As everybody who tracks the news biz knows, more and more digital advertisers are insisting their ads not be placed next to coronavirus stories. Now, on a national digital-only product like Vox, that's understandable.
But the digital (or even print, if such insistence is there, too) versions of regional and local daily papers? At least in certain cases, I think it's stupid, especially if there's no A/B testing to see if such placement is a bust, a n othingburger, or maybe even a boon.
Boon?
Maybe it could be.
Let's say you're a restaurant in an area or a state on mandatory restrictions on dine-in eating. Maybe, like daily specials for dine-in eating, you'd like to offer daily take-out specials, and advertise them. OR, make an offer to donate 1 percent of each meal purchase price to the local food bank.
Maybe it could be a boon.
News Media Alliance (former Newspaper Association of America) prez David Chavern decries the practice. Of course, this is the same guy who said four years ago that adblocking was a threat to democracy.
Yes, I remember Demosthenes telling Athens that if Alexander came, he was bringing adblockers with him.
The between-the-lines gist of the piece is that Chavern hates paywalls.
Friday, April 03, 2020
Thursday, April 02, 2020
Will the Tampa Bay Times survive COVID?
In the form it had before this week, the answer increasingly appears to be "no."
Tuesday, the paper announced it was cutting to just two days a week in print version, so dire was its dropoff in advertising.
At the same time, it announced one puzzler and one grasping at straws that I've called out before.
The puzzler? It's going to produce a non-printed print edition every day. In other words, the copy desks will be building a regular old newspaper, it just won't be printed. The only reason to justify this is that the Times may have multiple online subscription models and that one of them is based specifically on a PDF-ed e-edition.
It announced it was placing some people on furlough and reducing work hours for others. Why wouldn't you do even more of this with the copy desk, as painful as it would be to them?
The grasping at straws? It's going to put a weekly puzzle book in the Sunday edition.
Nope, nope, nope. Won't help you. At least, unlike the Dallas Snooze, the once-known-as St. Petersburg Times is doing it on a weekly basis, not monthly.
As for the post-COVID world?
My guess is that it will never get back to a full seven-day print version. One option would be going down the road of Advance's papers, and selling only those Wednesday and Sunday papers in stores, while making both like the old "bulldog" weekender editions. Print subscribers would still get the full seven days, but stores just those two.
Another option, of course, is canning the Monday edition for everybody in print. That said, sports fans might miss weekend wrap-ups. Alternative? Can Tuesday. Or Tuesday and Thursday, even.
That said? Since the puzzle books won't save you, you — and other regional seven-days — as you get the increased online subscriptions, will have to at some point raise subscription rates if you never go back to your previous print schedule.
As for this particular paper? Can it and the Tampa Tribune survive as two papers in the Florida Bay Area much longer???
Related question: How symptomatic is this of other regional seven-days? If we consider the whole Florida Bay to be one media market, Fort Wayne and Salt Lake City still have dueling print papers. I'm excluding NYC and LA. Is Dallas-Fort Worth one market? Could the likelihood of something getting at least closer to a JOA betwen the Snooze and StartleGram be closer?
Tuesday, the paper announced it was cutting to just two days a week in print version, so dire was its dropoff in advertising.
At the same time, it announced one puzzler and one grasping at straws that I've called out before.
The puzzler? It's going to produce a non-printed print edition every day. In other words, the copy desks will be building a regular old newspaper, it just won't be printed. The only reason to justify this is that the Times may have multiple online subscription models and that one of them is based specifically on a PDF-ed e-edition.
It announced it was placing some people on furlough and reducing work hours for others. Why wouldn't you do even more of this with the copy desk, as painful as it would be to them?
The grasping at straws? It's going to put a weekly puzzle book in the Sunday edition.
Nope, nope, nope. Won't help you. At least, unlike the Dallas Snooze, the once-known-as St. Petersburg Times is doing it on a weekly basis, not monthly.
As for the post-COVID world?
My guess is that it will never get back to a full seven-day print version. One option would be going down the road of Advance's papers, and selling only those Wednesday and Sunday papers in stores, while making both like the old "bulldog" weekender editions. Print subscribers would still get the full seven days, but stores just those two.
Another option, of course, is canning the Monday edition for everybody in print. That said, sports fans might miss weekend wrap-ups. Alternative? Can Tuesday. Or Tuesday and Thursday, even.
That said? Since the puzzle books won't save you, you — and other regional seven-days — as you get the increased online subscriptions, will have to at some point raise subscription rates if you never go back to your previous print schedule.
