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David Carr’s weekly column for The New York Times carries an intriguing title: “The Media Equation.” With 430,000 Twitter followers, he’s a unique journalist exploring the world of media for the larger Times brand, with its 9.5 million followers. It’s similar to the 1,200 individually branded FORBES contributors — and staff reporters, too — who now write about specific business topics under our 96-year-old umbrella brand.
I love the rubric attached to David’s newspaper work. FORBES itself is trying to figure out the media equation in an era when anyone can publish anytime — no trucks, planes or satellites required. Our still-evolving solution disrupts century-old newsroom thinking and processes. It also breaks with tradition in how certain marketing messages are sold and integrated on our growing news platform....
One of the high points of last week's DLD Conference in Munich was the What's Next? panel which explored the future of media in the digital age. Buoyantly chaired by DLD host Yossi Vardi, the panel included longtime media exec Jon Miller, whose illustrious career includes stints as Chairman and CEO of AOL and Chief Digital Officer at News Corp. So, I asked Miller when we sat down at DLD, what indeed is next in digital media? Miller’s response was encouraging for content creators in TV, music, and books. Companies that actually produce digital content, he explained, will become more valuable than companies that are simply channels for distributing content. And it’s television, Miller told me, that will become the key “battleground” in the war to successfully create models for distributing digital content....
Nowhere was the wall between editorial and ad sales as high nor as impenetrable than at mainstream news organizations. Who can forget the maelstrom that erupted in 1999 when one esteemed journalistic enterprise the Los Angeles Times blurred those lines by publishing a 168-page special Sunday magazine issue devoted exclusively to the city’s new sports arena, the Staples Center? It was an ad-brokered deal. The Times's respected media critic at the time David Shaw recounted the ethical breech (and the newsroom turmoil it caused) in a 30,000-word critique titled "Crossing the Line." Many other media pundits echoed Shaw's distaste for this egregious church-meets-state no-no. My how things have changed! In an era when display and classified ad revenue at nearly every paper-driven media organization has fallen off the fiscal cliff, and the CPMs at Web-based media have failed to quickly fill the void, publishers have resorted to new and creative ways to blur the lines between advertising and editorial to enhance "ad" revenue. (Shaw, who passed away in 2005, would likely not be pleased.)... [Peter Himler offers an in-depth look at the crossover between editorial and advertising, trends and impact of social media. ~ Jeff]
Comparing a traditional news story about a recent shooting with a news report from a Reddit user -- who pulled together Twitter messages from the perpetrators and victims -- provides a glimpse of what a real-time, crowdsourced newsroom of the... ...Mark Little of Storyful, which works with mainstream media outlets to do exactly that kind of thing, has written about how journalists need to stop seeing themselves as gatekeepers of information and start to look at journalism as a collaborative effort involving all kinds of different sources. Twitter is clearly one of these sources, as the Toronto shooting shows — and so is Reddit, which has already proven in the past that it can be a crowdsourced fact-checking engine. And those who learn how to make use of all these tools will wind up producing better journalism.... [Very thought-provoking and worth reading - JD]
...However, the smarter operators have realised that they can use social media channels and tools, especially in real-time scenarios, to keep them in their 'consideration mix' (this theory that when a consumer is considering between you and your competitors, they will lean more favourably towards you because of the value you have added elsewhere). Here are 10 examples of traditional media using social media to help encourage consideration elsewhere (and increase general engagement)....
A reporter walks into a marketing agency and a “branded journalist” is born. What once seemed like the set-up to a joke is just a reality of the new media age, explains content marketer Biserka Anderson. ...Flash forward to the present. Content marketing is the buzzword of the year and empowered businesses are pumping out editorial content in a race to spread their messages and reach an increasingly active community of online users. For many traditional newsrooms, meanwhile, digitization appears to have spelled little more than doom and gloom – squeezed advertising margins, dwindling circulations, editorial layoffs....
From Napster to Craigslist, Netflix to mommy blogs, perhaps no industry has been as severely disrupted in the past two decades as media. Content continues to evolve at a rapid pace, changing the way information is compiled, consumed, shared and monetized. At the 2012 SXSW Interactive festival, media mogul Barry Diller offered some words of warning to those unprepared for the sea-change: “Unless you are adapting every day to what is possible, you really will be wiped away.” At the forefront of this shift is the re-emergence of original, quality content and the surge in brands acting as publishers. Add to this changing landscape a redefining of journalism, shaped by social media, and the latest disruption in the broadcast industry, and media analysts see an industry that is both exciting and unsettling....
