ENTRIES TAGGED "media"
Old Media, New Media and Where the Rubber Meets the Road
My once-beloved San Francisco Chronicle has been "hollowed out," reduced to a thin pamphlet, thereby accelerating their subscriber attrition. Do you even know anyone who actually uses the Yellow Pages? Remember record stores? Whither Blockbuster? When analog media collides with digital media, "creative destruction" occurs with brutal efficiency — unless you can truly differentiate your offering, a tall task, but not an insurmountable one.
Content is a Service Business
What you're selling as an artist (or an author, or a publisher for that matter) is not content. What you sell is providing something that the customer/reader/fan wants. That may be entertainment, it may be information, it may be a souvenir of an event or of who they were at a particular moment in their life (Kelly describes something similar as his eight "qualities that can't be copied": Immediacy, Personalization, Interpretation, Authenticity, Accessibility, Embodiment, Patronage, and Findability). Note that that list doesn't include "content." The thing that most publishers (and authors) spend most of their time fretting about (making it, selling it, distributing it, "protecting" it) isn't the thing that their customers are actually buying. Whether they realize it or not, media companies are in the service business, not the content business.
Scribd Store a Welcome Addition to Ebook Market (and 650 O'Reilly Titles Included)
The document-sharing site Scribd has launched a new “Scribd Store” selling view and download access to documents and books. As part of the launch, there are now more than 650 O’Reilly ebooks now available for preview and sale in the Scribd store, and all include DRM-free PDF downloads with purchase. (Scribd will soon be adding EPUB as a format, and we’ll make that available as soon as possible.)
Report: Large-Form Kindle to Target Textbooks and Newspapers
The Wall Street Journal says a large-form Kindle — rumored to make its debut tomorrow — will be partially targeted at the textbook market: Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school's chief…
Coming to Grips with the "Unthinkable" in Publishing
While much of the Twitter chatter this past weekend was about the annual South by Southwest festival and conference, there was quite a bit of "retweeting" of links to a post by Clay Shirky: During the wrenching transition to print, experiments were only revealed in retrospect to be turning points. Aldus Manutius, the Venetian printer and publisher, invented the smaller…
Photos from New York Times R&D Lab
Nick Bilton was a hit yesterday at the TOC Conference, and during his keynote he talked about what they’re working on with content at the NYT R&D Lab. Nick was kind enough to give a few of us a private tour earlier this week, and here’s some photos from the trip:…
The Inevitability of Newspapers' Downturn
In a post at Boing Boing, Clay Shirky takes issue with the newspaper industry's slow adaptation to digital and its propensity for playing the victim: I'd only arrived on the net in '93, a complete newbie, and most of my opinions about newspapers came from talking with Gordy Thompson of the NY Times and Brad Templeton of Clarinet. Instead,…
Magazines Now in Google Book Search
Google is adding back issues of magazines to its Book Search index. From the Official Google Blog: Try queries like [obama keynote convention], [hollywood brat pack] or [world's most challenging crossword] and you'll find magazine articles alongside books results. Magazine articles are tagged with the keyword "Magazine" on the search snippet. Over time, as we scan more articles, you'll see…
Politico Expands Content Sharing Service
Here's a sliver of positivity from the gloomy news business: Politico's content sharing network has added more than 100 clients since launching in September. From Editor & Publisher: Politico Network, which makes the political news Web site's content available in exchange for advertising placement, launched Sept. 9, according to Beth Frerking, an assistant managing editor. Newspapers and broadcast outlets…
PC Magazine Goes Web Only
PC Magazine's January 2009 edition will mark the end of its print run. A reduced staff will focus on the PCMag Digital Network. From paidContent.org: The magazine, which was started in 1982, has a storied history, but its print base eroded over the years as its core brand of journalism — news you can use while shopping for computers…