This week, Rick Edmonds at Poynter, Ryan Chittum at CJR, and Mathew Ingram at Gigaom debated the state of the paywall at news sites. Not surprisingly, there is little consensus whether or not subscription paywalls are a deadend or the wave of the future. However, there is one kind of paywall that I … [Read more...] about Paywall Media — Why Not Bundle?
Why Digital Media Can’t Rely on an Advertising-Only Business Model
Commodity a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (as brand name) other than price --Merriam-Webster The New York Times' Tanzina Vega reports on a type of automated ad buying called programmatic or real-time bidding … [Read more...] about Why Digital Media Can’t Rely on an Advertising-Only Business Model
Media Enters the Age of (Statistical) Reason
The media is finally figuring out figures. The coverage of Nate Silver's tremendous success at statistical analysis has shown both that sophisticated data analysis can be newsworthy -- and have tremendous real-world impact. According to the New Republic, on Nov 5th, Silver's 538 blog garnered over … [Read more...] about Media Enters the Age of (Statistical) Reason
When Fact-Checkers Have Nightmares
They look like this: Just for the record: The quote is from Yoda in "Star Wars," not Dumbledore ("Harry Potter"), and the image is of Ian McKellen as Gandalf. Also, here's another wildcard, the image isn't from "Lord of the Rings" It is a promotion still from the film "The … [Read more...] about When Fact-Checkers Have Nightmares
Delivering ‘Likeable’ Content NPR-Style
In the past two years, many large media properties have begun focusing on delivering "sharable" content -- articles aimed at increasing links in social media. This is somewhat in contrast to a common strategy of the previous years: creating "searchable" content, aimed at increasing an article's … [Read more...] about Delivering ‘Likeable’ Content NPR-Style
Will Newspapers Be Gone in Five Years?
Mark J. Perry, author of the popular Carpe Diem economics blog, says that advertising revenue is in the kind of freefall that he calls " another one of those huge Schumpeterian gales of creative destruction." Here is his evidence: via Mark J. Perry's Carpe Diem blog … [Read more...] about Will Newspapers Be Gone in Five Years?
The Most Important SEO Tool In the World
Often forgotten in the development rush, regularly updated XML sitemaps are essential in guaranteeing that search engines crawl all your content. Here is Google on the subject: Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML … [Read more...] about The Most Important SEO Tool In the World
Google Trends Eats Google Insights, Also “Celine Dion or Torture?”
Google Insights is no more. It has been absorbed by Google Trends. Both Trends and Insights have been useful tools for writers and editors looking to improve their articles' SEO. Google Trends also lends itself nicely to a game I call "Celine Dion or Torture?" where you put in phrases until you find … [Read more...] about Google Trends Eats Google Insights, Also “Celine Dion or Torture?”