As for this particular paper? Can it and the Tampa Tribune survive as two papers in the Florida Bay Area much longer???
Related question: How symptomatic is this of other regional seven-days? If we consider the whole Florida Bay to be one media market, Fort Wayne and Salt Lake City still have dueling print papers. I'm excluding NYC and LA. Is Dallas-Fort Worth one market? Could the likelihood of something getting at least closer to a JOA betwen the Snooze and StartleGram be closer?
Thursday, March 19, 2020
A programmatic advertising fail? Some other fail?
OK, imagine that you're a state district judge running for re-election in Texas. You're being primaried, and elements in your own party recruited the opponent. (The particular judgeship is for the full county, and at the same time is the only district judgeship in the county, to finish the scenario.)
You're doing ad buys in the local papers and on websites for local radio as well. Maybe a few voice ads as well.
No teevee in the county, but two small-regional commercial broadcast stations are in the next county over.
Why do you have ads on the website for at least one TV station that is in the next market to the WEST, nearly 100 miles away?
This isn't hypothetical, it's real and happened in North Texas. If this was a purely programmatic buy, then some programming needs to be fixed, unless the ad cost was dirt cheap even for Internet buys. Nobody in the Texoma area watches Wichita Falls teevee, or, presumably, regularly visits the websits of stations there. (I stumbled on it while looking for something else.)
If it wasn't a purely programmatic buy, it's an even bigger head-scratcher.
You're doing ad buys in the local papers and on websites for local radio as well. Maybe a few voice ads as well.
No teevee in the county, but two small-regional commercial broadcast stations are in the next county over.
Why do you have ads on the website for at least one TV station that is in the next market to the WEST, nearly 100 miles away?
This isn't hypothetical, it's real and happened in North Texas. If this was a purely programmatic buy, then some programming needs to be fixed, unless the ad cost was dirt cheap even for Internet buys. Nobody in the Texoma area watches Wichita Falls teevee, or, presumably, regularly visits the websits of stations there. (I stumbled on it while looking for something else.)
If it wasn't a purely programmatic buy, it's an even bigger head-scratcher.
Monday, March 16, 2020
Will coronavirus help or hurt newspapers?
Many newspapers are banking on it helping them, especially on the readership side, but Jon Allsop of CJR says there are problems lurking, primarily on the ads side.
I'm going to start with him and go further.
Paper dollars have long since become digital dimes, and per my extension of that, digital dimes have become mobile nickels. Per Allsop, Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab says the virus — businesses shuttering, or limiting hours, or in food and entertainment, limiting patrons, as parts of the problem — could further undercut advertising in general.
But for Benton, and as referenced by Allsop, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
What if there is a recession? And, I'm assuming that's fairly likely.
Remember, more and more medium and larger chains are owned by hedge funds. New Gannett / Craphouse. Dead Fucking Media / Digital First. Possibly McClatchy in the near future. Possibly Tribune and/or Lee. McC, Tribune and Lee all have Alden holding significant minority stakes. Then there's the walking zombie called CNHI, in its own category. And Advance, which essentially has already committed to a print-drawdown strategy toward eventual digital near-first.
What if the hedge funds, in the face of a recession, do yet more cutting? In a sense, from inside the industry, that's hard to picture. In another sense, it's not hard to picture at all. That's issue NO. 1.
And, that's even though such cuts aren't necessary.
Take Dead Fucking Media. Per The Intercept, it had a 17 percent profit in its fiscal 2017. Some papers were as high as 30 percent. That's good for pre-Internet days!
Now, some ad-side specifics.
Online, Benton says many advertisers (perhaps except those already selling out of certain products and they don't need ads) don't want placement next to coronavirus stories. That's more a big newspapers than small newspapers issue, but still.
The wipeout in sporting events. (Not that sports advertising has ever been much of a draw on the print side, but still.)
Next, the circ side.
Benton notes that your community daily is still often hand-delivered. It's hugely unlikely that COVID passes with a thrown newspaper. BUT? What if the mainly older subscribers start panicking?
On the digital side, it's wonderful that many media outlets have dropped paywalls.
But, 19 years ago, in a newspaper world that was still mainly print, did we get free newspapers for a week after 9//11?
Allsop doesn't discuss this part.
But I think it's likely that bigger newspaper companies seeing this as a way to permanently hook a whole bunch of new readers are barking up the wrong tree.
I'll venture no more than 10 percent of this new readership hangs on after the paywalls go back up. Since parents can get school district info on Facebook pages or Twitter, and ditto for others, I wonder how much new readership happens anyway, since AP and Reuters can be found without paywalls as is.
