Long live newspapers

            A word what I heard a lot at ISOJ (International Symposium of Online Journalism) 2013 was ‘crisis.’ Of course this meant the crisis of newspapers, and ultimately, Journalism. But at this year, I could not hear the word ‘crisis,’ a lot. Within a year, things have been changed a lot, from the despair towards the hope. Two papers, written by Chyi, Lewis and Zheng (2012) and Tennant (2014) supported the bright future of Journalism. Chyi et al. (2012) mentioned that newspaper over-exaggerated the newspaper crisis, by emphasizing dramatic and negative aspects quite frequently. Tennant (2014) argued that the advertising revenue model for free newspaper companies are still viable.

            Newspaper is an experience good, which “contains attributes that in the main can only be evaluated by the consumer after purchase through experience with good (Hoskins, McFadyen & Finn, 2004). This is definitely true. But newspaper itself has been changed a lot, allowing readers to ‘experience’ more from the contents. When ‘USA Today’ firstly launched, many scholars and even public criticized its traits that contained a lot of images and pictographs, because they thought that such graphics might threat to the quality of Journalism. Even though there have been still debatable issues regarding USA Today, these days, the circumstance of Journalism has been changed a lot. Nobody would not stick to the traditional form of Journalism; we need multimedia and easy-to-understand stuffs. 
           I think such changes originated from the differentiation strategies by newspaper companies. The reason that newspapers (including free ones) are surviving is that they are different from of other mainstream media. For example, free local newspapers only focuses on local issues, which was not usually covered in larger newspaper outlets. They might contain some pictographs to make readers understand easily. Of course, there might be a chance that advertisements are automatically exposed to readers, leading advertisements to be posted on the newspaper continually. If the survival of newspaper resulted from the differentiation strategies, such idea totally makes sense in these days.

Week 3 reflections

After reading the Tennant article, I began to think how we (defined as people with access to the internet and a decent amount of digital literacy) value tangible goods versus things in digital space. Much of the time I am online is spent trying to beat the system: stream brand new songs on someone's YouTube page, finding the cheapest price while shopping on Amazon.com, or while a college student how to download games/music/music for free on torrent sites.

This is no different than how I find and read articles I want online. If I get hit with a paywall, I'll do a Google News search and find the article I wanted to read.

These behaviors however, don't translate offline. I could never just take a newspaper off a newsstand, because I feel like I'm conditioned to think of that as stealing whereas what I am doing online is a completely different thing. I pay for the papers/magazines/gadgets offline because of course money is the barrier to that content.

I've got a heart beat (Week 4)

While reading the article about the "death" of the newspaper industry, I had many of my own assumptions confirmed. Journalism, regardless of the form that it takes, is a service that many people look to on a daily basis. It provides people with exposure to a world beyond their own sphere of influence and allows them to quickly consume information that they would otherwise not have time to cultivate for themselves. For this very reason there will always be a place for it in our society and journalism isn't going anywhere.

However, there a numerous things that obviously contributed to the newspaper "crisis" being believed to be more sever than it really was.  For example, while journalists do report facts, they also rely heavily on emotional responses from sources to frame their stories in order to seek the attention of potential readers. This limited resource that we discussed last week is also why the focus of journalism is most often placed on the people affected and not the actual numbers or state of the business that is being covered. In this way it isn't surprising to find that things become exaggerated and our view is so episodic in nature that it becomes difficult to see over-arching trends.

While journalism is here for the long-term, markets do fluctuate and competition doesn't seem to exist the same way in every industry. As reported in this article there are very few cities (just 20 in the United States) that are serviced by more than one newspaper. With those ups and downs, and our desire to understand the cause of them, it isn't surprising that journalists hesitate to place blame for their situation on themselves. This is a natural human reaction to any type of problem to first look to outside factors. If people do look to themselves first, they are admirably rare. Regardless of the location for blame, journalism isn't dying, it's just having to fight a little harder for the attention of individual people.

Economic opportunities to increase news value through network externalities

The concept of Network externalities caught my attention from this week readings. The idea asserts: “the benefit from consuming increases with the number of other people consuming.”

