Media
Memoriam Page For Dead Magazines
Gawker has a striking and ever growing memoriam page for magazines that died in the US in 2008/2009.
(No, Time magazine is not dead. That is Time Style and Design)
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Why Do Publishers Nuke Themselves Online? (An Opportunity!)
Last night, my frustration about the casual deletion of the IHT archives and links to articles boiled over into an open letter to The New York Times publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.
No word from Mr. Sulzberger or the NY Times yet, but I have been heartened by postings of support from fellow bloggers and even mainstream journalists.
Postings included Boing Boing, Reuters, The Guardian, Dan Gillmor, MyPhillyNetwork, Phiforfools, Same Rowdy Crowd, a Belgian podcast Audioboo, a site called “The NYTpicker” (They only writes about the NY Times) as well as TIME magazine’s Justin Fox. Numerous people Twittered the posting.
P2Pnet created the illustration the left.
Sadly, through these conversations I have learned of similar moves by other major publications. These are the same publications that have repeatedly claimed they fully embrace the web.
The rogues gallery - in addition to my august former employer, The New York Times - now includes:
Fortune
Justin Fox on Fortune switching URL:
I’ve been steamed for years because, when fortune.com became money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/, the Time Warner powers that be saw fit to delete from existence out all web-only content that had previously resided on fortune.com, including the ‘London Calling’ columns I wrote every week in 2000 and 2001.
David Kirkpatrick lost his online-only column:
I had been writing my online-only Fast Forward column since early 2002, and when the switch was made at the beginning of 2006, all the links were broken and there was no effort made to republish the columns at the new combined site. Today the column archive at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fastforward/ does not go back beyond 2006. This happened also to a couple of other Fortune online columnists as well. It was presented as a cost-saving measure. Apparently the labor required to rebuild the pages on the new site was considered unjustified. But it’s often been pointed out to me that if you believe in any version of the Long Tail argument it is shortsighted, even from a cold-blooded financial perspective. Fortune and now the Times are losing the opportunity to present ads on a lot of very specific articles, which might not be often viewed but which almost certainly sometimes would be.
And of course, as you note, it’s rude and journalistically disrespectful.
Conde Nast
When Felix Salmon left Portfolio magazine his identity was stolen:
My name was summarily erased from more than 4,000 blog entries at Portfolio.com, when the site hired Ryan Avent to replace me. Now, everything I wrote has Ryan’s name on it instead of mine. You could call it erasing my career, I suppose. It can be fixed quite easily — if Portfolio.com stays up, which it’s far from obvious that it will — but I’m told there are no staff available to fix it.
TIME
After shutting down AsiaWeek - once Asia’s largest circulation regional news magazine - Alejandro Reyes found all his articles erase. How much would it cost TIME to maintain one server with all of AsiaWeek? Surely the ads would cover the cost.
Time did the very same thing two years ago when it took the Asiaweek archives offline. Today, if anybody wanted to read about the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 in the hope of learning lessons from that period that might be applied to today’s global economic turmoil, he would not be able to access any of Asiaweek’s excellent coverage online. Nobody can now access online any of Asiaweek’s outstanding coverage of Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Whatever you might think about the quality of Asiaweek, it’s a crime against knowledge, scholarship, and the public’s need to know and be informed. This is all very tragic - misguided decisions by New York-centric media bureaucrats whose careers are probably soon to be deleted just as ruthlessly.
Knight-Ridder
Dan Gillmor wrote about when Knight-Ridder homogenized local newspaper websites in 2002:
What K-R did to its papers, to those papers’ readers, to its local journalists, to the Web environment they all once graced, and finally to itself, was a coast-to-coast fuck-you. Gone or buried are all the local papers’ local originalities. They were dispersed, everywhere, in a snowstorm of 404s. Gone are persistent archives. Gone are the paper’s names, sections, and local characters. In their place is the same faceless homogeneity — and no doubt the same cost-cutting, advertising-selling and content-managing rationalizations that Clear Channel gave us when they removed all sense of local origination from commercial radio. (h/t sbw)
Dow Jones (sort of)
Salil Tripathi on how her older stories disappeared behind a firewall when the Far Eastern Economic Review went monthly:
I worked at Far Eastern Economic Review in the late 1990s. The magazine stopped being a weekly around 2004, and was reborn as a monthly a year or so later. I’ve continued to write for it all these years.FEER’s website has some parts that are free to use, and some restricted only to subscribers. When you search for something specific, you are likely to get only articles that have been published since it became a monthly. To access its rich archive of over 60 years of reporting on Asia, you have to go to factiva, Dow Jones’s proprietary service. Unlike NYT, FEER hasn’t erased stories from an earlier incarnation, but accessing those isn’t easy either.
