I work in the fifth-worst career, part 3 - advertising revenue

Last week, I blogged about the fact that a certain careers website said that journalism was the first worst job/career field right now, noting that, from the inside, that was no surprise.

Well, I'm probably going to do a few follow-up posts, looking at more specific issues.


Today, I throw out more specific ideas about advertising and circulation/paywall issues.

First, although paywalls aren't the answer, they're part of the answer. Period.

Newspapers are reporting more of their ad dollars are coming from the web, but that's because hardcopy ad dollars continue to sink, even as the country partway comes out of the recession. Newspapers need to get honest with themselves and permanently write off half of their hardcopy losses since 2007. And, that may be conservative.


Until newspapers do this, and accept this, they're not going to be able to better address the future, not just at individual newspaper levels, but at corporate levels.


As for the current disparity between traditional web ad rates and mobile-specific ad rates, reportedly as high as 5-1? Within in a decade, that difference will be no greater than 2-1, driven primarily by greater use of mobile devices, greater competition for eyeballs, etc.

Remember how much higher traditional web ad rates were a decade ago? The same things drove them down as will drive down mobile rates. More mobile-specific content, portals, and sites increases openings for ads and competition for eyeballs gets more scattered. Ergo, rates go down.


So, looking ahead to the future, newspapers need to be honest about that, too.


The Net, in its various delivery forms, has just the opposite problem as old newspaper media. You got plenty of room for editorial content, of course, but, because of ephemeral attention in many cases, there's limited "space" for ads. Plus, add in ad-block software, etc., and web rates plummeted.

I have no doubt that for both Android and iOS for Apple, somebody will invent the equivalent of ad-block programs, too. It's going to happen. Somehow. Jailbreaking of specific apps as well as mobile operationg systems will be involved, in all likelihood. But, it will happen.


The even bigger thing is that corporate chains have probably not even fully digested that 25 percent profit margins, along with hardcopy ad riches, are gone for good. I think many of them think that the much lower overhead for the Net will alleviate that. But, if Net dollars are dropping, or flat, still, and mobile dollars, while rising, are still smaller potatoes yet, that's not a "replacement." Plus, per part two of this series, as readers often demand fancier content, the overhead differential probably isn't quite so great as these owners imagine or hope.


So, back to those profit margins. Owners, and investors, need to digest that the day of 20 percent margins, even, for even the biggest dailies, are gone. Even with two more years of economic recovery, they need to get comfortable with 15 percent as "good." And, therefore, to stop laying off ever more editorial staff, cutting content, etc., while rewarding the CEOs who do that.


Think of this as the dot-com boom in reverse. The worst of the dot-com financial bust for papers is over. BUT ... not all of it is over. AND ... not all the lessons have been learned.


On circulation? A dollar is as high as even big metros outside the two coasts (and I really mean coastal California, on one hand, and the Boston-DC axis on the other) can go for several years. Ditto for the $3 mark on Sundays. That's your ceiling.


I'm glad to see a major metro like the Dallas Morning News has therefore finally gotten into the paywall spirit. I don't currently live in Dallas, so I wouldn't pay, and I don't know how much it costs. But, it was needed. That's even as, here in central Texas, the Austin American-Statesman, still free online, bleeds even more.


Of course, the AP, and now, Reuters with a largely expanded American presence, and somewhat AFP, have to be in the mix. Not all three can jointly deal with rates for news aggregators without explicit Congressional antitrust waivers, of course. But, individual papers can only do so much.


Of course, AP's long-term chairman of the board, Dean Singleton, was as stupid about this issue with AP as he ultimately was with the finances of MediaNews, running it into bankruptcy.


And, why didn't a court impose a five-year hiatus on him buying newspapers after getting out of Chapter 11? That could be a blog post by itself.

I work at the fifth-worst career, part 2 - advertorial

Last week, I blogged about the fact that a certain careers website said that journalism was the first worst job/career field right now, noting that, from the inside, that was no surprise.


Well, I'm probably going to do a few follow-up posts, looking at more specific issues.


Today, I tackle where the editorial and advertising rubber overlap on the same road, the good old "advertorial" content, as well as a couple of other business issues.


Per a recent post on Bloomberg about BuzzFeed, new media may be headed in an even more advertorial direction. This should be of no surprise. A recent story at Editor and Publisher said that many newspapers don't "get" either the traditional web or various new media as being different enough in format from hardcopy to call out for different presentation styles.


Now, a big paper like the New York Times has staff to create graphics slideshows and more. A community daily, a six-day or five-day, doesn't, really. A nondaily certainly doesn't. But, if readers who are reading the nearest metro seven-day of any size see those, won't they start expecting them from smaller papers, too?


