small purchases -- $1 or less -- that you ordinarily can't make on the Internet because sellers have a minimum." Seems astonishingly simple. (Via BoingBoing.

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Grokker offers multiple info-map options

Launched Sunday, Groxis's Grokker is the latest attempt to offer a visual representation(s) of information groupings. "84 percent of Web surfers go no further than the first page of document titles in searching for information," quotes the NYTimes.

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One guy who doesn't like media monopolies

According to an oft-told anecdote, "President Clinton once blocked an attempt to allow television stations to buy daily newspapers in the same city because, he said, if the so-and-so who owned the anti-Clinton Little Rock Democrat-Gazette had owned the leading TV station in Little Rock, too, Clinton would never have become President." From Nicholas Lemann's profile of Michael Powell in Ocober 7, 2002 edition of The New Yorker.

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NYTimes bullies WPost into selling IHT

The New York Times Company played hardball in pushing the Washington Post Company to sell its 50% share of the International Herald Tribune, an internal Post memo said today.

The Herald Tribune, co-owned by the two newspaper groups, lost $10 million in 2001 and is set to lose $7.8 million in 2002, a source told me. Although the international paper's circulation is 263,000, a record high, the IHT has been hurt by a collapse in travel and mobile phone advertising.

The New York Times has taken an increasingly aggressive stance internationally, partnering earlier this year with Le Monde to publish its own news in English in the French daily newspaper's pages.

The two companies have been negotiating in recent weeks about the IHT's future.

The Post memo said, ''If the Post did not sell, the Times said it would start its own international edition anyway, intending to sell as many copies as allowed under the IHT partnership agreement. The Times also said it would block any cash infusion into the IHT.''

''The Post was prepared to sustain the IHT's modest operating losses until further efficiencies could be achieved and business conditions improved. But the Times made clear that staying the course was not an option. So it was not possible to remain in partnership with an unwilling partner.''

''This decision was made with great reluctance and sadness, and little choice," the Post memo said.

In its own internal memo, the Times said, "We have been extremely proud of The Times's role in the IHT partnership, which began in 1967. Over the past 35 years, the IHT has earned its reputation as the premier international newspaper for opinion leaders and decision makers. During this time, The Washington Post has been an exceptionally good partner. Now, as we await the closing of this transaction, we are anxiously looking forward to working even more closely with our IHT news and business colleagues as we continue bringing quality journalism to its readers around the world."

The deal was for less than $75 million, a source told Reuters.

The IHT is based in Paris, France and employs 250 there.

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Washingtonpost.com Q3 ad revenues up 50% versus last year

The Washington Post Company reports Q3 numbers: "Revenue generated by the company's online publishing activities, primarily washingtonpost.com, totaled $9.1 million for the third quarter of 2002, versus $7.7 million for 2001; online revenue totaled $25.3 million for the first nine months of 2002, versus $23.1 million for 2001. Local and national online advertising revenues grew 51 percent and 50 percent for the third quarter and first nine months of 2002, respectively. Revenue at the Jobs section of washingtonpost.com increased 11 percent in the third quarter of 2002 but was down 6 percent for the first nine months of 2002."

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Pierce: blogs need to 'provide a freaking service'

Photo-essayist and bon vivant Tony Pierce spent yesterday trying to track down the text of a $56,000 Sean Penn anti-war ad in the Washington Post. Problem: the WPost doesn't cover its own ads; the NYTimes certainly doesn't cover the Post's ads; A-bloggers and e-Pundits are watching foliage or baseball. Tony writes "bloggers are missing their windows of opportunity. people have plenty of ways to get to their news and columns from more famous writers who editoralize. what the kids want today are links to things that no one else is linking to. tell them something they dont know." And "im trying to make this glorified science fair project actually provide a freaking service."

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... two fortune cookies and one ad

Alan Feuer: "At least one Chinese restaurant in Manhattan is sending out delivery orders in cartons adorned not with the traditional "Thank You, Enjoy," but with something a bit more jarring: an advertisement for Cingular Wireless, a purveyor of cellular phone service."