I’ve written for the International Herald Tribune as well, but as I was not a staffer, and wrote only op-eds, and probably wrote only about a dozen pieces in the last few years, I’m not terribly optimistic that I will get to see my IHT pieces anytime soon!
Know of any other examples?
Two concluding thoughts:
1- How sad that major media companies act with such cavalier attitude towards their major asset: Content.
2- If they are so uninterested in this content, anyone want to team up to buy the content and put it online ourselves? (Seems particularly good idea in the case of the AsiaWeek archives). Anyone know whom I should contact at Time about this?
Road photo courtesy blmurch
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Christine Brendle
Christine Brendle is the Managing Director of Dow Jones Consumer Media Group in Asia.
Based in Hong Kong, she has management responsibility for the commercial operations of The Wall Street Journal Asia and the regional web site asia.WSJ.com, the monthly Far Eastern Economic Review, the Chinese-language web site Chinese WSJ.com, and spearheads business development initiatives targeting consumers across Asia, both directly and through partnerships.
Ms. Brendle joined the Journal in February 2006, following a 17-year career with the Hachette Filipacchi publishing group in Asia, the U.S. and Europe.
From 1995 to 2001, Ms. Brendle served as president and chief executive officer of Hachette Filipacchi Asia Pacific, and from 1993 to 1995 served as vice president, Asia Pacific, and managing director, Hong Kong and China.
Ms. Brendle also served in a number of other roles for Hachette Filipacchi: from 1991 to 1993 for Hachette Filipacchi Japan and Time Hachette Japan; from 1988 to 1991 for ELLE Publishing and Hachette Publications Inc. in New York; and from 1984 to 1988 for Hachette Filipacchi Presse S.A. in France.
From 2001 until joining the Journal in 2006, Ms. Brendle had been a media industry consultant and publishing entrepreneur. In 2004, with her partners she launched Daily7 and Daily10, two daily English-language newspapers for children. Since 2000, she also has served as a foreign trade adviser to the French Trade Commission.
Ms. Brendle received an M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business Administration of Columbia University in New York, and a diploma from ESSEC (Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales) in France.
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Future of Media in the New Global Economy
The global economic crisis has added new and unprecendented pressures to the media industry.
Already reeling from the pace of change brought by the Internet, media companies around the world now face further economic pressures.
What will happen and what can media companies do?
I look forward to moderating an event in Hong Kong on this topic that includes quite a few media heavy-hitters.
Organized by the Society of Publishers in Asia, the event starts with a keynote by Marcel Fenez, head of the global entertainment and media practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Marcel will: “Share his insights and global findings on the impact of the downturn on media: Will digital migration accelerate? How do you manage in this environment? What are the short and long-term strategies for future success?”
I will then moderate a discussion on the future of media with these panelists (Click on their names for more details):
- Thierry Halbroth, senior Creative Director at McCann Worldgroup
- Christine Brendle, MD‐Asia, Dow Jones Consumer Media Group
- Edmund Lee, Partner, Advisory Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Michelle Kristula‐Green, President of Leo Burnett Asia Pacific
What would you like to hear from them? Any good ideas for questions very welcome.
Hope to see you there!
“The Future of Media Outlook in the New Global Economy”
Foreign Correspondents’ Club, 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong
12:00pm – 2:30pm, 1st April 2009 (Wednesday)SOPA Members: HK$375
Members of Supporting Partners: HK$425
Non‐Members: HK$475Book via: mail@sopasia.com or (852) 2572 2100
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Women Journalists: Apply for Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship
The International Women’s Media Foundation is now accepting applications for the 2009 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship, which is open to women journalists who focus on human rights and social justice.
Applications deadline is 15 April 2009.
The fellowship allows one woman journalist to spend the academic year of September 2009 to May 2010 in a tailored program in the U.S., with access to Boston-area universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as popular newspapers “The Boston Globe” and “The New York Times”.
The fellowship is named for the 1998 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award winner and “The Boston Globe” correspondent who was killed in Iraq in May 2003.
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Jeff Jarvis
When not updating his buzzmachine blog or writing a media column for The Guardian newspaper, Jeff Jarvis is a professor and director of the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism. In the course of these activities he has lately been thinking a lot about What Would Google Do – so much so that he wrote a book with the same name.
Jarvis is also consulting editor of news startup Daylife and was the Creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly. Before getting passionate about the new media, he was a critic for TV Guide and People.
In order to truly know Jeff, one needs look no further than his comprehensive list of disclosures.
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Jennifer Schenker
Jennifer Schenker recently quit Businessweek to found Informilo, a media website linking big technology companies with startups. The site aims for maximum global reach - Informilo means ‘news bulletin’ in Esperanto and Schenker is pioneering journalism 3.0 with a focus on what she calls the global innovation pipeline.
