Apparently, as part of their greater mission to save the world and make billions in the process, Google has taken it upon itself to save Journalism and Newspapers. At least, that’s the contention of this James Fallows cover story for the Atlantic this month.
This may seem odd since people like Rupert Murdock have been blasting Google for the downfall of the traditional newspaper business model; Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt has even described their reputation as “the vulture picking off the dead carcass of the news industry”. But, from Google’s perspective, which I mostly share, they are helping the news industry by feeding them traffic. According to comScore 35-40% of all traffic to major US news sites come from search engines. The problem with this analysis is that, even after the tremendous growth in readership over the past 15 years, online ad revenues only account for about 3-5% of total revenue.
Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian, has a great slide show that explains the problem well. Traditionally, this is what a newspaper’s (and generally most print publications) balance sheet looks like:
Like the slide says and shows, printing and paper are more than half the cost component of putting out a publication. Internet distribution will cut that significantly, but not entirely, because you still have server costs. But now take a look at this next slide showing ad revenue as a %, and by type:
Internet advertizing is little more than a rounding error. If you are Google, picking up this spare change amounts to billions of dollars, but no news organization, not even Reuters or AP, has that much of a presence on the internet.
Here is where things start to get really interesting. If one can’t find good, accurate, and interesting information, they will not search for it. Therefore, the Google-Content relationship is symbiotic, and to help Google has lead three initiatives that they believe will help the digital transition easier to bare.
The first are ‘Living Stories’. In essence this is a subject based aggregator that any individual organization can use to pull together all of the related stories into a narrative through time. To me this is an algorithmic Wikipedia. A very good idea, but again one that does not pay.
The next project is called Fast Flip. The basic premise is to recreate a magazine feel of flipping through pages. This attempt, like living stories, while being interesting, does not attempt to answer the basic question of generating more revenue from its readers.
However, the last initiative has more than a little promise, YouTube Direct. It allows sites to directly implement the YouTube video service on their site, complete with back linking, while Google pays the hosting and serving costs. Now it’s important to be aware that YouTube is a huge money pit at Google, the bandwidth costs alone are staggering. But Video presents a gigantic revenue opportunity. Video usually gets around $18-23 per 1000 people for a 30 second spot on TV. Yet, unlike display ads, 30 second video ads get the same price per 1000 people online as they do in the traditional television format. This is why Hulu is a profitable enterprise, because the ad rates are substantial enough to warrant a large upfront investment in content, licensing fees.
That is why YouTube Direct holds promise, because video, even online, is sufficiently monitizable. That doesn’t mean it’s a sure thing, Wired tried to start a TV show and failed, the NYT tried a Discovery partnership to create a TV Channel which also failed. Implementation matters. But unlike the technical and tactical tweaks proscribed above, and tried before, this allows for experimentation at very low costs, but in a format that has large revenue opportunities.
What Happens When the Problem is Bigger Than You?
During subsequent reader follow-ups to James Fallows people pointed out that changing copyright standards are having powerful effects as well. And none of this has touched on the inane idea of using ‘click-through’ a good measure of ad effectiveness.
My point is that Google did not bring about this sea-change, and Google cannot drain the ocean. Craigslist and eBay broke the classified world into pieces, that’s not coming back. No one ever paid for general news content through subscriptions, hell they didn’t even fully pay for physical product at the newsstands, so why would they now?
The extinction level problem for newspapers and all print publications is one of high-impact brand-awareness display advertizing. A strong national and retail ad-buy has typically supplied 60-80% of the revenue. There are no measures on print ads, just ‘impressions’. Introducing people to new products and services is not something that can be done with an algorithm. A ‘click-though’ only shows the last step in the sales funnel, but no one is going to buy your product, or use your service if they have never heard of you.
Forget the iPad and Kindle, forget pay-walls (unless your highly specialized in some area, like Business), if NYT, Rupert Murdock, and thousands of journalists want to see the news business continue, creating a higher-value digital ad unit is the best, if not the only, way forward. Google can’t do that for you, because it’s not their business, it’s not what they do, and it’s not their responsibility.
It official Rupert Murdock is setting his British Flagship papers of Record the Times and The Sunday Times behind an internet paywall. He announced this last summer, and by June it will be a reality. What’s interesting is that there is no attempt to adopt the price point to the audience or the papers content. Nope, as Michael Wolf, Murdock Biographer, said it:
His plan is not to create an online business or, even, to realize significant additional revenues from online readership. The plan is to get you to read newspapers—as in papers.
Basically he is set to charge you the price of a newspaper regardless of the medium, so you are really better off just buying the dead-tree version. To Murdock, who hates all things digital, the Web is just a value add, similar to the DVD inserts that he uses to goose newsstand purchases. This is a bold-faced effort to thwart the online news business, plain-n-simple.
Needless to say, I doubt that this will work. Jeff Jarvis put it best when he said this:
By building his paywall around Times Newspapers, he has said that he has no new ideas to build advertising. He has no new ideas to build deeper and more valuable relationships with readers and will send them away if they do not pay. Even he has no new ideas to find the efficiencies the internet can bring in content creation, marketing, and delivery.
Instead, Murdoch will milk his cash cow a pound at a time, leaving his children with a dry, dead beast, the remains of his once proud if not great newspaper empire.
Some have argued that in order for this to work, financially speaking, a conversion of around 5-10% would be sufficient. Because online advertising is so meager, and the additional cost savings of not printing and distributing paper are so great. But I will take a bet that he doesn’t crack 3% conversion on digital subscriptions. Less than 1% have expressed a willingness to pay for online content, and my suspicion is that many of those willing to pay, are willing to pay for things like the FT and the WSJ, highly niche journalism; not competitive journalism like what is found in the Times, Sunday Times, Independent, Guardian, BBC, AP, Reuters, AFP, ect.
All of this is still beside the point; Murdock doesn’t care if his papers make a single dime. They are underwritten by the rest of his media empire: SkyTV subscription fees, Fox News Spot Advertising, Box Office Ticket Sales and DVD Sales of Avatar and Transformers will keep his papers alive, because he loves them. But for the industry, this is a losing proposition, a way to somewhat delay the inevitable.
Ian Grayson is one of the few people arguing that this will work. He makes 4 points, which are worth sorting through.
