‘Supply lines of local news are being cut’

Endless newspaper layoffs have cost readers “tens of thousands of years of community knowledge,” says media sage Ken Doctor in an important new book. As if the loss of community wisdom and lore were not bad enough, it is unclear where local news will come from in the future, warns Doctor in “Newsonomics,” which is being published next week and can be ordered here. “For truly local

Can iPad save media? Skeptics weigh in.

Not everyone is buying into the iPad hoopla. A quick sampling of media thought leaders determined that many are skeptical, at least to some degree, about its potential as a high-tech elixir for all that ails their business. Here are their cautionary comments (edited in some cases for length): Richard Gingras, CEO of Salon Media, an Apple veteran and an early pioneer in portable computing:

How media can profit from new iPad

While it may be difficult for Apple’s new iPad to live up to the hype that accompanied its release today, there can be no doubt that this slick new device has raised the bar for interactive content delivery. Unfortunately, as discussed previously here, most media companies already are late in developing editorial and advertising strategies to meet this new challenge.Significantly, publishers

Next for MediaNews: Rolling up ailing dailies

Ailing newspapers in Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul and San Francisco eventually could shrink or shut down after MediaNews Group emerges from bankruptcy. The prospect of future seismic shifts in the newspaper industry from Salt Lake City to York, PA, were signaled last week when Affiliated Media, the parent of MediaNews, filed for bankruptcy to eliminate all but $165 million of its $930

Why Singleton will stay after bankruptcy

William Dean Singleton, the Evel Knievel of newspaper publishers, amazingly will remain at the helm of MediaNews Group in spite of a bankruptcy that will cost his lenders $750 million. In the latest act of a long and resilient career, Singleton is scheduled to continue as the chief executive of the company after it is reorganized under a prepackaged bankruptcy filed today. How does he

Climate chief admits error over report of Himalayan glaciers

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been forced to apologise for including in its 2007 report the claim that there was a "very high" chance of glaciers disappearing from the Himalayas by 2035.
Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, conceded yesterday that "the clear and well-established standards of evidence required by the IPCC procedures were not applied properly" when the claim was included in the 900-page assessment of the impacts of climate change.
The paragraph at issue reads: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."
Single source
The report's only cited source was a 2005 report by the environment group WWF, which in turn cited a 1999 article in New Scientist.
The New Scientist article quoted senior Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain, the then vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, who was writing a report on the Himalayas for the International Commission for Snow and Ice. It said, on the basis of an interview with Hasnain, that his report "indicates that all the glaciers in the central and eastern Himalayas could disappear by 2035". The claim did not, however, appear in the commission's report, which was only made available late last year.
This week a group of geographers, headed by Graham Cogley of Trent University at Peterborough in Ontario, Canada, have written to the journal Science pointing out that the claim "requires a 25-fold greater loss rate from 1999 to 2035 than that estimated for 1960 to 1999. It conflicts with knowledge of glacier-climate relationships, and is wrong."
The geographers add that the claim has "captured the global imagination and has been repeated in good faith often, including recently by the IPCC's chairman". The IPCC's errors "could have been avoided had the norms of scientific publication, including peer review and concentration upon peer-reviewed work, been respected", they say.
Several of those involved in the IPCC review process did try to question the 2035 date before it was published by the IPCC. Among them was Georg Kaser, a glaciologist from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a lead author of another section of the IPCC report. "I scanned the almost final draft at the end of 2006 and came across the 2035 reference." Kaser queried the reference but believes it was too late in the day for it to be reassessed.
Publicly available IPCC archives of the review process show that during the formal review, the Japanese government also questioned the 2035 claim. It commented: "This seems to be a very important statement. What is the confidence level/certainty?" Soon afterwards, a reference to the WWF report was added to the final draft. But the statement otherwise went unchanged.
Grey literature
One of the IPCC authors, Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, California, this week defended the use of so-called "grey" literature in IPCC reports. He told New Scientist that it was not possible to include only peer-reviewed research because, particularly in the chapters discussing the regional impacts of climate change, "most of the literature is not up to that gold standard".
The Himalaya claim appeared in the regional chapter on Asia. "There are only a few authors in each region, so it narrows the base of science," Schneider says.
This week Hasnain has claimed, for the first time, that he was misquoted by New Scientist in 1999.
New Scientist stands by its story and was not the only news outlet to publish Hasnain's claim.

Pay meter works at FT, but can it help NYT?

The metered pay system planned for the New York Times website is modeled on an approach pioneered by the Financial Times that appears to be generating some $26 million a year in web-subscription fees. If the pay plan were to be as successful at NYTimes.Com as it has been at FT.Com, the Times theoretically could sell close to $60 million in online subscriptions. But that doesn’t mean metered

MediaNews bankruptcy hit Hearst hardest

After plowing well over $1 billion into a decade-long effort to salvage its ill-starred purchase of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Hearst Corp. now stands to lose another $317 million in the upcoming bankruptcy of MediaNews Group. Hearst improbably put money into MediaNews, its direct competitor in northern California, in the hopes of reversing the almost continuous

Couch Potato Headed for Extinction

Is the couch potato – the much-derided passive spud, think Al Bundy, the TV-watching Mt. Rushmore from “Married With Children” – headed for extinction?



As someone in the business of advancing interactive television, I’d sure like to think so.  And I was given some encouragement by a piece I read the other today in the New York Times headlined “Now, Electronics that Obey Hand Gestures.”



The piece reported on a range of upcoming new consumer technologies and products that will, in the giddy words of the author, potential become:



“…one of the most significant changes to human-device interfaces since the mouse appeared next to computers in the early 1980s.”