A journalist for over 25 years, she has covered technology for the Wall Street Journal Europe, Time Magazine and the International Herald Tribune. She was also the international editor of Red Herring , managing a team of journalists in Europe, Israel, China and India.
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Are Tall Skinny Macchiatos Depressing?
The endless coffee choices at Starbucks (or any other coffee shop) can depress consumers, according to a slide presented at SIME by Christophe Cauvy, digital director of McCann for Europe. The diagram is from Swarthmore professor Barry Schwartz.
Increasing choice makes people happy up to a point, then turns negative.
This recalls a conversation I had with Steve Jobs about simplicity vs freedom and the iPod.
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Gordon Crovitz: Dotcoms and Traditional Media
For those looking to sell a dotcom to a major media company, Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, offers tips and thoughts in the below video.
After a long career in newspapers, Gordon has lately been spending a great deal of time in Silicon Valley.
The good news for start-ups is that traditional media companies are waking up to the need for new media and they are willing to look outside for what they need.
One example: Socialmedian.com - a start-up Gordon is advising - is trying to help people follow and find interesting news. This is good for consumers because it helps them find interesting stories and good for media companies because it shows them a new way for people to find good journalism.
For technology companies looking to attract media companies, they should experiment with ways to add value to existing content that add marginal extra cost.
For traditional media companies, investing in Silicon Valley start-ups can be a good way to stay on top of trends while also potentially finding a big winner.
How does Gordon follow news in this zone? Silicon Alley (in which Gordon is an investor) as well as Paidcontent.org, and All things D.
Interesting statistic: Your age is a good indicator as to how of your peers in the US read newspapers. 70 percent of 70 year olds in the US read newspapers; 30 percent of 30 year olds, etc.
Is there a role for English language publishing in Asia? Yes, but in a very different way from a generation ago when there was less freedom of expression throughout the region. Now there will be a more narrow specialist role around common zones of interest.
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CASBAA: Bill Roedy of MTV International
Running notes from on stage interview of Bill Roedy, CEO and Chairman MTV International.
LOCALIZATION
“MTV launched into localized content ‘back before it was cool’”.
“At the time, this was controversial because of opening local offices, transponders and all the expense. Now the local strategy has hooked us into many centers of cool around the world.”
“Our aim it to take elements from all channels and connect them to the rest of the world. There are many common elements about how our audience dresses, dates, eats and their music tastes. That said, there are a lot fewer global music stars now.”
CRISIS
“This is a global recession. I was not here in 1929, but 1980/81, 91 and 2001 we recovered strongly. In our business there are some recession-proof aspects. With cable TV subscriptions can go up because people want to stay home.”
Crisis plans for MTV:
1- Focus on the long term
2- Plan for it to be longer than it is.
3- Communicate with employees constantly
4- Energize your employees (redo the bonus structure)
5- There are competitive opportunities in tough times.
“There is a media ladder of where the pain hits first. It starts with print then radio, local television, broadcast television and then cable, Internet and digital.”
AIDS and CLIMATE CHANGE
“Television is often blamed for a lot of things, but by getting involved in issues TV can be a really good thing.”
Two goals of MTV’s AIDS efforts:
1- Arm audience with knowledge of how to protect themselves.
2- Discrimination: It is about humanity and equality.
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Marcopoto, Millenials and Stunning Complacency
Stunning complacency shown by pay TV industry executives following a great panel by Steve Marcopoto, the Hong Kong-based president of Turner Broadcasting System Asia.
Steve’s panel featured four high school students talking about their media consumption habits and afterwards the audience was polled to find out whether they thought Asia’s pay TV industry was doing enough to attract those young viewers.
The students described how they often actively fight against the industry to watch TV and access media, but 92 percent of those present said they thought the Pay TV industry was doing enough to attract young people. (Note: Discussion below whether the vote in fact went the opposite way. Seeking clarification, but still not yet received it.)
By definition they are Asia’s leading TV executives so this conclusion was incredible given the devastating indictment of media companies delivered by the the high school students (Details below and on video with Steve)
Who are Millenials?
- Largest generation in America 83mn vs 74mn Babyboomers. They are also the largest consumer group in countries like China and India.
- Optimistic
- Globally focussed
- Digital natives who grew up online
- Like to consume media anywhere, on any device at any time.
- They accept ad-supported media as a reasonable cost for quality content.
- Seek many more services from mobile phones. (”Why can’t I order my Starbucks coffee before I get to the shop?”)
- Ready to invest in home entertainment devices.
- In BRIC countries they are among the largest group of consumers and they want more choice.