I'm going to start with him and go further.
Paper dollars have long since become digital dimes, and per my extension of that, digital dimes have become mobile nickels. Per Allsop, Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab says the virus — businesses shuttering, or limiting hours, or in food and entertainment, limiting patrons, as parts of the problem — could further undercut advertising in general.
But for Benton, and as referenced by Allsop, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
What if there is a recession? And, I'm assuming that's fairly likely.
Remember, more and more medium and larger chains are owned by hedge funds. New Gannett / Craphouse. Dead Fucking Media / Digital First. Possibly McClatchy in the near future. Possibly Tribune and/or Lee. McC, Tribune and Lee all have Alden holding significant minority stakes. Then there's the walking zombie called CNHI, in its own category. And Advance, which essentially has already committed to a print-drawdown strategy toward eventual digital near-first.
What if the hedge funds, in the face of a recession, do yet more cutting? In a sense, from inside the industry, that's hard to picture. In another sense, it's not hard to picture at all. That's issue NO. 1.
And, that's even though such cuts aren't necessary.
Take Dead Fucking Media. Per The Intercept, it had a 17 percent profit in its fiscal 2017. Some papers were as high as 30 percent. That's good for pre-Internet days!
Now, some ad-side specifics.
Online, Benton says many advertisers (perhaps except those already selling out of certain products and they don't need ads) don't want placement next to coronavirus stories. That's more a big newspapers than small newspapers issue, but still.
The wipeout in sporting events. (Not that sports advertising has ever been much of a draw on the print side, but still.)
Next, the circ side.
Benton notes that your community daily is still often hand-delivered. It's hugely unlikely that COVID passes with a thrown newspaper. BUT? What if the mainly older subscribers start panicking?
On the digital side, it's wonderful that many media outlets have dropped paywalls.
But, 19 years ago, in a newspaper world that was still mainly print, did we get free newspapers for a week after 9//11?
Allsop doesn't discuss this part.
But I think it's likely that bigger newspaper companies seeing this as a way to permanently hook a whole bunch of new readers are barking up the wrong tree.
I'll venture no more than 10 percent of this new readership hangs on after the paywalls go back up. Since parents can get school district info on Facebook pages or Twitter, and ditto for others, I wonder how much new readership happens anyway, since AP and Reuters can be found without paywalls as is.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
Could we see a Lee-Tribune merger this summer?
It would make a fair amount of sense from both the vulture capital world and the clustering world.
The second first.
As I noted in my piece on Lee Enterprises acquiring Warren Buffett's papers, Lee bigly wanted the Omaha World-Herald. Already owning the Lincoln paper and several others in eastern Nebraska, plus several in Iowa, it made huge clustering sense. (That said, a lot of things make clustering sense, but newspaper companies don't always do the legwork to realize the benefits on either the news or the advertising side.)
Now, expand the picture.
Lee's flagship is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It's headquartered in Dubuque, Iowa. It has papers in both southern and northern Illinois. And, of course, Tribune Publishing's flagship is the Chicago Trib. A merger here gives you a big clustering across northern Illinois, Iowa and northeastern Missouri.
And, it makes sense from the vulture capitalist angle, too.
As I also noted in that piece, after Lee bought BH's papers, Alden Global Capital bought 6 percent of Lee. And Joshua Benton at Nieman reports it's deepening its claws in the Trib.
It can't do more there until June 30, per a "non-aggression pact"? But afterward? Or increasing its Lee shares in the meantime?
Late last year, looking at that date, Nieman's Ken Doctor suggested the country's five largest papers chains could become two on or shortly after that date. I tweeted him that the Lee-BH combo is probably No. 6 and that the Alden moves would set up something like this.
Let's then spin this back to clustering.
The Trib owns the Baltimore Sun and the Annapolis papers. Lee got a bunch of Virginia papers with the BH acquisition, the biggest of them being Richmond. You could put those three dailies together for some Beltway commuter tabloid, el cheapo USA Today type regional tourism mags and more.
Now, would a Lee-Trib merger be touted as a move to drive off Alden, or would Alden instead, via third-party investment vehicles, be secretly ramrodding it?
The second first.
As I noted in my piece on Lee Enterprises acquiring Warren Buffett's papers, Lee bigly wanted the Omaha World-Herald. Already owning the Lincoln paper and several others in eastern Nebraska, plus several in Iowa, it made huge clustering sense. (That said, a lot of things make clustering sense, but newspaper companies don't always do the legwork to realize the benefits on either the news or the advertising side.)