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You can be the leading "media company" in your industry. Make the choice, and bolster your content marketing efforts with these 7 moves that will give you the advantage over your media competitors.... I’ve been a publisher for 13 years now. Today, I spend my time teaching brands how to become publishers. I love publishing and have a number of close friends who now run mini-publishing empires in industries that range from mechanical systems to design engineering to convenience stores. In this post, I’m going to share with you secrets that my publishing friends just don’t want you, the non-media company, to hear. Don’t get me wrong… you’d learn about these publishing tips at some point… but even using a few of the points below may send a shudder down the spine of the leading trade media company in your industry. I believe each one of these tips are game changers for your content marketing program....
In print, decades of design language have helped publications draw extra attention of readers. But news web design has mostly been straitjacketed in rigid templates. A few news sites are trying to break out. When it comes to reading long form, the web can be an ugly, distracting place. It’s the reason why services like Instapaper and Pocket (née Read It Later) exist: to strip content of its context — noisy site designs, advertisements, and other unnecessary elements. But perhaps we’re moving into a new era where more of the web is clean and readable. Maybe the future of web publications will be beautiful enough that the reading experience is more enjoyable in its natural habitat. This is how I felt, at least, when I came across ESPN.com’s “The Long Strange Trip of Dock Ellis,” a gorgeously designed feature about the Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher who threw a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD. It’s arguably one of baseball’s most colorful tales; this take on it is certainly one of the most ambitious web designs ever attempted by a traditional media company for a single article. The piece is generously adorned with accompanying visuals — photos of Ellis, memorabilia like trading cards, pull quotes, all moving and sliding while the reader scrolls. The reading experience is very comfortable on both desktop and tablet, thanks to a larger text size and generous amounts of white space. It’s feels like an experience instead of a block of words surrounded by the detritus of the web.... [This ESPN story is a fascinating design innovation for a news organization. ~ Jeff]
In a bold first-day speech, the BBC's new boss says the corporation must stop thinking that online innovation means repurposing broadcast content and instead 'create genuinely digital content for the first time'. ...“Yet it’s the quest for this – genuinely new forms of digital content – that represents the next profound moment of change we need to prepare for if we’re to deserve a new charter. “As we increasingly make use of a distribution model – the internet – principally characterised by its return path, its capacity for interaction, its hunger for more and more information about the habits and preferences of individual users, then we need to be ready to create content which exploits this new environment – content which shifts the height of our ambition from live output to living output. “We need to be ready to produce and create genuinely digital content for the first time. And we need to understand better what it will mean to assemble, edit and present such content in a digital setting where social recommendation and other forms of curation will play a much more influential role.... [The new leader points to fresh news directions ahead for the BBC. His remarks are relevant to content producers, marketing and PR too. - JD]
In a discussion about his use of Twitter as a reporting tool, NPR strategist Andy Carvin made some interesting points about the value of crowdsourced journalism -- including the importance of being transparent about the process, and the virtues of being human....
Despite what you may have observed, you can pin more on Pinterest than recipes, home décor, fashion, and enough DIY projects for a lifetime. Much has already been written about magazines' use of Pinterest. Because the majority of the site's users are women, much of the coverage has focused on how Pinterest has presented opportunities for women's magazines to share content with wider audiences and drive traffic to their own websites. But magazines of all types, beyond just women's publications, can use Pinterest creatively to craft interesting selections of content to intrigue current -- and potential -- readers. I spent hours on Pinterest looking for innovative ways that magazines -- especially smaller publications, and those on non-lifestyle topics -- are using Pinterest. Here are five creative strategies I found that might also be new opportunities for other magazines....
Content marketers can learn a few fine lessons from traditional publishing companies, though they shouldn't completely emulate them, says the Content Marketing Institute. “The key for both publishers and content marketers is to listen to your audience,” writes Blogger Rob Yoegel. “Look at which sections of your website they spend the most time on and which stories they read, share and comment on, and then write more about these topics and share this information throughout your organization.”...
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Lewis DVorkin explores the new world of native advertising, brand journalism and what the future me look like for journalism.