Funny footnote at the end of the PwC film featured non-millenials. A series of “older” consumers were interviewed and spoke about how they like to read newspapers and watch scheduled TV . Conclusion by PwC: “Older consumers will maintain habits that support traditional media.”
Verbatims from Steve’s four students from Hong Kong International School:
While the PWC survey found 32% of Millenials prefer to watch TV on Internet, all four members of the panel said they preferred watching on the net over a television screen.
TELEVISION
- “I never like to watch TV on the TV because you can’t multitask and chat with friends at the same time.”
- “I follow US TV, like Desperate Housewives, which we can’t get in Hong Kong, so I watch it online.”
- “I watch a lot of TV shows on Tudou and Megavideo, but generally I get there via another site, like Surfthechannel
MOBILE?
- “If I hear about a new TV episode while in cafeteria from a friend, I will go home and watch it on TV instead of look at it on my mobile.”
PIRACY?
- “I like Hulu and would use it, but they don’t let me watch it here in Hong Kong.”
PAY FOR CONTENT?
- “I only buy music from iTunes, not TV programs.”
- “I use iTunes as a secondary source, if people cannot find it online in peer-to-peer for some reason.”
- “I mainly watch TV downloaded from torrents with limewire.”
- “If they sold the series for less than HK$500, I would buy it. You pay for cable on a monthly basis and it is not that expensive, but if you buy individual episodes, it gets very expensive. This is unreasonable.”
NEWS?
- “I browse the titles, but don’t look at the stories.”
- “I follow CNN.com and the big aggreggators. There is too much bias in blogs to trust them. I mainly just stick to the major outlets.”
SOCIAL NETWORKING
- “I only use Hotmail to see if I have messages sent from Facebook.”
- Each have 500 to 700 friends on Facebook.
- “The good thing about reading something sent over Facebook is that your friend recommended it.”
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Asian Media: Cheeriness at CASBAA Amid the Crisis
Anyone eager for a little cheeriness amid the financial maelstrom would have found a relatively high level of optimism at this morning’s panel on media investment at the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia convention.
Moderated by May Lee of Lotus Media House, the panelists fought the perception that Asia and the world are sinking.
Chris Halpin, Director Providence Equity
How does it look out there?
When we look across the landscape now, there is tremendous value. We went from a situation where capital was plentiful to one where it is more valuable. That is good for us.
Where are things looking good in Asian media?
Advertising companies in China. Common wisdom used to be that these companies were all going to the moon, so they became way too expensive. Air Media and Focus Media are now trading below any sense of their fundamental value. Given the macro picture in China, things are looking particularly good. In just 18 months China has gone from a momentum play to a value play. In Southeast Asia, we are very big believers in growth of middle class driving up the value of media. We were more worried about inflation.
Who benefits?
This is a moment in time when it is hard to have a view on value, with markets going up and down by 14 percent in a day. Investment will have to come from funds like Providence Equity or sovereign funds.
Reality check
When you go out in Asia, people are still spending and investing. There are real opportunities when you get out of the panic in money centers like Hong Kong and go to meet real operators. The level of consumer loan leverage in Asia is nothing compared to Europe and the US. There is not a need for consumers in Asia to de-leverage.
Marcel Fenez, global managing partner, Entertainment and Media practice
What is happening out there?
For a long time there was an oversupply of cash, driving up the price of assets. Asset prices our now dropping, which creates new opportunities.
Where are the deals to be done?
There were a lot of hasty deals done in the last few years. Some of those deals might be worth looking at right now. They were based on business plans that don’t work right now and may unravel. Hedge funds are likely looking to close out their positions, so there are bargains out there.
Reality Check
Whatever headline writers like to put on their stories, there is still growth in this region. Headline writers please take note: 10 percent growth is still growth. In most of world, consumers spend 6 percent of their disposable income on media. In Asia, that figure is still only 3 percent, so there is plenty of room to grow.
Jeanette Chan, partner Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison
What is happening?
We still see deals being done and it is a good time for a correction. Deals were getting done so quickly that it is good to have a breather.
Where to look for deals?
Check out who had pre-IPO convertible bonds. The listings likely won’t happen and the capital calls at hedge funds might force people to sell. This is happening in Taiwan where regulations are less stringent. This downturn will also spur governments to relax regulations to increase opportunities. Korea just announced they will allow media cross-ownership. Taiwan is looking to see what ways they can encourage the media sector.
Who else benefits from the present situation?
This is also a good time for media companies themselves to go out and find companies that could provide useful technology.
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Thomas Crampton was a correspondent for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times for more than a decade, reporting from five continents, writing a column on Asia and covering Asian politics, economics and culture. Currently based in Hong Kong, he writes here about China, the Internet and New Media seen from Asia, while also advising companies on digital communication strategies. For more information click here...