1. News ain’t news: It’s true that general news has become a commodity on the internet, but it’s wrong to put all news in the same category. While it’s unlikely anyone will pay for celebrity gossip and coverage of breaking events, quality journalism is a very different deal. People who value well written stories, quality audio visual resources and informed comment will be happy to pay for it.
Writing is very much a commodity, the glut of talented writers killing themselves to get noticed, with excellent credentials, had never been greater. The competition among writers, with HD cameras in tote, makes fencing off any group a losing proposition for that group.
2. A one-stop destination: Newspapers work because they bring multiple elements into a single, easily digestable whole. Sure, some of it might be available in other places on the internet, but having content filtered, edited and presently as a whole makes it vastly more usable. It’s called adding value.
Adding value within the medium is exactly what Huffington Post, Newser, and Google News do, to a far better degree than any newspaper site in existence today. How a site, run by a man who hates the internet, and doesn’t know what Google does, will outwit the digital natives, seems more than far-fetched.
3. New platforms: Attention is focused on Apple’s iPad and its clear that it (or future devices like it) will provide a new and compelling way to enjoy news content. Having a slickly presented package of news delivered to such a device will be so compelling people will pay for it
. The iPad does nothing new. The other tables do nothing new, that a laptop can’t do today. If you haven’t been able to innovate for the internet, why is a new device going to save you? How is it different?
4. Quality versus quantity: There’s no doubt that traffic to the websites of The Times and Sunday Times will drop dramatically once the paywall is in place. However the traffic that remains will be vastly more valuable. Rather than getting excited about millions of visitors who come to the sites briefly before clicking away, the papers will have a core group of loyal readers that will visit on a regular basis. Such a group is much more attractive to advertisers and therefore far more lucrative for publishers. Less can be more.
This is an interesting point. It is true that paying website visitors do yield a higher CPM rate than non-subscribers. This is true for two reasons. One is that they are considered a captive audience, more attuned to the site’s brand, and therefore its brand contextual advertising. And two, is the known demographic profile. But there is no reason why you could not create a similar situation behind a free registration wall, rather than a pay wall.
My position is this: People will not pay for the news because they have never paid for the news, ever. When people had subscriptions to newspapers they were paying for delivery/distribution and a small part of the paper costs. (Many times subscription fees did not even cover that cost) But the CONTENT has been paid for by advertising (or patronage) for as long as the newspaper has been in existence. To now say, oh readers have to pay for content, because they OUGHT to pay is ridiculous, emotional entitlement is not economics.
It looks the NYT’s wants to raise a pay-wall starting in 2011. Borrowing from the FT-model, the NYT will allow lite-users the ability to read a number of articles a week/month for free, and then ask for payment beyond that. As you may know, I am skeptical that this will work.
First and foremost, as many others have said before, the FT and the WSJ, the only two papers to have successful online pay models, offer a monetizable news/information service. Bloomberg, another monetizable information provider, gets the vast majority of its revenue from very expensive terminal subscriptions. The key to these services is that only a very small cadre of people care about the stories that get reported; at the WSJ they even have a saying, the smaller the audience the more valuable the information. It’s so valuable, that typically these information providers have their subscriptions paid directly by the companies on which they report, who then turn around and report the subscription cost as a business expense.
However, the NYT doesn’t provide this type of journalism. It provides general interest stories, which are also covered by countless rivals. In fact, as most bloggers point out, there is almost no story in the NYT that isn’t also covered at least by Reuters, AP, and AFP as well. Because of the overcrowded market for general interest news, Reuters has actually taken to paying large traffic-directing aggregators, like The Drudge Report, to favor linking to their stories over the competition; the diametric opposite of a pay-wall.
Which brings up my second criticism, that there is no business logic behind this move, other then they need more money. Historically, subscription revenue, $600-a-year for the NYT, do not even cover the paper and delivery costs associated with their production. (Econ: Price = MC) It was the combination of classified and display ads that subsidized the entirety of the Newsroom, and helped defray the printing costs. The problem, as I have laid out in detail before, is that digital ad prices are drastically lower then print ad prices per-impression. So while the NYT, the Post, the IHT, ect have never had a larger readership in all their history, they are going broke faster than they can grow.
For Murdock it does not matter, his papers can be subsided by the rest of the News Corp, as I understand Fox News is raking it in, and Avatar is busting the box office coffers in full 3D glory. As the FT reported when Murdock announced the pay-wall idea at the end of Q3, News Corp is a family operation:
Profits staged a double-digit rebound in the three months to September 30, with 85 per cent of operating income now coming from cable channels including Fox News and its Hollywood studio…
Group revenues fell 4 per cent, dragged down by a $300m decline in its newspaper portfolio, which stretches from the Sun in London to The Wall Street Journal in New York. Operating income from newspapers and information services fell from $134m to just $25m, or 2.4 per cent of total profits.
…
The cable networks division secured its place as News Corp’s biggest profit engine, raising operating income by 41 per cent to $495m, owing largely to Fox News.
Fox film studio profits rose 56 per cent from the box office success of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and DVD sales of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. (Bolds Mine)
Lucky for the WSJ, The Times, The Sun, and The PostMurdock loves newspapers, and will prize them above all else as long as he is alive. It’s just in the man’s blood.
Sulzberger, on the other hand, does not have that luxury, even if he shares Murdock’s blood-for-ink preference. No, the NYT lives and dies on it’s own. Which is why the absence of a REAL business plan and rational for this pay-wall is so troubling. It does nothing to address the advertizing decline. They have not answered how this pay-wall will be more successful than its ill-fated Times-Select, which held opinion behind the pay-wall. And yet, here we go again, and it’s the same guy making this decision as made the last pay-wall decision, that all went nowhere; and who also made the call to buy a huge chunk of Manhattan Real Estate, burdening the company with massive debt, that it can ill afford. And for these reasons, I have to agree with Michael Wolff, that Pinch has to go, if the NYT is expected to save itself. Just because your family owns the paper, does not mean you know how to run the paper.
Finding a way to drive subscription revenue from online sources is not a bad idea, I’m simply saying that borrowing the FT-model and hoping it will auto-magically work, ain’t a good plan. Adding value and charging for that, might work. Creating new ad units, or interactive advertizing, also might work. But rather then innovating, or trying something new, they are dusting off the old, calling it new, and praying that it will work…somehow.
I polished off Chris Anderson’s, Editor of Wired Magazine, new book Free the other week. Releasing a book in the current media climate, with papers folding everyday and magazines (including Wired) suffering from an ad drought, arguing that everything should be ‘free-er’ still is heresy. To be sure, it was a good read, but it was incomplete.