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Bigvid vs. the vidlog

Erik D'Amato writes Glenn Reynolds: "For most people, news is primarily about sights and sounds: 9/11, men walking on the moon, the white Bronco inching down the freeway, the white van circling DC. And in the background, a bit of yakking, a lot of it unscripted. Why should we think Big Video Media will be able to compete with cheap video over the wire any better than Big Print Media have have been able to keep up with cheap written oped over the wire?" Erik, who once edited me and later succeeded me as editor of the Budapest Business Journal, better start blogging soon.

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Tina talks Web

Commenting on a spate of magazine launches, Tina Brown says: "If I was to do Talk again, I would do it on the Web." (Via Nick Denton.)

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eBay revenue up 73% over Q3 2001

Revenues for eBay increased 73% in Q3 2002 versus Q3 2001. Total transaction volume increased 93%. Five categories exceed $1 billion in volume in 2002.

Excerpts from eBay's press release:

Online net transaction revenues in Q3-02 increased 73% year over year to a record $263.6 million, driven by 52% year-over-year transaction revenue growth in the U.S. and 163% year-over-year transaction growth internationally. On an overall consolidated basis, Q3-02 net revenues increased 49% over the $194.4 million generated in Q3-01, reflecting the expected 40% year-over-year decrease in third party advertising revenues."

Listings – eBay hosted a record 160 million listings during the quarter, representing a 47% year-over-year increase from the 109 million reported in Q3-01.

Registered Users – Cumulative confirmed registered users at the end of Q3-02 totaled a record 54.9 million, a sequential increase of 5.2 million users and a 46% increase over the 37.6 million users reported at the end of Q3-01.

Based on Q3-02 annualized GMS, eBay now has five categories that generate more than $1 billion in worldwide GMS: eBay Motors at $3.8 billion, Computers at $1.6 billion, Consumer Electronics at $1.4 billion, Books/Movies/Music at $1.2 billion and Sports at $1.0 billion.

Nearly 37,000 sellers on eBay.com and 14,000 sellers internationally, are currently taking advantage of the enhanced merchandising capabilities of eBay Stores.

During Q3-02, PayPal users generated $1.79 billion in Total Payment Volume, representing a 93% increase from the $925 million generated in Q3-01. PayPal net revenues totaled $59.3 million, representing a 98% increase from Q3-01.

The release can be accessed from this page.

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Big papers' Q3 digital revenues up 27-32% versus last year

"Revenues for New York Times Digital increased 26.8 percent in the third quarter to $18.2 million from $14.4 million in the year-ago quarter. Revenues improved as a result of stronger online advertising, especially in the technology, finance and travel categories. Advertising renewal rates were strong and new advertising formats continued to attract increasing advertiser interest. Overall online classified advertising rose with particular strength in real estate and autos. Operating profit was $2.8 million in the third quarter compared with $0.8 million in the year-ago quarter, primarily resulting from an increase in revenues." Also, see color here.

And at Tribune Company, parent to the LATimes, Chicago Tribune and others, digital revenues were up 32% over the same quarter last year. "Third quarter revenue growth was due primarily to higher classified revenues: recruitment was up 31 percent, auto rose 30 percent and real estate increased 37 percent," the company said in a press release. Print classifieds continued to slump, down 3 percent versus last year. "Help wanted revenue for the group was down 20 percent." (Via LAExaminer.)

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Paid listings and the little guy

Andrea Orr: "Take out the contribution from Overture and Yahoo's other advertising revenue was flat to down. Yahoo said that the addition of paid listings helped it attract a host of small and medium-sized businesses that don't have the budget to buy expensive banner ads. Even as the rates go up, paid listings remain comparatively cheap."

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Reporting from inside the Iraqi news machine

"CNN shares the building with the BBC, Associated Press, Reuters, and the handful of other news organizations that have a permanent presence in Baghdad. But there's an uncomfortable fact about this building to which these tenants don't often call attention: It's the Iraqi Ministry of Information." (Via Andrew Sullivan.)

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Commissioning weblog journalism

Glenn Reyonlds suggests that Traditional Media's "news analysis" centurians will be overrun by hordes of barbarian pundits slinging their views for free. But, he adds, reporting news "is still mostly the province of professional journalism, and that's less likely to change."

I'm more pessimistic for traditional media's news gathering functions and, surprise, more optimistic for news entrepreneurs. OK, so I thought this six years ago too. But times are changing fast.

