From a recent 15-page case study of yours truly, written by Justin A. Walden, a journalism graduate student at Pennsylvania State University:
Jim Hopkins faces a problem that plagues the entire news industry and media firms both large and small: How can he draw in enough revenue to make his online venture financially viable? He is confronting other questions as well. How can a traditionally-trained journalist reinvent himself in today's digital age?
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
18 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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ReplyDeleteHave you given up on the NY Post blog? Nothing posted there for a month. I would think that a blog on Rupert's empire and Fox would work. So why didn't it? Have you thought about doing it for MNI. There was a blog by Howard Weaver that tracked MNI for a while, and I thought he had some balls to run a blog while he was an executive in the company. But he's since gone, and doesn't write much about MNI any more. So why does Gannett Blog work, and others don't?
ReplyDeletep.s. hope the kid gets a good mark for his essay, which I thought well-written.
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ReplyDelete9:08 A blog about Gannett is different than one about News Corp. and one about the New York Times Co. because GCI has some unique features.
ReplyDelete1. It's a company of many, many smaller companies: About 100 mostly small newspapers, plus 23 TV stations, many geographically remote. That means small worksites that are isolated. Employees can't easily meet each other in person to share information. They make a better audience to aggregate online.
2. News Corp. and the New York Times Co. are dominated from a newspaper perspective by two big dailies: The Wall Street Journal and the NYT. Those papers both have workforces highly concentrated in one city, New York. That means employees can more easily swap information.
3. News Corp. also is highly diversified, unlike Gannett. NWS has about 55,000 employees in everything from television news (Fox); movie production (20th Century Fox); online commerce (MySpace); book publishing (HarperCollins), and so on. Those 55K employees don't share enough in common with each other to be easily aggregated under a single blog.
Did you ever think of a broader blog covering the rest of the newspaper industry, a sort of Romenesko but not so reliant on announcements and stories written by others? I have friends at Hearst and McClatchy who are thirsting to find out what their companies are doing, but don't really have a Web source to follow. The advantage you have over Romenesko is that you do some reporting.
ReplyDeleteMy personal opinion is to give up on New York. They have a different view of themselves up there, and sneer at us provincials living in flyover country as being ignorant rubes.
The value of this blog to me is that it gives an insight of management plans, which are never pubicly disclosed. We have public campaigns of defending the First Amendment, and serving the public, etc. while the real agenda is clearly something else. I don't know of any other place where I can get a glimpse of what they really are doing. I think the same can be said of Lee, Scripps and the others.
A broader blog would obviously be a lot more work, and perhaps overwhelming for one person.
The interview with you Jim,that the writer was quoting from? Was that the student interviewing you, or did he used words from another interview you gave to another writer?
ReplyDeleteWhen Jim is on his game, the blog is a great place to find out info and vent some steam. But its obvious that this is of limited interest to a broad audience. Which is why its hard to generate sufficient ads and donations to make it more than an intense hobby. Maybe the Foundation can underwrite it as a charitable enterprise? Surely there's more interest for Gannett employees than, say, donations to pet causes and alma maters.
ReplyDeleteJim:
ReplyDeleteYour analysis of why a blog about Gannett differs from blogs about other media companies is short one important point. No other media company is hated and distrusted by its own employees as much as Gannett is. And this, for better or worse, helps to make this website a happening place. Don't believe me? Check out the "action" on the Lee blog. One visit a month is sufficient there. I believe it's the anger, distrust and dislike that makes the difference.
10:51 is onto something. There has to be some other explanation why this blog works and others don't. Lee has a similar approach to making money as Gannett, but doesn't make any bones about it. Perhaps it is the hypocrisy about Gannett being committed to public service that has Gannett employees up in arms
ReplyDelete10:51 and 11:40 Yes, I've thought about a broader industry blog, too. But there are other sites that cover the newspaper/media industry generally, so there would be additional competition.
ReplyDeleteThe trick with any blog is to find an underserved niche with large-enough audience to aggregate. Gannett was a perfect opportunity. I was surprised then, and am still surprised today, that no one was blogging about GCI back in 2006, when I publishing this sites in September 2007.
In the end, however, I can only devote so much time to a site that produces minimal revenue. In general, blogs don't make money. In the latest Technorati survey, only 20% of blogs have any income. And most of those are sponsored by corporations or kept by professionals who make money other than from donations and advertising -- such as from consulting and speaking fees.
In the future, technology now under development by Google could solve the income problem by making it effortless to pay a few pennies per visit. If I could automatically charge only five cents per visit, with access each time to unlimited pageviews, I could make close to $50K a year. That's a living wage for a single person in many cities.
But that technology isn't here yet. Even The New York Times hasn't solved this problem.
9:07 rmichem The study's author interviewed me.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, it is The Pennsylvania State University.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting case study but maybe the writer should have had the benefit of a copy desk to catch the minor mistakes and eliminate unnecessary words.
ReplyDeleteBut maybe the writer's school has surmised that since quality standards have been dropping for years in corporate America, this kind of writing is OK. I don't blame them if they came to the same conclusion that Gannett and other news media companies did.
I agree with 7:41, but Jim has stated he doesn't have the time to devote to covering other news companies. I certainly don't blame him.
ReplyDeleteI regularly read this blog because I believe it offers me a window into what will or is happening at the company I work for. For the record I work for one of the "other" media companies mentioned.
In the past two year's our company has let go thousands of employees, while management has systematically protected the top jobs both locally and at the corporate level. Most of the jobs eliminated in the newsroom have been, reporting, copy editing, and photography. Very few editors have been let go. Our company has consolidated some of production on a smaller scale. Additionally a few papers are already being printed with presses at sister sites.
Does all this sound familiar? What GCI is doing is not unique in the industry.