It seems to be a simple notion. But the instance that I believe is most important to increase the relationship between traditional media and social networks is the following: programs could be “affected by the number of other viewing, as part of the enjoyment results from discussing the common experience.”

There is a great opportunity for social TV and for TV news to use this economic concept to create common experiences for its viewers using social networks.

If the value and benefit of a journalistic product increases by discussing around an issue, opportunities to use social networks for second screening could be endlessness during breaking news or political debates.

so...print newspapers are still alive!

This week’s reading told me that first, the statement that print newspaper is dying is merely a myth (Chyi, Lewis, & Zheng, 2012). Second, The major source of the revenue for newspaper is advertisement on print newspaper, not advertisement on online newspapers. Free newspapers business is still thriving recently (Tennant, 2014). If free newspapers are viable then we can assume that paid newspapers cannot be too bad.

Since advertising revenue is major source for newspaper. That fact tells newspapers owners that “don't charge your readers for contents.”  The study showed that free newspapers have advantage over paid. Besides, “content is king and if the paper is lousy, people will not be engaged, paid or free,”(Tennant,2014). I want to ask, “Are people willing to pay if the content is good?” This study somewhat answered my question. It showed the decision makers don't believe paid or free content make readers more “engaged” in a newspaper. It is what decision makers “believe”. Maybe to survey or interview readers can yield a more precise answer.

As a reader, I think content supposed to be free. Major revenue for newspapers comes from advertising. The amount of content fee is too small to help, then why charge readers for the content? The economic value of content is to attract readers for advertisers. To be more specific, readers are commodity of media (Smythe, 1981). Content is a tool to produce readers.  

The reading raised another interesting question. Newspapers are dying is a myth. How this fallacy affects demand (Chyi, Lewis, & Zheng, 2012)? Will the statement that newspapers are dying influence consumer behavior? If newspapers are still thriving, does it imply that the change of news consumption behavior didn't affect newspapers business? Or the fact is that consumers didn't change their habits reading print newspapers.  

College Newspapers

The Tennant article made me think about campus newspapers like “The Daily Texan” and I have to admit I don’t know exactly how its funding is split up. I assume some of it comes from advertising (based on Dr. Chyi’s anecdote from last week TDT ads are not cheap) and some probably comes from university subsidies / student fees. It does not hurt that it is run by unpaid volunteers. Could newspapers like this be the best poised to weather the storm toppling over bigger news publications?

Well, as it turns out (and it may be no surprise all of you journalism Ph.D.s) the answer is not necessarily. The NCSU student newspaper the Technician is reducing its circulation because of dropping ad sales, some of which are migrating online, to social media. Moreover, and more interestingly, in anticipation of the problems facing the journalism industry as well as the additional responsibilities of journalists (such as consistent social media presence), students appear to be less invested in putting in the hours at campus publications.

A recent Universityof Georgia study found that journalism majors may be declining and some schools are trying to re-brand their journalism departments, like University of North Carolina. This reminds me of the fact that recently my own “Radio-Television-Film” department polled us graduate students about a new department name, perhaps in recognition of the fact that not a single one of us is studying radio. As the Chyi, Lewis & Zheng (2012) paper points out, not just the newspaper industry is facing economic woes. Similarly alarming stories have resurfaced about the future of the film industry. Digital certainly poses problems for content industries, but also reduces the barriers to entry (and in so doing, increases competition). Either way, it will be interesting to see whether the Daily Texan continues its print edition, although it seems like a relatively stable institution.

Buying Breaking News

David Carr has written a great piece in the NYTimes today about how TMZ has emerged as a news breaking factor in the news ecosystem. I think the most interesting point in the piece is that while ESPN needs the NFL for what he calls relevancy and profit, outfits like TMZ operate on their own set of rules. They pay a lot of money for content and don't have to worry about ruining relationships with sources/partners.

I also recommend checking out Jeff John Robert's piece in Gigaom about public interest litigation in a digital environment. He talks about how newspapers were at the forefront of access-to-information and public interest litigation in the last century but are limited to do this with small legal budgets these days. He also explains how tech giants such as Google and Twitter have emerged and replaced newspapers as the direct source for news. These companies also have vast amounts of data that a traditional newspaper would legally try to unseal. Roberts explains that this creates a whole new set of legal fights for tech giants in the digital era.