First, thin media's competitive advantages -- low overheads, deep commitment to the beat and personal rapport with readers -- are finally being unleashed by fissioning weblog networks. The distribution dam has broken; news can flood anywhere gravity takes it.

Second, margins in traditional media's core businesses are collapsing. Subscriptions aren't being cannibalized by the web, but gravy-slathered classified ad revenues are, as these two posts document.

Third, squeezed media margins mean that large swathes of news demand increasingly go unserved. Think of the dozen or more tech publications that have disappeared in the last six months; this isn't because technology is less important today or people are less transfixed by the subject matter ... it's just that their ad revenue wasn't big enough to support big staffs and printing and distribution.

All this invites, no instead let's say demands, news entrepreneurs. What is to be done? Obviously, I'm betting news entrepreneurs can make money selling ads, since that is the market we support with Blogads. Sure it will take a while for people to develop the lingo and metrics to fire weblog advertisers' imaginations. But the convergence of high-audience commitment and low overheads make Blogad ignition inevitable.

Other pieces may be needed to complete the ecosystem. For example, the Blogging Network postulates that audiences will subscribe to access weblog content. But padlocking content seems to toss grit into networking, thin media's essential engine for propagation.

There may be another way to fund news entrepreneurs without killing the free-for-all, though. Matt Welch pushed forward a great idea today, and I'll try to nudge it further. He suggests that bloggers solicit funding for specific projects. "If you actually put a set price on something that would guarantee to produce sweet & relevant content for readers, well, wouldn’t that be interesting?"

If you've ever wondered why writers at the New Yorker or the Atlantic or the New York Times can churn out amazing reporting, analysis and prose, it's partly because they get paid darn well for doing it and don't have to worry about much else. What's the going rate? Must be $2 or $3 a word for mags and a little less for newspapers. You can do a lot of fine thinking for that price.

Yes, just as editors commission articles, groups of bloggers might commission freelance thinkers to spend a few days or a month focused on a project... without having to sweat bills or rent. Let's raise $4750 to send Matt to Baghdad or Tehran for two weeks, paying him half up front and half when he delivers five 2000-word articles on specified subjects. Send Andrew Sullivan to North Korea to blog from another evil axis angle. Or pay Ken Layne $200 for attending some school board meetings in LA and turning in a 1000-word ramble. Commission David Gallagher to dig out the daily user tally for major news sites. Or buy Tony Pierce a plane ticket to Washington for a photo-essay on the sniper(s). Or pay Amy Langfield $375 to badger some congressmen about the health insurance options for the self-employed and report on what she hears. Send Greg Beato to interview Bill O'Reilly's first girl-friend. Pay Glenn Fleishman $750 to write the definitive layman's guide to WiFi. Pay Bill Quick $1000 to report on a few nights in a San Francisco homeless shelter. Pay Emmaneulle Richard to ask French expats why they love LA. Pay Olivier Travers to spend two days in Paris interviewing his compatriots about the coming war on Iraq. Let Megan McArdle pop the housing bubble (or its myth) once and for all. Put Eric Olsen on the road with the Stones or Dylan.

Of course, the second component of great journalism is outstanding editing. Editors assign gently, question persistently, cut confidently, clarify murky prose and disentangle biases. But perhaps the instant feedback from readers and peers can compensate for the editorless blog's weaknesses. We'll see.

(10/17/02: I've come across some fun anti-blogonomics posts this morning. For example a) "No money in blogging. Yes, I'm biased. I like to point to articles that support my opinions." b) "Sponsorship of content inevitably ends in tears, because it requires the content producer to be incorruptible." c) "I don't think I would mind a grant to fund my blogging, provided it wasn't dictated to me what I could and couldn't write. I might even be willing to accept sponsorship from , say, the Audobon Society, since I already write about birds and the AS isn't really selling anything." I wonder: why the religiously fervent belief that writers can't profit online? Don't miss this fine spoof of some anti-blogonomics rhetoric: "There is absolutely no way that I would violate the trust of my readers by blogging for money. My readers know that I'll always be honest with them, and would never sell out for filthy lucre. (By the way, while we're on the subject of readers, I would like to recommend to you the ultimate in RSS feeds -- the Userland RSS feed. It dices, it slices, it purée, why it can even clean Windows.")

