Information R/evolution

October 29, 2009 No comments yet

I recently came across this video again – and thought it was worth sharing. It is a great way of explaining some of the massive changes that are sweeping through the information economy. It finishes with a very pertinent question: are we ready? Enjoy!

Digital priorities for publishers

October 29, 2009 1 comment

Bill Keller, the Executive Editor of the New York Times, made a speech to his staff last week, in which he addressed issues of concern – such as paid content. During this, he outlined the 7 digital priorites for the NYT.
They are the following:

the future role of Times Topics and other “living articles”
openness [...]

First Click Free

September 28, 2009 No comments yet

Quick post on something I only found out about a few weeks ago:
Google has a program to allow publishers with paywalls to include their results in Google’s rankings, whilst allowing searchers to read the article they click off to for free.
I’m sure most publishers considering paid content have seen this, but for those who haven’t…
It’s [...]

Fast Flip for iPhone. And the power of Google.

September 16, 2009 1 comment

A huge amount has been said about Google’s latest move in its love-hate relationship with content publishers. There is no need to repeat that all here, so if you haven’t already, see the following:

Paidcontent with a good overview of the product.
Techspheres with a somewhat overblown reaction about how it will kill the newspaper industry.
Read Write [...]

Businessweek: What can we learn?

September 15, 2009 2 comments

Its a sad story, but one we must learn from. Businessweek was founded in 1929, and by the 1990’s was seeing a circulation of more than 1 million people. It used to carry more advertising pages than any other US magazine (up to 6000 pages in 2000), and was a profitable, valuable, and well-regarded publishing [...]

The Future of News: In quotes

September 8, 2009 No comments yet

After reading this fantastic post on the Future of Journalism blog, I’ve been inspired to collect together the best quotes about this emotive issue. With no further delay, here is The Future of News: In quotes.
The basics:
Clay Shirky explaining the desire of news audiences to share content:
When a 14 year old kid can blow up [...]

Moving beyond the article

August 28, 2009 No comments yet

Communication over instant messenger tend to be continous and casual, with ebbs and flows, rather than discrete conversations. Wikipedia has changed encyclopedias from being static and authored, to dynamic and crowdsourced, with popular pages usually containing references that are correct up the very day of viewing. Facebook claims to be the biggest media company in [...]

A newsfeed bundle for “The future of media”

August 24, 2009 1 comment

Several people have asked me recently for suggestions on good sources of news and analysis regarding the future of the media industry. So I have bundled up my favourite feeds on this topic into an OPML file, which you can import into Google Reader, or any other feed reader (see below for details).
The OPML file [...]

Digital magazine strategies

August 21, 2009 No comments yet

Dan Thornton (ex-Bauer Media) wrote an interesting post recently titled “Is any magazine company leading the way digitally?“, which looked at recent moves in the digital magazine publishing industry as it grapples with the world of online publishing. So in search of a ‘good’ digital magazine strategy, here is what the consumer magazine publishers seem [...]

Will paid content work? You can’t fall off the floor.

July 14, 2009 No comments yet

After the secretive meeting of newspaper executives a few weeks ago, at which the economic future of the industry was discussed in depth (see my thoughts here), there has been a splurge of coverage about the companies that are positioning themselves as the newspapers’ saviour.
The Guardian recently reviewed the startup ecosystem that is forming around [...]