The biggest critique on Anderson is that he doesn’t have the ‘Freeimum’ answer for the dying publishing models of today, he only points to a few examples like Google as (imperfect) case studies. Most notably, Malcolm Galdwell made just this point in his review of Free for the New Yorker. While Google offers YouTube for free, it doesn’t actually produce any profit. The server cost alone would swamp any lesser company. So if Google, Anderson’s poster child for Free, can not find profits from a freeimum model, doesn’t this cast doubt on the whole Free argument?
Just to be clear Anderson is not really saying that everything should, or ought, to be free. He is actually very specific to say that data and information want to be free. His view is that future business models will have to seek revenues from a smaller core group of individuals who are willing to pay higher premiums for ‘value-added’ components. Think of a free game that asks you to pay for the 2nd level. The base is free, or cheap, but the extras are pricey. (Over simplified)
So that got me to thinking: if I accept Anderson’s argument on face, and I do, what would be my ‘Freeimum’ solution to replace the old publishing model?
At first I focused only on Wired, but each idea I came up with applied to any other lifestyle publication. Although the audiences change, the economics do not. All lifestyle publications seek to create a brand which will attract a specific audience to whom they can sell to advertisers.
The publishing business’ problems are structural. In a nutshell, print display adds are priced 4-5X higher than an equivalent web ad. Even though paper, printing, and delivery are ½ a publishers costs, with the loss in revenue from print to digital ad sales, a firm faces a 30% structural deficit. Anderson makes the argument that as technology expands shelf-space and reproduction costs approach zero. Unfortunately, this misses a key distinction, marginal cost approach zero, but the fixed costs of discovery are as real today as they ever were. And those costs are not being met in the current digital environment. More to the point, on the internet high-traffic loads carry a disincentive to the publisher because of the exploding server costs. It’s choking off the NYT’s and bleeding the balance sheets of every major publisher.
My Freeimum solution would involve five different planks. First and foremost, new methods need to explored which can demand a higher price-per-impression for digital display ads. Related to that would be an offering a pay-per click option to have your company and products linked throughout the site. Next, I would move to diversify the revenue streams by building an affiliate retail operation. Most importantly, I propose a new ‘freeimum’ membership community that will be centered on regularly sponsored events in locations across the country. With these four things first implemented, I would then create a set of bundled ad packages, comprising print pages, web ads, web links, event participation ect.
Better Faster Stronger
Magazines need to earn more money from digital ads; in particular it needs to extract a bigger premium from their display based ads, because they have the highest operating margins.
Today’s display advertising on the web is ugly, small, and cheap. It does not make a strong impression, if it makes an impression at all. Between Ad Blockers, conditioned blindness, and irritation with ad severer times the actual impressions made, as opposed to served, are a fraction of the page view number.
The best parts of print display ads in magazines are the serendipity of finding something new and beauty of a full-bleed 4C pictorial, on the web that gets lost. In an effort to recreate that type of interaction I propose ‘pre-loaded transition ads’.
Delays in load-time resulting from the ad-serving process can infuriate people, almost as much as the sight of a blank page. What I propose is that on any given page a script is run, after all the main/editorial content has loaded, that loads a ‘full page ad’ eg 800X600. However, the ad isn’t shown until a new link is clicked, when that happens, the picture is displayed for a time, while the new page is loaded behind it. Once completely loaded, the ad disappears. While clickable, there is no skip, no count down, if you click back the ad slides away, otherwise the ad stays up until the page is ready. The key is in the ‘pre-load’. We don’t add any additional time to the transition; and since we are not showing the ad on the page itself, the load should be quick.
The result is a ‘piece of eye-candy’ that enhances the user experience, specifically the transition, without degrading the primary functionality of the site or the browser. Implementation of this is of course key to its effectiveness, it could easily be abused and thus create a worse user experience. Done correctly, and you have a large format digital display space, with little to no loss in site traffic.
But what if a person doesn’t click on any link, and simply closes the page, you haven’t served an ad?!
The flip to transition ads is site skinning. This was brought into the fore by Denton’s Gawker collective, where you allow advertisers leeway to control major design aspects of the site, including sidebars, backgrounds, and more. This is an infant of an idea, but one that I think will have legs going forward.
Skinning will take on a new dimension when, IMHO, over the next 3 years wide screen web-design will start to become the norm. With that added real estate, skinning takes on new possibilities regarding large pictorial background images, moving ads, and more. This is especially true if other browsers start adopting Google Chrome’s JavaScript engine in whole or part. (Safari and Firefox will adopt it in the year or so)
My vision of this plan would incorporate the skinning with the transition ads together. The feel should be that the ads are a seemless part of the UI. Not annoyance but a reason to view the site in and of themselves. Both approaches give the advertisers a better canvas and the power of exclusivity. These benefits justify a higher CPM. Of course this means not having the banners, skyscrapers, and footer ads they have now, but the higher price point is to their benefit in the long run. In this case what’s best for the user, is best for the bottom line, because it’s better for the advertisers.
Contextual Linking: aggregating the clicks
I’ve stated before that clicks are fungible commodities. A click from Cosmo is the same as a click from National Geographic, or Google, from the advertiser’s perspective. This attribute gives advantages to those with size. The obvious example is Google, but there are many ad networks that work under a similar premise. Using a behavioral algorithm, ad networks serve ads targeted to individuals, but across many sites. An example would be getting a Travel ad on a page talking about baseball, that was chosen because you visited Expedia earlier.
This mathematical targeting requires a wide network, and millions of data points to function effectively. No classic publisher is going to reach the level of views needed to make this work on their own, and allowing an ad network to serve the ads cuts deeply into an already thin margin. And it doesn’t matter…
Typically a publication has a core group of a few dozen advertisers. And while publishers charge for banner ads on a CPC basis, the editorial staff gives away free links everyday to the same companies. Not only do they give away the exposure, they give it away in the most prime real estate, in the context of an article.
My solution would be to offer advertizing companies the option of ‘fully integrated contextual linking’ throughout the site. What I mean is that companies can buy the right to have brand key words in copy linked to whatever site they choose. From the publishing end we would take that link and place it behind a redirect short-url. An updated fair-use policy would be imposed stating that anyone can excerpt or aggregate original works, with attribution and link carryover. The rational is that if anyone wants to use our original material they have to ‘compensate’ the originator by also carrying their advertizing.