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Sullivan bemoans his powerful e-poverty

Thinking about blogonomics, Andrew Sullivan writes: "I wonder if there's ever been a technological innovation that has combined such extraordinary new power with such dramatically poor financial rewards." (Via Nick Denton.)

Hang in there Andrew. There were only 160 years between the invention of the movable type printing press and the genesis of the newspaper. Actually, our early experience suggests www.andrewsullivan.com should make $500-1500 a month selling Blogads.

Sullivan notes that the NYTimes.com's readership has leapfrogged over print circulation and credits this interview. (I'll confess that this is my first appearance in The Sunday Times of London.)

It is interesting to note that even with the NYTimes.com traffic factoid's appearance in the Sunday Times, the information still doesn't show up in Noogle. OK, another search suggests that the Sunday Times is not indexed in Noogle.

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Airlines sell 20% online

"During the just-completed third quarter, airline revenue from Internet bookings probably will top 20% for the first time," reports the WSJ. Unfortunately, what airlines thought was a tool for reducing costs has turned out to be exactly that... for consumers.

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2.3 cents a tousled head...

"Eighteen to thirty-four: for decades, conventional advertising wisdom has attached the adjective 'coveted' to this slice of the viewing audience. According to an analysis by the former NBC News president Lawrence K. Grossman, advertisers pay an average of $23.54 to reach 1,000 viewers in that age bracket, versus $9.57 per 1,000 over the age of 35."

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Microsoft PR zeros in on blogs; some don't disclose gratuities

Nick Denton writes: "we launched Gizmodo in August as an experiment in commercial blogging. Within three weeks, Microsoft had Gizmodo down on their list of online influencers, pinged Pete, and invited him over to Redmond. Whatever your thoughts on Microsoft's software, the company's marketing machine is extremely impressive. Of course, Pete now feels he has to be a little rude about Microsoft, just to show he can't be bought." Mitch Ratcliffe notes Gizmodo's disclosure that travel expenses were covered by Microsoft and kvetches that another four bloggers invited to the event made no such disclosure.

Yes, it's healthy for bloggers to disclosing their biases. As I've argued before, well-marked advertising serves to unambiguously articulate the relationship between the writer and the sponsor. Yep, that's what we're trying to do with Blogads. "Establishing a clear space and format for advertising will clarify what is flogging and what is blogging."

This can work to all everyone's advantage: readers get full disclosure, the blogger gets a clean consciousness and some cash, the advertiser gets face-time with readers and some loyalty-ruboff.

To provide some context: although few people realize it, plenty of journalism is fueled by gratuities and complimentary relationships with advertisers. Often this means that good news gets highlighted and bad news gets ignored. The practice is rarely reported: newspapers don't like to wash each other's dirty laundry in public and reporters like to keep their jobs. Here's one instance, as recorded in The New York Times. Dean Singleton, who runs 46 daily newspapers and 81 nondaily newspapers in the US, once "upheld the firing of a reporter who had failed to file a news story consisting of an advertiser's news release verbatim, and instead added accurate details that wound up making the advertiser look bad."

In Europe, many newspapers and magazines publish articles as a quid pro quo for advertisements. As editor of the Budapest Business Journal, I once spent six months in Hungarian court after we documented the willingness of a half-dozen leading local publications to publish articles for cash. It turns out no one was bothered by our accusations; the practice was common knowledge among professionals, and the cynical public assumed the press was rotten anyway. We heard later that what landed us in court wasn't our report; it was that we failed to catch one of the biggest offenders and therefore appeared to be participating in some obscure political vendetta.

(Update: Nick Denton offers additional color in this new post.)

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Scuppering the commish skimmers

Olivier Travers, editor of Scifan, is tired of losing affiliate commissions to skimmers. "This weekend I'm going to experiment with, and most probably implement, those scripts that lock out infected users. I'm not going to sit there idly when thieves rob us out of our commissions while Sophie and I bust our asses building the best database about SF/F books out there."

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NYTimes.com marketing notes

Here are outtakes from my Wednesday interview with Craig Calder, NYTimes.com marketing VP.

Calder offered up the new data and a generous dollop of context. As someone who has spent six years badgering newspaper folk to embrace the web, I enjoyed his story.

