Blogs Are Untrustworthy

So, we endorse you read this link for totally trustworthy information. No bias, no nothing, just the straight reliable facts:

TNS: We Trust Online News and Newspapers, but Not Blogs – Advertising Age – MediaWorks.

Huh?

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Those all-important “digital influencers” actually get their information from magazines, newspapers, TV and radio.

That’s according to an MS&L survey whose results will be released tomorrow. The study, developed by MS&L’s influencer-marketing unit IM, reveals that some 84% of digital influencers go online to find out more about something only after first reading about it in magazines and newspapers or hearing about it on TV or the radio.

Renee Wilson, deputy managing director of MS&L New York and director of the IM MS&L practice, said the study reveals that traditional media sources are shaping opinions in the rapidly evolving digital-media landscape.

‘Digital Influencers’ Get Info from Magazines, TV First – Advertising Age – News.

Web Video Ads Slowing Too

Just like all advertising, online video ads are slowing down too:

“The most surprising thing to us is how fast the digital marketplace has come to a standstill in the fourth quarter,” said Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal, during the conference.

Online video is still expected to be one of the highlights of the digital-ad market. When it revised its forecasts for U.S. online ad spending earlier this month, research firm eMarketer predicted that online video-ad spending by U.S. advertisers would grow 45% to $850 million in 2009.

By contrast, Bernstein Research forecast last month that total TV advertising would fall 1.9% this year, and another 5% next year, to $65 billion for 2009.

Despite its small footprint, online video has gotten advertisers excited, as they shift dollars to the Web to keep pace with the amount of time consumers spend watching videos there. But the eMarketer forecast is down from earlier projections of 49% growth, and as the recession forces marketers to scrutinize every penny, no area is immune.

Online Video Ads Slow – WSJ.com.

Magazine Ad Sales

Why You’re Losing Your Magazine Job | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD.

The Associated Press: Estonia to vote by mobile phone in 2011

Parliament has approved a law making Estonia the first country to allow voting by mobile phone.

Lawmakers approved a measure Thursday allowing citizens to vote by mobile phone in the next parliamentary elections in 2011.

Estonians were allowed to cast Internet ballots in last year’s parliamentary vote.

The mobile-voting system, which has already been tested, requires that voters obtain free, authorized chips for their phones, said Raul Kaidro, spokesman of the SK Certification Center, which issues personal ID cards in Estonia.

via The Associated Press: Estonia to vote by mobile phone in 2011.

Leno Stays At NBC, Goes On Earlier

Bad news for anyone that was hoping to get Jay Leno off the air in the near future. He’s sticking around, and he’ll be on even earlier.

NBC is expected to announce that it is moving “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno to the 10 p.m. time slot as early as next fall, as the beleaguered broadcast network looks to keep the popular host in the NBC fold.

The new arrangement will solve several potential problems for NBC. First, it keeps Leno at the network after rival networks ABC and Fox over the past few months have aggressively tried to recruit him to bolster their late-night line-ups.

The move will also solve NBC’s problems at 10 p.m., which has been slammed by sagging ratings as new shows fail to connect with viewers and older, well-known shows like “E.R.” end their run.

As part of the deal, Leno will get a new contract, the value of which could not be learned.

JAY LENO MOVING TO 10 P.M. – New York Post.

A Few Ways To Fix Newspapers

Today the Tribune company filed for bankruptcy, The New York Times announced that it would borrow $225 million against its share in its own building to raise much needed cash and Don Graham of The Washington Post said, “The business model that used to work at newspapers does not work any more.” What impeccable timing I have, as today I published my feature for BER Business Times looking at the painful decisions that face the newspaper industry.

I compared the decision of The Christian Science Monitor to go web focused versus the New York Sun’s decision to go out of business. These are going to be choices that many newspapers face in the near future. It will not be simple. The Monitor is propped up by the Christian Science church allowing it time to develop a strategy. The Sun was not so lucky. Newspapers typically only earn 10% of their revenue from their web operations. Switch off the printing presses and they face revenue shortfalls.

I write about the problems with the industry and suggest that many news companies have not taken full advantage of the opportunities their vast resources present. Why am I more inclined to look for a restaurant using Urbanspoon than a local newspaper? Why do I get all my news for free? Why are companies scared to make the big jump from print to online? And will they have a choice in the near future or will the move be made, as suggested by Henry Blodget, “at gun point”?

BER Business Times Against A Deadline:

Sunlight pours into the nearly empty offices of The New York Sun on the second floor of the Cary Building in Lower Manhattan. With one sweeping view, a visitor can take in what was once a bustling newsroom. Now it’s a ghost town. Desks are littered with office memos, newspapers, and abandoned computers of varying vintages, waiting for their occupants to return.

On September 4, Seth Lipsky published a letter on the front page of The New York Sun titled, “The Future of The Sun.” He wrote, we may need “to cease publication at the end of the September unless we succeed in our efforts to find additional backing.” He had launched the newspaper in April of 2002 with a reported $15.9 million in financial backing from a diverse group of investors. At the time he printed his letter, The New York Post reported that his company was burning through a million dollars a month to keep delivering papers to newsstands and doorsteps around New York.