By using the short-url redirect we can charge for the click regardless of where the click came from. Furthermore, you also make it easier to spread said links across the social universe of like-minded people by using the short-url in the original content, which is then monitizable regardless of where the link ends up be clicked.
The goal is to allow your content-contextual advertizing to travel along the same viral path as your content, and tracking that path to ensure that resulting click revenue flows back to the content originator. Furthermore, rather than fighting the massive new distribution channels, this uses it to the publishers advantage. The more your work is quoted, the further its spread, the more your links appear, the more they are clicked, the more you make, at a marginal cost of close to nothing.
Though this does involve an extra step companies could make it easier for the bloggers and public to comply with an excerpt tool that is pre-coded with links. When faced with the choice of an extra step, or the prospect of paying for ‘online subscriptions’ I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of people will pick the links, over the wallet.
Prying Coin From Purse
Now that I have purged the web of all banners, skyscrapers, sidebars and every other traditional Web Ad, people will expect me to replace those revenues.
In their place I propose a full-on retail program tied to the product review pages. This can done in a few ways, and would be dependent on negotiations, but let’s sketch the outlines of two variations.
One is the traditional affiliate model, where an Amazon or Buy facilitates the order processing, warehousing, and fulfillment. In exchange for sending them orders, the publication gets to keep a percentage. In order for this to work, the affiliate percentage would need to be substantial, and the products, electronics to books, needs to large and wide. Here’s the hook, Subscribers get X% off across the board. The savings are enough to warrant a subscription, which because of the additional revenue one gets from growing the rate base, and the X% from gross sales, should more than supplement the lost Web Revenues from the banners.
Two, is the Fashion Model and this one is largely dependent on specialty merchandise. In this model it’s the advertisers themselves that fulfill the orders, the magazine provides the retail space and facilitates the transaction (So no discounts). The key to making this version work is the inclusion of exclusive merchandise that is only offered on your site. It can have branding, it can be designed in-house, it can be many things, but it must be exclusive and sell at a premium. Those premiums are your bulk profits. In this variation mostly what you are offering is a curating service to your customer base. You hand select the very best, and develop the rest yourself.
Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. But they both offer a new revenue stream, which ties directly into the publications core competencies and stakeholder interests.
Step Away from The Internet
Lifestyle magazines exist to bring together people with a similar set of interest. Before one page of advertizing can be sold this audience must come together… but magazines almost never really bring these people together. They may all read the same articles, but let’s face it, when big magazines throw a party it ain’t the readers they are looking to invite. No they want A & B list celebrities, some bullshit with Jerry Seinfeld, and Phyllis Diller. Or at least it’s been that way.
I think this is the A-#1 thing that needs to change and this where you get your ‘freeimum’.
Whether it’s fashion, beauty, literature, politics, interior design, sports, computers, or anything else like-minded people want to be around other like-minded people. Sponsoring events for these audiences to interact in real life would be a very valuable thing to your most loyal and interested base.
The math is obvious. Take a rate base of 750K, convert 1% into premium members, $250 a person, that’s $1.8 million revenue. Minus costs, but you also have a new ad driver. Before I delve too deeply into the cost revenue breakdown, let me explain exactly what these events entail.
What do I get for $250?
It depends on your interest and the advertiser base. The most obvious thing for business and political magazines are networking events: speakers, live interviews, happy hours, ect. Fashion and beauty are perfectly suited to shows and demo’s. Sales and sneek peeks could also be attractive. Computer and science speakers, gadget labs, gaming parties, networking events with the nerdiest of the Nerd-core for a Wired subscriber.
The idea is to have a regular series of sponsored events open to club members only. These small group of highly interested people are your best advertizing resource. They are the trend setters, they know before anyone else knows, they are your guerrilla marketing army, geographically diverse, they prime the well spring your advertisers are looking to pump.
From a business perspective you only need to charge the people marginal cost to breakeven (you can charge more), but most of the revenue comes from advertizing sponsorship of each event. From the advertiser perspective they get a captivated audience to whom you can introduce your newest lines to the public in a highly visible, yet exclusive manner.
Selling this is tricky, but potentially very profitable.
The ‘freeimum’ subscription revenue must meet your marginal costs. The reason being that even if an event goes unsponsored it still has to be held. At a minimum you need a space, a draw, and a planner. One planner can handle multiple locations, budget six people for 20 locals, $35K a year, $210K total. Event space varies widely, from a low of $5K in smaller cities to highs of $100K in NYC. Sponsored events can be held at larger nicer venues, since someone else if paying for it, and non-sponsored events can held at more low-key locations. Therefore the budget needs to premise on a baseline cost. Assume an average of $7.5K, 20 cities, 12 months, that’s $1.8MM (Just about what I project for sub revenue). Draws should typically be provided by sponsors, since that is largely the point of the events. But assuming that no sponsor comes forward a publisher could always send the editor, or a writer who has a new book, or you can invite a group of people whom are experts in some sense to hold a round table. These are very cost effective options. My point is that given the ‘freeimum’ sub revenue before you ever sell one sponsorship slot, you are close to even. So taking a low ball estimate of $10K per-event, you break even after one month of sales, and from there it’s straight profit from February forward. That’s $4MM in revenue, $2.2MM in profit.
Granted these are broad strokes, and I will be the first to admit that details matter. Yet, as a structural profit center, this has real potential. You could run the entire editorial staff at cost off web revenues just to pull the audience together for these events. Add in single event ticketing, up the sponsorship ante for select cities and seasons, and you have an $8MM revenue stream.
Which brings up the biggest question I have dealt with yet, how to sell this new ad package.
Pre-packaged bundles: Like Revenue Crack
Now that I have laid out the new digital and interactive advertising platforms its best to explain exactly how I expect to sell them; the short answer is all together.
The long answer is by combining the different elements into ad-packages. If you were to sell everything al-carte everyone would go for the exact same things, and other less popular aspects would go unsold month after month. Those low demand products are the ones with the highest profit margins.
Instead, you need to sell in bundles.
For example if you are going with the affiliate model on the retail side, you should also offer an exclusive deal to own all of the contextualized links. In this case the exclusivity allows you to negotiate a higher price-per click, or higher retail sale split.
In the fashion model, naming rights would be included in the price of a paging bundle. So in exchange for a minimum buy of X, you will also get brand placement links.