So, per BuzzFeed, if smaller dailies want that type of stuff, it probably will be an easy opening for online advertorial content. For nondailies, it will probably be an issue of web news getting no more than an Onion-esque first-graf look. Or else.


And, it's not just smaller dailies. I've already seen online advertorial content at the Austin American-Statesman. In fact, it may be easier to disguise the advertorial nature of online content until after someone has clicked the link.


For nondailies, more advertorial content is probably going to come via the newspaper oriented web content companies that host, and provide support for, most nondailies that aren't part of big corporate chains. Expect more advertorial video first. Slideshows second. Text "news" third.


Meanwhile, advertorial's always existed in hardcopy newspapers, and usually more so at community ones, and above all in smaller communities that still had the fortune, or the misfortune (due to it straining both papers even thinner) of competing newspapers.


Even when not part of explicit "buy a story, get an ad" special sections, I've seen it. At my current newspaper, we got a fax last week from the area's top renter and property manager. An official from said company asked if we were aware that current highway construction projects plus the pending work on a new power plant were likely to make renting a better option than ever for homeowners who can't sell their homes right now? Said official then said his company would like to advertise in the same issue of our semiweekly that we ran a story about this.


It's fucking disgusting, to be honest. The story line actually isn't a bad one, though the highway projects don't have that many new people in town, and we'll see on the power plant. But, that we the newspaper will be that blatant (and not the first time) ...


So, journalists? Let's be honest and stop calling PR "the dark side." You're going to get expected to do more and more of it.


Part 3 ... advertising and circulation revenues ... is ahead.

I work at the fifth-worst career

In case you've not heard about it, newspaper journalism was listed by some career site earlier this week as the fifth-worst career in the U.S.

Throw out my best newspaper job, at a group of suburban Dallas weeklies before they went belly-up (which of course ties to why newspapers are getting ever worse) and I easily believe it.

Last two papers?

A national chain that believes Facebooking everything is the "answer" for driving both website and mobile app advertising sales, even though the website is still free and, IMO, the disparity between mobile-based ads and traditional online ads will not be a long-term deal.

And currently, a paper with "old-school" newspaper vets, Type A male yellers, the senior of whom, I think, believes this Texas Hill Country town can be a new Fredericksburg, when it won't. Sorry. Ain't. Gonna. Happen.

And, it works on the "margins" as far as staffing size, even for today's newspaper world, to boot.

That's even as the national chains continue to engage in forced furloughs, job cuts, or both, at the reporter/editor level at local newspapers, while simultaneously paying out bigger bonuses to top brass precisely for making those cuts.

And that's the dirty secret of why top brass of most national chains have no interest in a nonprofit newspaper incorporation bill, should one ever get real consideration by Congress. They'd rather skim now, and "apres moi, le deluge," than engage in responsible management. Local operations, meanwhile, continue to dream of "new angles" while stretching themselves ever thinner between hardcopy, traditional web, and mobile content delivery, while barely having the staff to do justice to hardcopy coverage.

Sure, lots of college students still study journalism. They may believe the myths of liberal media. They may be clueless about the business-side issues. They may be in love with online journalism while remaining clueless to the fact that about nobody's figured out how to monetize it yet.

And, while they're still taking journalism classes to be a new exploitable crop, and others, formerly in the traditional biz, now work at various demand mills, the fifth-worst ain't going to get much better. It's that simple.

Kids in J-schools should be required to take a class in newspaper business management first. Second, they ought to be disabused of much of their belief in the "liberal media," if they hold it for good, unlike Faux News types.

As for the current disparity between traditional web ad rates and mobile-specific ad rates, reportedly as high as 5-1? Within in a decade, that difference will be no greater than 2-1, driven primarily by greater use of mobile devices, greater competition for eyeballs, etc.

Remember how much higher traditional web ad rates were a decade ago? The same things drove them down as will drive down mobile rates.

The Net, in its various delivery forms, has just the opposite problem as old newspaper media. You got plenty of room for editorial content, of course, but, because of ephemeral attention in many cases, there's limited "space" for ads. Plus, add in ad-block software, etc., and web rates plummeted.

I have no doubt that for both Android and iOS for Apple, somebody will invent the equivalent of ad-block programs, too. It's going to happen.

Oh, and as for the current locale, that's not just my opinion.

A cover story about your "app"?

Yeps, that's the newspaper I work at now. Last fall, the cover story for their weekend entertainment section was about their new smartphone app.

Now, I've seen papers bigger than this tout their new apps. But, they did so as straight news, and in 300 words, not 1,200.

But, the entertainment section here is supposed to be so artistic.

Geez.

Just shoot me.

Between this "entertaining" cover story, a quarter-page house "app" ad every week and more, let me say that this, no more than Facebooking everything by everyone in an office, is any "solution" for struggles.