Just 26 days later, on September 30, Lipsky’s warning came true. The newspaper over which he had presided as president and editor, published its final edition, with another front page article by Lipsky. This time it was the transcript of a speech he gave to the Sun’s staff when he announced the paper would stop publishing. The decision, he wrote, was not an “acrimonious” one, rather, “a logical decision following a hard-headed assessment of our chances of meeting our goal of a profitable publication in the near future.” He “very much regretted” that the Sun “would not be able to return the capital invested in the paper.”

The Sun is not a singular case in the newspaper world. A month after it closed its doors, The Christian Science Monitor, a hundred-year-old daily paper, announced that it would stop publishing a daily print edition starting in April 2009. Instead, the Monitor is revamping its web operations, creating a site that is continuously updated. Its editor-in-chief, John Yemma, says this will free the staff to report in a real-time environment, no longer restrained by printing schedules. While the daily publication will cease, it doesn’t mean the Monitor is abandoning print altogether. The company will publish a weekly paper every Friday, but it won’t look like a newspaper. It will be about the size of The New York Times Magazine and will be printed on heavy white paper. This publication will not simply summarize the stories of the week, it will be its own product, with its own editor and exclusive reporting. Stories will not be published on the website first. It will cost $89 for a yearly subscription, a significant decrease over the $210 currently charged for a subscription to the daily paper.

Like the Sun, the Monitor struggles with economic woes. The paper is on track to lose $18.9 million for the fiscal year ending in March 2009, but losing money is a financial predicament that has dogged the paper for its entire existence. Unlike the Sun, The Christian Science Monitor survives such heavy losses because it is supported by an endowment and regular donations from the Christian Science church. “For the Monitor’s second century, we’ve got to make its business sustainable without relying on the subsidy from the church,” says Yemma. “The church shouldn’t have to keep putting money in.” The company now has a five-year plan in place to ramp up its web operations, which management hopes will bring in more web traffic and thus page views, allowing the company to sell more ads and eventually reach profitability. On the Internet, ads are generally sold by cost per thousand impressions, or page views. If a company can crank up its page views, it can generate more revenue.

As the migration of information away from printed products continues, newspaper companies will find themselves at the same fork in the road that confronted the Monitor and the Sun. Many experts, in and out of the traditional news operations, believe it’s time to tear up the old business models and start something new, a proposition made even more urgent by the current economic slowdown. The problem is that most media chiefs are still struggling to figure out what the new thing could be, whether to take the fork — and the risks — taken by the Monitor and try something wholly new or to make incremental adjustments in the old model and risk losing everything, like the Sun. Or maybe salvation lies somewhere in between.

Tribune Company Facing Bankruptcy

The Tribune Company’s debt coupled with the collapsing advertising market for newspapers may force the company into bankruptcy. Dealbook is reporting that the company has hired Lazard and Sidley Austin for legal advice in a potential bankruptcy filing.

Dealbook:  While Tribune must contend with hefty interest payments over the next year, its most pressing problem is a maintenance covenant on some of its debt that limits the company’s borrowings to no more than nine times earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization.

Even if the company continues to make interest payments, failure to maintain that level of debt means technical default — which does not always lead to a bankruptcy filing. Other newspaper publishers have halted making interest payments on their debt, but have yet to file.

Tribune has sought to ameliorate its woes by selling off assets like the Chicago Cubs, the company still faces a looming debt crunch. Tribune hired Lazard several weeks ago to assess its options, these people said. Sidley Austin is a longtime outside adviser to Tribune, and it has a well-respected bankruptcy practice as well.

See Also: Painful $2 Billion Drop In Newspaper Ad Revenue
Magazines Lose A Billion In Ad Sales
Wall Street Journal Managing Editor: Advertisers See Newspapers As A Safe Harbor

The Full Shebang

Anyone interested in seeing what I did all semester for my multimedia reporting class can click over to the work page. Or they can just look below:

• Video: GroundReport, A Profile Of The Citizen Journalism Site
• Video: Former Reporters Discuss The Evolving Landscape As They Now See It
• Video: What Happens To Online Ad Spending In A Downturn?
• Podcast: Who Reads Newspapers Anymore?
• Slideshow: How To Build A Better News Website

I also spoke with David Carr of The New York Times, and venture capitalist, Howard Lindzon.

What Happens To Online Advertising During A Recession?

When an economic contraction comes, the first thing businesses eliminate is advertising spending. Well, we’re in an economic contraction, but we’ve got a new medium for advertising that can produce trackable results: The Internet. So what happens to online ad spending? And why should companies think twice before cutting web spending?

I spoke with Mike Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, Lewis A. Rothkopf, VP Network Development, Brightroll, both are web ad companies. Brightroll does video and Buddy Media does social media applications that are branded. I also talked to a marketing professor at NYU, Jeffrey Green.