As I noted yesterday, the site generated 85,000 new home delivery starts in 2001, up from 25,000 in 2000. Through September 30 this year, they’ve generated another 58,000. (My calculator annualizes that to 77,000.)

“We were their most cost-effective and efficient means of acquiring subscribers,” said Calder. Since online subscriptions are charged to a credit cards, people aren’t canceling, he notes.

“We work very closely with the circulation department,” he said. “Even if you are not ready to subscribe today, when you do get to that point, you have a great affinity for the brand and product.”

I asked Calder to rate the relative importance of different strategies within the total marketing effort. He said NYTimes.com's e-mail newsletters accounts for 30% of marketing return, headline distribution deals are 40%, keyword targeting with Overture and Google is 10%, and search engine optimization is 10%. The last 10% is miscellaneous experiments.

E-mail newsletters The site now sends out 3.5 million “Today's Headlines” e-mails, up from 1 million in January 2001. Niche newsletters range from 85,000 for “In Advertising” to 290,000 for "Book Digest." Eight of 12 newsletters have 150,000+ subscribers.

NYTimes.com launched the “Sophisticated Shopper,” a compendium of “special offers” this summer and already has 101,000 users. These users were acquired through in-house promotions like banners and notes to the 2 million people who accept e-mail updates from the site. All NYTimes.com e-mail technology is managed in-house, he said.

Headline distribution The site recently negotiated a deal to run headlines on AOL for free. In addition, NYTimes.com pays Altavista, Yahoo, MSN and Netzero between 1 and 3 cents per click for visitors referred by headlines posted on those sites.

Nothing conveys the brand more succinctly than a headline, he said. “This is much more effective than two years ago when we were paying 25 cents a click for banners,” Calder said.

Search engines NYTimes.com has devoted attention to its appearance in search engines, but the site’s performance is constrained by registration and padlocked archives. Calder did not have figures on the initial impact of News.Google.

After achieving operating profit for each quarter since Q2 2001, NYTimes Digital is on track to achieve an operating profit for the year in 2002. Combined with the staff of Boston.com, NYTimes Digital has 220 staff, with 15 of those involved in marketing. Calder said the site does not release figures for what it spends on online marketing.

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Love clicks

A new study shows that: "High-affinity audiences are more valuable to advertisers. They demonstrate brand loyalty and a willingness to pay more for products they perceive to be of higher quality."

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The joys of recycling

When you next hear a journalist smear webloggers, ezinists and other thin media moguls as news recyclers, recall this article.

The nut: "in the past four months, three major articles and numerous broadcast stories have covered collegiate sex writers, portraying their work as controversial, buzz-worthy and part of a growing campus trend." The college sex columns are moldy news. The buzzing torrent of coverage seems to have been triggered by a June article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The point, however, is not that these news services are doing something bad. It is that they are excelling, and we should study their strategy.

First, recycling a story makes economic sense: it conserves publishing resources.

Second, news is relative. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it ain't news. Conversely, information is "news" as it reaches each new audiences. The end of WWII was still news to Japanese soldier Hiroo Onada when he emerged from the Phillipine jungle in 1974.

Third, publishers can only aim to serve some of the people most of the time. Good editors realize that each story only hits 2-20% of their readership. Even within a tight demographic, passions and interests just aren't that congruent. So a publication is only doing a bad job if a) most of its readers have already heard a story and b) those people are sick of it.

Finally, most of us don't really absorb what we read. For example, how many of your relatives have seen 10 articles about blogs but today still claim never to have encountered the word?

So part of a publisher's duty is to make sure his/her audience members miss nothing they, as a pseudo collective, care about. And this means lots of recycling.

The same goes for the weblogger's responsibility to her audience. In fact, because we blatantly link to sources, webloggers are more credible and useful than institutional peers. (Confession: I'm only guessing that the articles mentioned above did not site The Chronicle of Higher Education or recognize that college sex columns are years old.)

Yes, it may be silly to be the 98th person to blog Daypop's top link. But if your audience cares about the topic, you should do it. And at least you'll know you aren't dumber than thick media.

The article I cite above was blogged first by Jim Romenesko.