Site skinning and transitions are as two sides of the same coin, like I said my vision is that the two ad mediums would work together. So the ‘package’ here is not to sell impressions, you sell people by session length. So if Ford buys a person, they get a 1st view skin and transition. If they want a longer chain, they can buy that at a per-page view cost, which would be lower than the 1st view. (The site setup will make big difference in how well this works. 1st page views are expensive, but consecutive views are cheap once the person is on the site. The initial ad setup is the expensive part because of the fixed costs, but the extension of an ad run is almost costless. Therefore, any extension is a pure profit, which we should be pushing to the fore)
The event schedule is the prize. As such it requires a minimum buy somewhere. Whether, its paging, web ads, retail, or event locations these are your strongest leverage, because of the medium and the audience. Imagine splitting the city list into 2 levels, NYC, LA, Chicago, SF are level 1, Philly, DC, Boston, Miami, Houston, Seattle, Phoenix, Atlanta are 2. You would sell packages of 1 level one city, with two or three level 2 cities. If a client wants two level 1 cites, they also buy 2 more level two cites. It’s imperative to sell the lesser cites with the cites in greater demand, because even if no one buys the event for a location, and event must still be held to maintain engagement. (For this reason sub revenue must justify the marginal per-person cost) These events are for the most engaged, they are the ones who will justify for the client spending all the previous money, because these are the crème-dela-crème customers.
Its about leveraging high-demand products to yield higher ad buys across the board. Bundling is a proven economic strategy that has seen success in every area of media, from CD’s to Newspapers. Refashioned for a digital strategy, bundling is how I plan to bolster the sales of low-demand-high-margin inventory by tethering them to the high-demand-low-margin products.
The Forest from 50,000 Ft.
Free, for better or worse, is here to stay. The Genie has been released, and will not be put back into the lamp. While Anderson does a good job of explaining how we got here; he offers precious few thoughts on what it all means and how to adapt.
I think that’s the point Gladwell was making, and I agree with. Anderson, like many technologist writers, can point out excellent examples of tall trees in the forest, but not the shape and size of this new ecosphere. Google is doing great; it gives away email, space, results, maps, web browsers, movies, and now an OS for free. Yet, it makes billions by skimming off the algorithmically chosen premium advertisers, which subsidizes everything else. Minus that search revenue and Google is a black-hole-of-money.
This should all sound familiar, because it’s not too far off the old newspaper model. News rooms were funded by localized classified ads, with a dollop of national ad buys in the more consumer oriented style, travel, and sports sections. In that respect ‘the news’ has always been ‘free’, typically more of an ego trip for the papers owners. But now the classified are centralized on the web, benefiting from local and national exposure, and the national buy isn’t enough to run the papers at the level that they had been.
So where’s the beef? What’s the next search? How do we replace classified revenue? How do we grow the value of our digital ad space? To fight aggregation? Embrace? Can we monetize anything? These are questions that get begged, and left unanswered in Free.
These are questions I seek to answer in small part here. And my solutions on any point might be wrong and off base. But given how small most web revenue currently is for most publishing intuitions, there isn’t much risk to experimentation either. It’s like global warming, or the frog in the pot, if you jump you may escape or get burned, but if you do nothing death is assured.
IN the media, especially the print media world, people have described the internet as a ‘linked economy’; meaning that more links signify greater value and should not only be spread freely and widely, but sought after. When you are talking about internet traffic, and page views, this formulation makes some sense.
I have issues with this turn of phrase, but I do think it makes a greater point about the revenue side of online media. Notably, that links are a primary source of revenue for most of the new media players. Google receives most of its money based on clicks and links, aggregators make all of their money based on them. The point is that links by themselves have, a very small, but measurable value.
Recently, Chris Aheam, President of Thomson Reuters Media, came out in full throated support of the linked economy, encouraging people to link to Reuters stories. This stands in contrast to Murdock who is planning to raise a pay wall at all of his sites in the next year, and the AP who along with Attributor have been talking of trying to charge people for excerpting AP stories, even if they are attributed and linked.
Personally, I am much more on the side of Aheam, but because of the diffusion of content as it is today I am sympathetic to the notion that companies need to be able to monetize, in some form, their quoted work, regardless of where the work appears.
‘Fair use’ is concept that is currently influx, but I believe that if a company tried to start charging for any quotation usage it would be ruled illegal under this doctrine. Not to mention it would be prohibitively expensive to implement, and would target the people with the least ability to pay, bloggers.
Instead I would go in the opposite direction. Anyone can link, or quote any story, but they can’t just use the words from the story that have to use the links, the exact same links, from the original story in their excerpt. In the meantime media companies could start to sell the rights to have their advertiser-links be the link for a given brand word every time that word is used in the content copy. But you’re not going to use the link as it was given by the advertiser; you use a short-url. The beauty is that by using this redirect URL you can counts the clicks regardless of where the link is clicked from, and charge as the clicks pileup. The point would to say yes, you are allowed to use our content to better your content under ‘fair use’, however that also means that you must carry our contextualized-link advertisements as well.
As anyone who knows me already knows, I don’t believe subscriptions are viable. Sub revenue doesn’t even cover the print & delivery of a paper; it’s all subsidized by advertising. Currently digital display ads are pathetic. Yet, rather than address the problem of advertising online, most companies are searching for a vein in a stone…. Good luck with that. (Yes, I am shorting News Corp’s Stock through the 4thQ)
I have a bigger Wired post but until then I wanted to say something about tactics in the page view/rate base race. Earlier in the summer, Wired had an issue edited by JJ Abrams of Lost and Star Trek fame. In that issue were a variety of puzzles that readers could solve and some of them lead to other puzzles elsewhere, a hunt to find the greater solution. It was incredibly successful, so much so that I think it should be a regular feature for the Wired.
In video games they are called ‘Easter Eggs’, surprises, extras, and hidden features that are found only by those gamers who explore every single aspect of the game environment. Well it occurs to me that this is exactly what a site wants its readership to do, check multiple times a day, and views everything. More page-views are more impressions to sell, period.
So instead of running a giveaway like they do today with a Sweepstakes sign-up, they should have ‘Easter Egg’ hunts every week/month. Weekly giveaways could be small things, like iTunes gift cards, a Zune, ect. But monthly give-away’s should be bigger: computers, trips, TV’s ect. The weekly giveaways can be web only, and include a 1yr subscription. But the Monthly giveaways should always start in the magazine itself, with tie-ins on the web throughout the month.
