Competitive Journalism
In the spirit of this blog being a recording of various issues I am concerned about and not a finished product for general consumption I am going to make more of an effort to throw out more questions and ideas I am unsure of as opposed to my own opinions or simply linking to the news. I very much doubt I will find the time to research these issues and report on them further. So my first question...
How do journalists compete? Or rather how to media organizations compete and how does that affect reporters and editors and ultimately, readers?
What is the strategy of one media business to grow market share and advertising revenues over other media businesses? How have these strategies changed in recdent years with the proliferation of 24 hour news networks and the growing influence of the Internet?
How important are quality reporters and editors to the bottom line? What is the value of a scoop?
How does the Washington Post grow its brand and reputation? I think most people would agree that www.washingtonpost.com and www.nytimes.com and www.latimes.com offer extremely similar experiences. You won't find news on one that you wouldn't find on the others. The only differences perhaps the layout and the feeling that reader have for that particular media organization. Is USAToday a name you trust?
How does being considered biased affect your paper? Many conservative wing-nuts believe the NYTimes is a liberal-biased media organization. How does this affect the NYTimes brand image? How does it affect their revenues? My initial feeling is that it may hurt the NYTimes but help Foxnews. Does it help an organization to be considered liberal or conservative?
How do subscription fees for content affect revenues? How do they affect the brand? The NYTimes recently put some of its content behind a subscription fee. They did not put their "news of the day" content behind this subscription. Obviously with many competitors offering almost identical services on the web for free it would be surprising if they could increase profits by doing that. Presumably some hardcore NYTimes readers would pay a fee for that subscription but it seems likely that a vast majority of readers would simply move over to the WaPost or other "national" paper. Lost advertising revenues would more than offset any subscription revenues.
But the NYTimes did place a subscription on its editoral content. How will this affect the revenue and the brand? One clear distinction is that editoral content can not be easily copied by other papers. The columnist work exclusively for the NYTimes and they obviously felt these people were not easily copied by other news organizations. Note, I can go to other news sites for opinion so there can be substitution here. In fact, that is probably what most NYTimes readers did. So the NYTimes feels that revenues from a subscription for its editorial content will more than offset the lost traffic of people visiting its site specifically for this content. It will be interesting to see what becomes of these fees...some people predict they will have a negative effect.
What if advertising prices go up?
This is a very interesting topic to me.
How do journalists compete? Or rather how to media organizations compete and how does that affect reporters and editors and ultimately, readers?
What is the strategy of one media business to grow market share and advertising revenues over other media businesses? How have these strategies changed in recdent years with the proliferation of 24 hour news networks and the growing influence of the Internet?
How important are quality reporters and editors to the bottom line? What is the value of a scoop?
How does the Washington Post grow its brand and reputation? I think most people would agree that www.washingtonpost.com and www.nytimes.com and www.latimes.com offer extremely similar experiences. You won't find news on one that you wouldn't find on the others. The only differences perhaps the layout and the feeling that reader have for that particular media organization. Is USAToday a name you trust?
How does being considered biased affect your paper? Many conservative wing-nuts believe the NYTimes is a liberal-biased media organization. How does this affect the NYTimes brand image? How does it affect their revenues? My initial feeling is that it may hurt the NYTimes but help Foxnews. Does it help an organization to be considered liberal or conservative?
How do subscription fees for content affect revenues? How do they affect the brand? The NYTimes recently put some of its content behind a subscription fee. They did not put their "news of the day" content behind this subscription. Obviously with many competitors offering almost identical services on the web for free it would be surprising if they could increase profits by doing that. Presumably some hardcore NYTimes readers would pay a fee for that subscription but it seems likely that a vast majority of readers would simply move over to the WaPost or other "national" paper. Lost advertising revenues would more than offset any subscription revenues.
But the NYTimes did place a subscription on its editoral content. How will this affect the revenue and the brand? One clear distinction is that editoral content can not be easily copied by other papers. The columnist work exclusively for the NYTimes and they obviously felt these people were not easily copied by other news organizations. Note, I can go to other news sites for opinion so there can be substitution here. In fact, that is probably what most NYTimes readers did. So the NYTimes feels that revenues from a subscription for its editorial content will more than offset the lost traffic of people visiting its site specifically for this content. It will be interesting to see what becomes of these fees...some people predict they will have a negative effect.
What if advertising prices go up?
This is a very interesting topic to me.
posted by Tim at 8:34 AM
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