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Denton on blogonomics

Although he doesn't use words like "blogonomics" or "thin media," Nick Denton offers a nice distillation of their economic logic and the social forces against them: " one weblog item has about one hundredth the editorial cost of a commissioned article. The content management software is nearly free. The message to traditional publishers is this: you don't need 200-500 people to run your online operations; you could manage with a tenth of that. And that is the one message the online executives, intent on protecting their jobs, don't want to learn." Here's more on thin media.

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NYTimes.com daily users surpass paper's weekday circulation

Daily visits to NYTimes.com hit new highs in September, with an average of 1.28 million unique users visiting the site each day, Craig Calder, New York Times Digital VP for marketing, told me yesterday.

The September tally represents a 10% jump over the previous high of 1.16 million in October 2001. (See graph below.)

The jump in daily users puts the site’s daily readership solidly beyond the newspaper’s 1.2 million weekday circulation. An average of 1.3 million unique daily users is projected for October, Calder said. Summer months are always slow, he said.

I talked to Calder because I had been looking at the site’s published traffic figures, which ran only through August. These suggested that the site had hit a ceiling around 1.1 million unique daily users. This would have correlated with the sideways drift in US Internet user figures.

Figuring I could either blog "the plateau” or do some fact checking, I decided to contact New York Times Digital. If traditional media can interview bloggers, why not vice versa?

NYTDigital spokesperson Christine Mohan put me in touch with Calder, who delivered the numbers. Calder attributed the growth both to increased value delivered to the site's pool of registered users and to the public’s demand for reliable information in stressful times.

Cannibalization is not an issue, says Calder. On the contrary, the site is “critical to newspaper's growth in national markets and younger user groups,” he said.

“As a whole, the newspaper industry is challenged by fact that readers are getting older and aren’t reaching a whole generation brought up on AOL and CNN. We've been extremely successful in offsetting this,” Calder said.

The paper’s typical reader is 45, while the site’s average reader is 35, said Calder. And while 85% of the website’s users come from outside the New York designated marketing area, 44% of the daily’s readers are inside the area.

Since January, NYTDigital has been examining the overlap between site users and the newspaper’s readership and found that only 8% of site users are also print subscribers.

Growth in daily usage of the site comes because NYTimes.com is wringing more visits from its pool of nearly 11 million registered users, said Calder. A year ago, NYTimes.com aspired to attain an 18% retention rate, meaning that 18% of the site’s total registered users visited the site at least once in a given month. Today, retention is 30%, Calder said.

The site generated 85,000 new home delivery starts in 2001, up from 25,000 in 2000. Through September 30 this year, the site generated another 58,000. (My calculator annualizes that to 77,000.)

I’ll type up more notes on this later.

(Note: After I posted, Christine Mohan supplied new information about print reader median age and footprint. I've updated the copy above.)

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Blogless Lileks: wired but clueless

Newspaper columnist James Lileks describes how he felt when the paper's Internet connection broke and he was unable to read blogs:
"I felt cut off from the world. It was as if my window had been bricked up. I needed to know what was going on out there. Keep in mind that I had this feeling in a newspaper, where I had access to every wire service on the planet." Yep, reading the news without blog context is like listening to an old Sony portable radio versus sitting in the midst of an orchestra. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

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And on the third hour...

Declared dead yesterday, Arts & Letters Daily appears to have been resurrected as Philosophy & Literature. Have A&L's editors, Denis Dutton and Tran Huu Dung, simply hung out a new shingle?

If so, the shuffle effectively serves to move traffic from the ALdaily.com URL before the bankrupt owner's assets are liquidated later this month. The layout and content are similar, and the big space at the bottom of the new site says "Don’t worry, readers. This space will be filled with fresh, interesting material in no time. — D & T."

Thin media passes whole through the needle's eye.

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Ebay auction of Nintendo newsletter hits $1025

The "WINTER 1987 volume 1 number 1" issue of the Nintendo Fun Club newsletter sold for $1025 yesterday. (Via BoingBoing.)

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Newspapers plow old ground

Gordon Borrell and Clark G. Gilbert have applied great empirical rigor in examining the way newspapers respond to the Internet. Highlights from their access-restricted report:

"In every instance of disruptive technology studied, the disruption causes a net expansion of the marketplace. So, it seems, will the Internet create net growth of local advertising expenditures." While cable-TV advertising took 11 years to achieve a 2.5% share of total ad spending, the Internet achieved the same share in 4 years.