Clark Gilbert, Utah papers, and the circulation game

We were just talking about how circulation numbers are a mess yesterday. Here is a real story FYI:

http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/reading-between-the-lines/Content?oid=2519741

Two market experiences

Readings about the information surplus and the competition for audience’s attention on the Web bring me some memories from media companies:

1.

 When I was working for Univision as an online editor –basically ensuring synergy between the online platforms and local television networks—one of the most difficult tasks was to convince TV news reporters and news directors to use their website to promote their own content.

 “By promoting on-air any other product different to television news we could take away our TV viewers’ attention,” they said,  "so even our own website would become an open competition/distraction that might lead to a reduction of our audience.”

I was amazed by that logic and always wondered whether it was possible to understand the web not as a substitute but as a complement of traditional media.

If traditional TV news decided not to be on the Web, could that lack of presence facilitate competitors to take over potential markets and cannibalize the same audience they ignore from the bottom?

Some trending users’ activities such as second screening could open the way towards that direction. The relationship between social networks and television would provide new ways to engage audiences during braking news, political debates and live coverage.

2.

Terra Networks, an online branch of the Spanish company Telefonica, launched its online video product Terra TV on February 2006. I was selected as the director of the project for Colombia and Venezuela. The headquarters of the operation were located in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The idea was to implement little teams of producers in each Latin American country and provide generic content to feed the local websites from Brazil. Terra bought Grey's Anatomy, Lost, iCarly’s old seasons, among other TV shows. All episodes were in HD.

The massive audience of these TV programs and people who didn’t have access to cable in Latin America were expected to visit Terra TV to consume those old episodes of famous series. They never did.

As a reaction to that costly failure, we started to produce short local videos (1’:30”) with our small team in Colombia (culture, news and sports). Soon we reached more audience than those foreign shows. As Hoskins, McFadyen and Finn have stated, the demand is greater for TV domestic products than for foreign programs. Therefore, the dream of Terra Tv to maintain a low profile local operation in Latin America and substitute local content with foreign high quality episodes published from Brazil did not come true.

Experience the information!

Today, Apple just held a showcase to promote I-Phone 6 and wearable devices. This is meaningful for the ‘information surplus’ because the development of technology let the supply curve move into the right in a drastic manner. What I feel significant about Apple products is that they not only lead consumers to pay attention to information, but also lead them to ‘experience’ the information vividly in their lives. Cutting-edge technologies can widen the information surplus because their roles as transmitting information is becoming faster and easier for consumers. At first, consumers might feel fascinating about the convenience provided by technologies, which allow them to pay attention to more stuff in comparison with the past. Later, consumers will be absorbed into the massive information that is directly related to their own lives. For example, individuals can check their health status easily, by using I-Phone 6 (Of course, they might pay attention to such health service before ‘the assimilation.’)

Some services on smartphone applications are free, which were not free in the past. Now, consumers might take it for granted that information should be free. I totally agree with the idea that individual’s attention is limited. But, due to the development of technology, the chance to be exposed to information for individuals is growing exponentially. Apple or Samsung products are successfully for consumers to pay more attention to the information. We are facing the world where mere attention to the information would not be enough; we are experiencing the information and bring such experiences into real lives. As a platform, communication technologies are accelerating the information surplus gap.

            Information itself can allow consumers to not only pay attention to, but also experience that. ‘Snowfall,’ created by New York Times at 2012 is a perfect example to ‘experience the information.’ Snowfall is an interactive news service and quite different from traditional news content. Audiences can understand and even experience what happened at Tunnel Creek. After consuming interactive news contents like Snowfall, audiences might feel banal toward existing news services. Sometimes, they might feel dismissed after paying attention to the news content, which would not lead them to experience that service.
           In the information surplus area, consumers might not so much different from the past. But the supply determinants are drastically evolving. Information surplus will continue and even increase and technology is playing prominent role in moving the supply curve into far right.