They way these usually work is to set out one puzzle, that leads to another puzzle, and another and another, the trick is to dole out the string slowly and in a variety of places; by doing so you spread your readership around your properties as they search for the next clue. This not only drives page views, but it turns the magazine into an experience, and gives a clear value-add to subscription. If I subscribe, every month the magazine is going to set me off on an adventure that is interesting, challenging, and potentially rewarding.
(Wired maintains a rate-base of 700K with 350K monthly newsstand sales, clearly an further inducement to subscribe is needed, and at $12 a year vs $5 an issue price isn’t the problem)
As a rule I generally don’t talk about the goings on at my own company, Conde Nast. I do this for all of the most self-apparent reasons, #1 being: I like me job and I like the company environment, hence I’d like to keep it.
That said today is a special day, today is the day Portfolio died. I have to admit this took me by surprise, Conde Nast has a corporate culture that would rather kill a weaker property, then make any of the major’s skimp in even the slightest of way. (It’s why they call this place: Publishing Valhalla) Men’s Vogue, Golf for Women, even domino seemed to be prime targets for closure. All of them had small niches, limited advertiser interest, and low growth prospects. And there are other properties that fit that description still at Conde, if more properties where to be on the block.
But Portfolio was different, much like The New Yorker or Vanity Fair, this had a high-income demographic, broader advertisers, and starting from 0 and topping over 400K subs in a 2-year period ain’t that bad. Given that Si Newhouse has a history of sticking with his beloved books through unprofitability, again see New Yorker and Vanity Fair, I thought for sure he was in it to win it with Portfolio.
Last year, Portfolio cut from 12-to-10 editions a year, and slashed their online staff. The magazine was well known to be one of the best paying gigs a financial writer could land. Conde sunk $100MM into the launch of this property.With the economy the way it is, I’d say the publication was simply too expensive to continue, with establishment now depending on a turn-around.
People have argued in hind-sight that this was a bad investment. I disagree. I think it out-gleamed the pack by a mile with writers that packed pounds-per-inch. The problem was an incoherent web/print strategy, with a top management, Joanne Lipman, who mis-cued the direction and misspent resources.
Firstly, the website Portfolio.com had top-notch bloggers in Salmon, Market Movers, and Bercovici, Mixed Media, whom actually broke the news of Portfolio’s end.Yet, for all of the great work that they did, and news that they broke, it was almost completely disconnected from what appeared in the Magazine from month-to-month. This is the Conde way. The web is run out of Conde Nast Digital, formerly CondeNet, and the magazines are disconnected from their associated web properties, run out of Conde Nast. ‘Never the Twain Shall Meet’.This is how the company is run, and was setup this way along time ago with good reasons. (See Style.com and Epicurious.com)
But in the case of a Portfolio, this was a liability. The site was very popular, but Ms. Lipman was dismissive of the web once remarking, ‘reading bloggers is like listening to a crazy person on the Subway.’ So what was a very successful web strategy, hit wise, was being undermined, used mainly as a conduit to print subscriptions, a fancy Consumer Marketing play at best.
Rather than treat the web as a daily conduit to its readers to expand coverage, preview upcoming pieces, and provide a daily must read to complement the expanded overviews, insights, and analysis to be found in the magazine it was relegated to scraps. But like I said, that is the culture, for good reasons, and bad. (This does appear to be changing…)
Secondly, Joanna Lipman was the wrong person for this job, period. A launch publication needs a certain type of person whom is willing to experiment, risk, and lead the competition, aka an entrepreneur. That’s not what you get from a former editor of the WSJ Magazine. No, someone who has ‘stayed the course’ and piggy-backed off a stronger publication will run to safety every time. Like putting Sara Palin on the cover the same month Obama is inaugurated.
This is all on top of the fact, that Lipman was spending company money on frivolities, like 5-star hotels and first class flights to Davos, when everyone of importance was already skipping the event. I’m sure that these things are par for the course in most publishing environments, but when advertisers are fleeing, times are tight, and your firing people, to then spend $20K on luxury expenses is not ‘financially intelligent’.
UPDATED: So i read this piece by Andrea Chalupa who is far kinder then what I have heard elsewhere, and was employed on the dot com side. I’ve reconsidered my above criticisms a bit.
here is how she tells it:
It was founded to capture the extreme excess of life on Wall Street and the insane wealth circulating the globe. The world had a new class of super-rich, and Portfolio would be the magazine to document their lives. It viewed itself as a resource of business insight and lifestyle tips for executives and CEOs — the new rock stars — and their fans, who aspired to be like them. Some detractors, and even some admirers, viewed it as rich-people porn.
Along with the sober, prescient business analysis of Jesse Eisinger and Felix Salmon, there were eye-popping stories: how to buy an island, how to develop your own golf course, a $40,000 iPhone, a billion-dollar house. It covered smart, sane economics, and luxurious oligarch-bait.
Within a year, all that changed — sort of. On its November 2007 cover, when Eisinger predicted major bank collapses, even some of us staffers had thought he sounded as wild as a doomsday prophet. That feeling only lasted a couple of months, until Bear Stearns capsized suddenly in early 2008. The editors toned down the lifestyle stories, keeping more tightly focused on how our business leaders were impacting the world rather than how many cars they kept in their garages. With the economic world in turmoil, it seemed like this was the right time for a magazine like Portfolio, and particularly a website.
“Conde Nast, as successful a company as it is, it’s not in the business of publishing business news. It’s in the business of aggregating high-end readers and selling them to luxury advertisers,” Bercovici told me by phone this morning.
…
“I don’t think it’s a doomsday scenario,” Bercovici told me, “in the sense of magazines surviving as magazines. Conde Nastis the fittest of the companies to survive that transition. The whole industry is going to be more like the British magazine industry, in terms of staffing levels and cost structure. [But] you can’t beat brands like Vogue and Vanity Fair; they will survive a lot better than a lot of other brands.”
It’s not just that, the interplay between reader and advertiser is unique to each brand. The placement of any ad into any specific publication places the product into the public conscience at the associated level. In light of this branding approach, Lipman’s travel expenses are understandable, trying to promote an image and all that. But the placement itself is more confusing.