But, focused on winning yesterday's battles online, newspapers turn their backs on the real growers. "Our estimate for 2002 is that the newspaper industry is missing out on $289 million in ad revenue by not offering targeted advertising and other high-growth revenue categories that are achievable on the Internet today. By 2005, those missing categories could represent as much as $880 million..."

Newspapers are wired to defend current franchises rather than greenfield, and millennial-era Internet-pioneering losses reinforced this reflex. Currently, 72% of the typical newspaper's online revenues come from classifieds, with half this only an upsell from print.

Even in plowing old fields, newspapers often undershoot; in Pressflex's experience serving newspaper websites, an astonishing number of papers fail even to promote print subscriptions online, something that can work remarkably well.

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Tribune Co. COO: Internet fails at local brand-building

Speaking to a group of investment bankers, Dennis FitzSimons, President and Chief Operating Officer of Tribune Company, said, "There is value in Internet advertising, and we’ve invested to get our share. But the reality is this: the hyper-targeted, one-to-one marketing that the Internet can provide is what we originally thought it would be; a great tool for marketers—much like direct mail or telemarketing. It’s a great add-on. But it is no substitute for the brand-building capabilities of local mass media."

FitzSimons also said Tribune Interactive reached profitability in the second quarter (six months ahead of schedule) based on online classified revenues. Print classified advertising represents 21% of the company's total revenue. Finally, LATimes.com registers an average of 7,000 users a day, he said.

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Squ-ad cars

The CSMonitor reports: "Since May, 12 police departments – in locations as diverse as Ozark, Ala., and Caddo Valley, Ariz. – have signed up for the offer:" placing ads on police cars.

A critic says, "We've already tracked the rise of ads into every area of life from urinals to golf holes. I think this will diminish respect for the whole institution of police." (Via Adrants.)

The company's site explains, "If your local Law Enforcement hasn't received Government Funding for Homeland Security or if your tax base is insufficient to provide the Vehicles your Department needs, your Local Government may be a candidate for our program. We have a virtually unlimited amount of capital available for Brand New, Fully Equipped, Local Law Enforcement Vehicles. Our Sponsors will require recognition on the vehicles. The Vehicle Theme can be your choice of very creative or conservative."

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Glut of the easy stuff

Tackling the view that an Internet-powered glut will make words worthless, Nick Denton argues "even if bandwidth and publishing systems are free, talent and marketing critical mass will always be in short supply."

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Shirky: ads will migrate to the Web

Clay Shirky writes: "Weblogs aren't a form of micropublishing that now needs micropayments. By removing both costs and the barriers, weblogs have drained publishing of its financial value, making a coin of the realm unnecessary. One obvious response is to restore print economics by creating artificial scarcity: readers can't read if they don't pay. However, the history of generating user fees through artificial scarcity is grim. Without barriers to entry, you will almost certainly have high-quality competition that costs nothing. This leaves only indirect methods for revenue. Advertising and sponsorships are still around, of course. There is a glut of supply, but this suggests that over time advertising dollars will migrate to the Web as a low-cost alternative to traditional media."

If you write something long enough, people will draw diametrically opposed lessons. Jeff Jarvis reads the same post as "very depressing to the community of bloggers."

My view: the pie for professional writers is going to get lots bigger.

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Noogle gives bloggers a new opportunity?

Doc Searles writes: "I already have a dependency on Google News, without which I wouldn't have found the last three links in the item above."

Me too. Noogle makes writing about the news a completely different and more interesting game.

In months of scouting, I've never found a Drudge with a business focus. Now this page serves me.

You can do the same yourself with agriculture, sex, the NFL. But why not get more specific? There's the Cleveland Browns, mutiple sclerosis, NRA or even the Google itself.

Of course, Google can probably never (in the next five years?) filter out the crud and provide the necessary context. Which leaves a huge amount of room for bloggers to add value.

Noogle may create a wonderful opportunity for bloggers to refine and interpret the spew of news. Energy that went into crawling the web can now be devoted entirely to thinking and writing about the product of that crawling.