Now, expand the picture.
Lee's flagship is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It's headquartered in Dubuque, Iowa. It has papers in both southern and northern Illinois. And, of course, Tribune Publishing's flagship is the Chicago Trib. A merger here gives you a big clustering across northern Illinois, Iowa and northeastern Missouri.
And, it makes sense from the vulture capitalist angle, too.
As I also noted in that piece, after Lee bought BH's papers, Alden Global Capital bought 6 percent of Lee. And Joshua Benton at Nieman reports it's deepening its claws in the Trib.
It can't do more there until June 30, per a "non-aggression pact"? But afterward? Or increasing its Lee shares in the meantime?
Late last year, looking at that date, Nieman's Ken Doctor suggested the country's five largest papers chains could become two on or shortly after that date. I tweeted him that the Lee-BH combo is probably No. 6 and that the Alden moves would set up something like this.
Let's then spin this back to clustering.
The Trib owns the Baltimore Sun and the Annapolis papers. Lee got a bunch of Virginia papers with the BH acquisition, the biggest of them being Richmond. You could put those three dailies together for some Beltway commuter tabloid, el cheapo USA Today type regional tourism mags and more.
Now, would a Lee-Trib merger be touted as a move to drive off Alden, or would Alden instead, via third-party investment vehicles, be secretly ramrodding it?
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
A doozy of an error, or set of errors it turns out, by Merrill Perlman
Or is it by the OED and she's just repeating it?
The howler was on "autocrat," which she says began with Catherine the Great.
Actually it's two doozies, though the etymological one caught me first.
Perlman claims the "-crat" back half comes from Russian. No, really.
Catherine the Great was the first to call herself an “autocrat,” in 1762, in her manifestoes that began: “We Catherine II. by the Grace of God, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias,” the Oxford English Dictionary says. And yes, “auto” is from the Greek for “self, one’s own, by oneself, independently,” though the “crat” comes from Russian.This classics major laughed in his Greek grammar, knowing that κράτος is the Greek word for "state" or "state power," as in the common everyday English word "democrat."
Then, doing a web search for a piece on its etymology, my second suspicion was also confirmed.
No, Merrill, per this, Catherine wasn't the first to use it. She may have been the first to call HERSELF that, but ... that's nitpicky. The word was around before her in various languages.
Actually, this too isn't nitpicky, but just wrong.
The history minor began wondering as well. And yes, Byzantine emperors used the title (in Greek of course) to translate the Latin "imperator." And, per that link, Catherine wasn't even the first Russian to use it! It was Peter the Great!
I saw the piece last Thursday and Tweeted that I expected a public correctly at CJR, not just a Tweet back. Her actual column only appears about every two weeks. A correction need not wait until then.
On Twitter, I got a response about it the next morning:
Quoting the OED etymology on how it came together, and referring to English usage.— Merrill Perlman (@meperl) March 6, 2020
Well, then the OED is wrong! (And I'm not paying $90 a year to check on it.)
In addition, I further know it's wrong about "-crat" as a graduate divinity degree holder. Post-Nicaea Eastern Christianity referred to Christ as "Pantocrator," among other things.
We'll see if any correction is in the offing; I have my doubts, given her response, and no response to my response to that. (I told her the OED was wrong.)
A month later, the piece remains uncorrected.
We'll see if any correction is in the offing; I have my doubts, given her response, and no response to my response to that. (I told her the OED was wrong.)
A month later, the piece remains uncorrected.
Thursday, March 05, 2020
How much is that online paper or mag spying on you?
Read just how much Outside tracks your ass with cookies, analytics, Facebook, etc., if you don't wear lots of online condoms on your browser to protect yourself. And that page notes that, for browsers like Firefox, "do not track" signals are ignored.
I found that link as part of a story on my main blog about an Outside story on the National Park Service and budget cuts. I had looked for ads about concessionaires in and near national parks, and then other non-concessionaire businesses in neighboring towns, when I saw that link.
To summarize?
Seven different analytics links.
Eight tracking tools.
Facebook Connect beyond that for "functionality."
Plus the "we don't currently respond" to do not track signals.
Plus the old tut-tutting of "certain features on our platforms may not work" if you block our cookies.
Know what?
I.Dont.Care. I hope it doesn't, in the sense of making it harder for you to track me.
Beyond that, if your website won't work that well without that much spying, you've got problems anyway.
Beyond that, targeted advertising doesn't work as well as marketing people claim.
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