I agree it makes perfect sense to try and grab the uber-rich with a Conde magazine, and bundle the associated luxury brand advertisers. But that’s only ever going to be small group, high subscription rate, high rate card, low run endeavor. It’s like W magazine, fashion for women who can afford it. Which, as it would happen, was a successful as a launch. A mass publication; life-styles of the rich and famous, doesn’t pair well with economic analysis. Its two different types of reader.
The great thing about Vogue, GQ, & Vanity Fair is that you have no idea what the price is, its small and secondary, what you know is that if it’s in the magazine, its worth it. That’s a ‘high-end reader’. People whom ‘ooohh’ and ‘aaaahhhh’ at some price tag, like a $40K iPhone or Billion dollar house, are not. (Who would buy that stuff except some crypto-capitalist oligarch?)
My Way:
Rather than just point fingers and yell ‘ha ha, told you so!’ I am going to start explaining what I would do differently and why. Starting Now –
If I were called to run Portfolio in 2007, I would have gone in a totally untapped direction from Business Week, Money, Inc, Fast Company ect ect.
I would have made Portfolio a Business Magazine for Women. The tag line would be:
‘My Portfolio includes…
30 commercial investment properties,
50 residential,
2 dogs,
a 17 year-old-son,
and me.’
Leveraging the Conde Nast Fashion and Beauty advertiser network as a base, I would run recurring features on various professional fashions: suites, business casual, comfy Heels, stylish sneakers, 5 minute makeup, ect. All of these, would be intergraded with a digital shopping cart, so these busy women can buy anything we feature, direct from the advertiser with one-click. (Payment and sizing information would be stored, discounts for subscribers!)
Every month would feature a real women’s schedule showing her work/life balance, and a column on how she copes, manages, and what she would change to make it easier. This would be a sponsored sweepstakes-type feature, most applicable to travel and spa’s, but also Blackberry.
Furthermore, I would place strong emphasis on technology for working women. I’m talking ultra-thin, sleek stylish phones, laptops that look like real ‘Notebooks’ (the kind that people used to actually write in with a pen), all the way to luxury cars; but always focused on the feminine value of ‘style meets practicality’. Coincidently, this also gives a strong hand to play with tech advertisers, as women are more likely to pay premiums for rare/stylish goods, especially those featured in the mag that can be purchased in one-click.
Now here is where the real trick comes into play: if you want to be featured in our one-click shopping, you MUST buy X pages of print advertising, and we get a percentage of the buy directly attributable to our site, as a referral fee.
My next biggest change would be to have in-debt coverage of professional events in various industries in real-time, via the web using twitter, youtube, email, ect. The deal being predicated, that if an organization wants their event to be covered they have to advertise it first in the magazine.
This is not exhaustive, nor complete. Monthly features are highly contextual, and can’t be systematized. But it is to say that as an idea, a new business magazine, Portfolio, could have been a winner, if they had played more to their strengths, and had a different head, IMHO.
And No, I have never run a million-dollar business.
(The above is my own opinion, it in no way reflects the views of anyone at Conde Nast, its subsidiaries, or affiliates, other than myself. And I could be completely wrong, time will tell)
I had signed up for this Time Mine program the day I wrote this post, and received the ‘personalized’ magazine on Monday of this week, except it was totally wrong. I had wanted Time, Money, InStyle, and Food and Wine. Instead I got Golf, SI, and Travel + Leisure. Not a good first showing, and today I got this in my Inbox:
Dear Randall,
Thank you for subscribing to mine magazine. We want to let you know that a computer error may have affected the first issue you received this week. It’s possible that this issue did not contain the combination of magazine content you selected. Please know that the problem has been resolved, and that each of your subsequent issues will reflect the exact content you originally requested.
In appreciation of your support, we have extended your five-issue subscription to include a sixth free issue of mine. You can also access real-time mine content through your smartphone device at http://mine.mwap.at.
We apologize for the inconvenience and, again, thank you for being among the very first to experience mine.
Best regards,
Wayne Powers
President, Time Inc. Media Group
As someone who works with Databases and Web Development every day I know these things happen. But I checked on a few other people whom I know also signed up and the same thing happened to them. It looks like this was quite wide spread and I’d be curious to know what exactly happened. I can’t wait to see what happens next month. I’ll be sure to keep an eye on what’s happening, and if they can fix the problem.
For the record I respect Bill Keller of the NYT’s, he’s a good editor who helped the paper recover from the Jason Blair affair, and mostly navigated the Judy Miller escapade without too many unforced errors. That said: he is also a sanctimonious ass.
Saving the New York Times now ranks with saving Darfur as a high-minded cause.
Now of course that’s not exactly what he meant, and in fact he wrote an email to Michael Calderone to clarify his intent.Regardless, the Editor of the New York – fucking – Times, should not be shocked in any way to have his words pulled out of context. However he might have meant the comment, the fact that he made the comparison at all says something about the mindset in America’s Newsrooms.
Namely this: for all of their vaunted skills in uncovering and exposing the world’s problems, they are almost devoid of any real or innovative solutions. In fact, saving the NYT’s has at least one parallel to Darfur, neither will be solved as a result of high-minded anything.
And I admit it’s unfair to single out Keller, because like I said he’s better than he is bad. He is simply the most visible member of a news media culture.
For example, the Atlantic has a new poll of ‘industry insiders’ in which 65% said that the Internet has hurt media more than it has helped (granted that’s only 30 people). Yet, the rational that they offer shows their real concern isn’t for ‘Journalism as an ideal’, but rather a screed against the end of ‘Journalism as Practiced by Them’:
“The Internet has some plusses: It has widened the circle of those participating in the national debate. But it has mortally wounded the financial structure of the news business so that the cost of doing challenging, independent reporting has become all but prohibitive all over the world. It has blurred the line between opinion and fact and created a dynamic in which extreme thought flourishes while balanced judgment is imperiled.”
“A year ago, I would have given a different answer. The increases in audience reach and communication with the audience are incredibly gratifying. But the cost to the business model (R.I.P. Seattle P-I) and the inability of the business model to monetize the Internet means that there is a disturbing net cost to newsgathering. If you’re not covering your state delegation in D.C., or the state legislature back home, or the city council, bad things are going to happen, undiscovered.”
“News consumption depends on news production, and I don’t see anything on the Internet that produces news—that is, detailed responsible empirical journalism—the way newspapers do (or did). It is typical of Americans to get more excited about consumption than about production.”
Let’s take these as two main arguments, the business model, and the content quality.