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Noogle link = 500 visits in 10 minutes

When Google.News (aka Noogle) pulled an obscure ABCNews.com article on Kashmiri violence onto its front page, the site got 500 referrals in ten minutes, according to Staci Kramer. (The Kashmire article had not made the front of ABCnews.com.)

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Riordan's real shot at glory

Millionaire and aspiring LA publishing mogul Dick Riordan is a "rebel without a blog," quips this article.

Hell, why doesn't Riordan stop putzing around and just pay the LAEXAMINER team $300,000 a year to cover five journo salaries? Three scribes would report, with the other two copyediting and blogging.

Riordan could be battering the LAT next week rather than sometime in 2004. He could turn a profit quicker with far lower risk and, more importantly, have a bigger impact on LA life.

(Looking for further thoughts on the idiocy of funding a newpaper rather than a weblog swat team, Riordan should read this post, and this, and... in fact, he should read this whole blog.)

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ASAP RIP: Goliath fails to eat David's lunch

Forbes shuts ASAP, its 10-year-old print and web magazine about the digital economy. "There is no market for a dedicated new-economy publication," says a spokeswoman.

I guess that depends on how you define the words "market" and "publication." Yes, it may be uneconomical to cover the digital "As Soon As Possible" economy in a quarterly print publication. And if by "market" you mean $500 million a year, yes, that doesn't exist today.

In fact, "dedicated new economy publications" like 80211b, Tom's Hardware Guide, Slashdot and The Register seem to be doing OK. Perhaps the truth about the nimble digital economy is best reported by nimble digital Davids, not lumbering print Goliaths.

Ironically, ASAP's last issue includes an article by blogger Greg Beato quoting the operator of DavidLynch.com, a site which more than covers its expenses of $30-40,000 a month through membership and sponsorship fees. "Eventually, small guys like us are going to prove that you can make money doing this..."

I hope ASAP's eight laid off staffers can find themselves a home where they belong: on the Internet.

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Editorless sites

John Motavalli interviewed by IWantMedia: "For the most part, editors at the big magazines stayed away from [the Internet]. So the major DNA that went into producing the magazine didn't have much to do with the Web product. When I worked at Hachette New Media, I never once saw an editor from any of the magazines set foot on our floor."

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Internet World 'pathetic'

After visiting the Jeff Jarvis writes: Internet World trade show yesterday, "This year's show is only a quarter the size of last year's. It is pathetic. It is a physical embodiment of the word 'nevermind.' The show can't even fill one room. AOL has the biggest booth and it is small; Real and Sprint are there; Microsoft has a small booth just so they can say they have one; Yahoo has a booth smaller than a Silicon Valley cubicle."

Ironically, the show's tagline, "Grow Your Revenue and Operate More Efficiently through Internet Technology" has never been truer than today. It's just that the companies who best benefit from the Internet are too new or small or cheap to pony up for a ticket at the "low price" of $995 and are instead busy learning online.

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Newspapers swapping high-margin business for low

Clark G. Gilbert, protege of disruptive technology guru Clayton Christensen, has been scrutinizing how newpapers operate online. He says, "the most disturbing thing is that newspapers now appear to be focused on replacing their high-margin business of print classifieds with the lower-margin business of online classifieds. If that's all they're doing with their online operations, we'd suggest that they shut them down tomorrow. The more important segment to tap is the area of new growth that the Internet has made possible, populated by new customers altogether."

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Two newspapers down

Surveying the evil swap that killed two newspapers yesterday, Ken Layne writes "I really, truly hate the newspaper business. Too bad I don't have any other skills. Maybe it's time to join the dockworker union and make $150,000 a year for scratching my ass and wrecking U.S./Asia trade."

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Google brakes blogs?

Olivier has dropped from #2 to #7 in Google. He wonders: is Google braking blogs? Tony Pierce, once #1 for Tony, is now #11. I see Dave Winer has the same symptoms. David Weinberger notes that he has plummeted from #6 to #25, supplanted by namesakes like David Bowie, David Lynch, David Gray, David Brin, David Grisman, Harry and David.

Inspired, I just spent a couple of minutes looking for myself among the Henry clan. After 6 pages, I gave up. Note to self: create an app allowing bloggers to track their Google status.

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