This first point is a general trope used over and over again, and I hope to do a full post on this specifically. For now let me simply say: what the internet takes away, the internet also gives; meaning that even though the average-profit-per-impression is lower on the internet, the cost-per-impression is also extremely low. Paper, ink, printing, distribution and home delivery are damned expensive. That was THE barrier to entry for ages. Now you’ve eliminated that cost. So you don’t have to charge for papers, which only ever covered a small portion of the printing costs anyway. Rather it was the industry failure to better monetize their internet offerings that put them in this financial position (the 2nd person at least seems to recognize this failing as partly internal).
This focus on trying to get consumers to pay more for something, which they never really paid for in the first place, is stupid. This isn’t a consumer problem (the main beneficiary of the internet), it’s an advertiser problem. And that is the fault of management, period, full stop.
Yet, it’s this second point that actively pisses me off. This idealized ‘just the facts’ journalism is unique to post-WWII America. The early forefathers of Newspapers as we know them today were the Colonial pamphleteers. People like Thomas Pain, and the Federalist , wanted to make an argument, so they paid to have their essays printed and published for dispersion. In many ways they were like bloggers, they made no money off their pamphlets, but they did inform, and got the message across. But make no mistake, political parties were the 1st publishers, followed later by shipping companies, and later still by independent ‘publishing companies’. But all of them had a slant, and made no secret of it, imagine the British Press today, but 100 years ago.
The reason that this actively pisses me off is that I fail to see how the American way of Journalism is much better then the old way, or more appropriately the British Way. In the American tradition, reporters are supposed to ask tough questions of those in power. These select few are given the almighty ‘Access’ with which to uncover the ‘Truth’. But the reality is that ‘Access’, not information nor understanding, has become the measure of good Journalism. The efforts to protect that access, IMHO, is the underlying cause of our collective Journalistic failure over the past 20-30 some odd years. From the failure of CNBC to actually ask tough questions of over-paied/under-performing CEOs; to Judy Miller, Vaunted NYT’s reporter, who propagandized for an Administration, and even did their dirty bidding in silencing an Administration critic. This Idealized American Journalistic Standard has led to shoddy reporting, NO-analysis (God Forbid), and a stack of Newspapers that treat their readers like 5th grade children.
NO!
This is weak willed crap posing as mild-mannered reporting. It uncovers little, and is played by those whom would seek to sub-divert thinking with emotional drivel. We don’t want facts, jack. We want analysis, and as long as you are upfront about your leanings, what’s the problem? That’s how they do it in the world’s oldest democracy, and some of them even managed call-out the false conclusions made in the run up to the Iraq War.
This is all to say two things:
Number One: Publishing Management needs to take responsibility for their epic mismanagement of their enterprises. Technology changes in every industry, most people deal with it, many top reporters took advantage of it. Your failure to develope new revenue sources, is your fault, not nature’s, not the internet.
Number Two: The American Journalistic Model is not the final buttress on the cathedral of democracy, and in fact its mores have hurt the public’s understanding and knowledge of government’s inter-workings. It’s been those opinionated and targeted independent media sources that have proven to be the sustained voice of the people, and defenders of freedom. Not those with the access, but those with the unanswered question, it is those people whom need to be protected, defended, and brought safely into the new digital media.
Dan Gross at Slate had a great piece up about the decline of Newspapers in America and it causes. His main point is that, contra popular belief; the internet did not and is not killing the Daily papers.
Rather, many of the papers that are folding had incompetent management, with heavy debt, running a company with declining revenue. He cites Sam Zell’s Real Estate expertise as a sure marker of Editorial and Publishing success. And of course, a little PR savvy is all you need to run a major newspaper, so Brian Tinery at the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer was a natural fit. Yes, let’s buy a newspaper franchise at $562M, $100M+ more then the next bidder, its ok we have a $450M credit line. Awesome!
But let’s not forget the one bon afide media genius of the pack, Conrad Black. Who confessed to stealing millions from Sun-Times Media during the 1990’s. While they were profitable then, the resulting tax liability, has financially held the firm’s head underwater. And as you know, are now also in bankruptcy.
It should be noted from a financial perspective Private Equity enterprises, as all of the above are, always operate from a heavy debt position, because being private they have no access to the equity markets for capital expansion.
Yet, one of my favorite people on the internet, a commentator on Barry Ritholtz’s blog The Big Picture, Marcus Aurelius responded to the fact that The New York Times and The Washington Post are both publically traded, and in the financial crapper:
We have experienced the dumbing-down, politicization and propagandizing of what were formerly true “news” organizations. What was formerly an adversarial relationship – that between the newspapers and the interests they investigated – has become a cozy relationship marked by access to “inside” information and functionaries, for the cost of repeating the party line.
Too often, what passes for news is misinformation, at best. A good example is Chris Whalen’s earlier post here at TBP – AIG: Before CDS, There Was Reinsurance. I doubt many papers will run stories related to this chicanery, and those that do will bury the story in favor of fluff.
The public wants less reporting and more investigation. If they can’t get hard facts and critical analysis from traditional sources, they’ll turn to non-traditional. The public (a.k.a. The Market) is speaking clearly to Big Corporate Media.
Italics mine
In my mind this gets to the heart of the matter not only for the newspapers, but infotainment in general (Fox & CNBC in particular). Within their ranks, journalist do not measure each other by the stories they break, they measure by the level of access. The causes are many, but the feed stock for this perversion is a group of publishers that love access just as much, but are still hamstrung to ensuring monthly debt payments.
My overall point, the one that Gross hints at and Aurelius nails, is that both ways are doomed to failure. Right now the poles are between “Pinch” Sulzberger with Bill Keller, who in their deification of ‘journalism’, have coddled their reporters from the bottom line to the point where the only way forward they see involves non-profit status, or some kind of charitable giving, akin to PBS, just to keep the model afloat. Or you have Roger Alies at Fox, who bases pay scales on Nielsen Ratings and the ability to cross leverage News Corp assets across mediums.
Thus, we have a world in which quality can’t compete and ranting counts as ‘news’. Neither situation is acceptable, and yet with the current management class that all we can get. In my opening salvo I mentioned that Editors and Publishers need to marry, and this is why I said that. Until the Edit and Publishing relationship gains some symmetry, where writers recognize that yes, they need to be concerned with money; and publishers stop treating their writers as power tools (Denton & Huffington), we will continue to have the worst of all worlds.