Well, in my book the television set is still “a device” so this onrushing revolution is also poised to change the relationship between Mr. Bundy and his Mitsubishi.



Because once a viewer is connected to his TV-set by hand gestures – the same way we are intimately bonded to our iPhones, except writ larger (like 52”-inches plasma-large) – we can safely consign our unengaged Idaho to the Museum of Viewing History.



The Times pieces makes it clear that the hand-to-screen nexus isn’t a futuristic fantasy:



“In the coming months, the likes of Microsoft, Hitachi and major PC makers will begin selling devices that will allow people to flip channels on the TV or move documents on a computer monitor with simple hand gestures.”



So let’s get back around to what this means to me as an evangelist for the power of interactive television in all its potential: as a viewing experience, spur to programming innovation, and marketing tool.



I am massively encouraged by this development as a powerful augury for the rapid deployment of interactive TV because it points to the welcome emergence of a new viewing behavior.



There are many stars that have to align for the mass availability of interactive television, and pretty much all of the blinking balls of gas in the firmament are ready.  The technology and all the nuanced set-top integration is there.  The standards and protocols are in place. 



What’s missing?  I believe one of the stumbling blocks is emotional, a lack of belief that viewers will move from a lean-back to the much-discussed lean-forward experience.  That TV viewing can become, well, physical.



But innovations that profoundly re-shape the lean-back experience are around the corner.   Soon we’ll have “…TVs from Hitachi in Japan that will let people turn on their screens, scan through channels and change the volume on their sets with simple hand motions.”  And then there’s Microsoft’s Project Natal, a gaming system that “will require nothing more than the human body.”



Instead of a remote (and I mean that literally and figuratively) relationship between viewers and TV sets, technology is bringing us a new intimacy, a technological pas de deux.   This new behavior and new set of expectations that are associated with it will change the landscape that interactive television lives and breathes in.



Suddenly, we won’t be the voice in the wilderness arguing that television must move beyond the current archaic, one-way relationship it has with viewers.  Because we will be surrounded by a thrilling new marketplace filled with innovative ways to connect the hand to the screen.



Consider that the phone used to be a kind of lean-back instrument.  You held it to your ear and talked and listened through a device whose purpose was to be a conduit for sound frequencies.   Just as the TV set has always been a conduit for radio waves.



Then Apple came along and said hold on a second, the phone can be something far more than that.  And wow pow, shazam , a new behavior was born; we touch and interact with our phones as if we’re all gripped by Jobs-inspired OCD.



I smell something in the air that says a similar phenomenon is about to happen with our television sets.  In another context, David Pogue wrote “It is a very human, almost innate, urge — readers want to touch what they are seeking to learn.”



Interactive TV is the first innovation, actually, in the history of the medium that brings this primal instinct to life.  That’s why it’s a revolution waiting to happen, and the decades long belief  (and simultaneously, skepticism) embodied in the familiar locution “Not if, but when” is about to be answered by “Now.”  And who’d have thunk that it would be companies in a whole other industry – the interface business – to complete the transformation?



Then again, isn’t that how change happens?  The inevitable gets accelerated by the unexpected.

Adam Hanft

Hanft Projects – Agency to FourthWall Media

twitter.com/hanft

twitter.com/mrdictionary

www.gurumia,com

www.gurumia.com
to explore Bangladesh

in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

High debt plagues many more publishers

While nine newspaper companies burdened with a collective $16.7 billion in debt have sought refuge to date in Chapter 11, the march to bankruptcy court may not be over for the battered industry. Beyond the publishers who already have filed or announced plans to file for bankruptcy, seven publicly traded newspaper companies owe far more money than they should at a time they

MediaNews: No layoffs in bankruptcy, but...

Although no one at MediaNews Group will be laid off because of the upcoming bankruptcy of the parent company, employees were told there are no guarantees that there won’t be staff cuts in the future. “Our decisions about staffing have always been – and will continue to be – in response to business conditions, not our finances,” said a question-and-answer sheet distributed

Where are all the front-page ads?

Not too long ago, newspaper purists shuddered at publisher plans to begin putting advertising on their front pages. Turns out, they needn’t have worried. In a survey last week of the front pages of all of the U.S. dailies published at Newseum.Org, I found only 17% of the papers actually ran ads on their covers. This may reflect the general dearth of newspaper advertising

How long can publishers afford to print?

Second of two parts. The first part is here. Unless advertising pulls out of its spectacular nosedive and rapidly begins to grow again, publishers may find within a matter of years that they cannot afford to keep printing newspapers. While there may be a sufficiently large audience of people interested in buying newspapers for a decade or longer (see prior post) , the high fixed costs

good service

i appriciate - www.gurumia.com

in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

good service

i appriciate - www.gurumia.com

in reference to: Google (view on Google Sidewiki)

How long can print newspapers last?

First of two parts. The second part is here. Actuarially speaking, the population of print newspaper readers will drop by nearly a third within 15 years and probably be less than half the size it is today by the time 2040 rolls around. The inevitable – and seemingly irreversible – contraction of the newspaper-reading audience begins to answer one of the most frequently

Only 2.4% subscribe at newspaper pay sites

A puny 2.4% of print subscribers is the average number of people paying for online content at the handful of daily newspapers that have been bold enough to erect pay walls, according to a new survey. In the first comprehensive study of actual consumer willingness to pay for online news, ITZ/Belden Interactive delivered both good and bad tidings to publishers hoping to begin

Holy Moses! Media need to gear up for tablets

Most media companies are better equipped to deal with the tablets Moses hauled down Mount Sinai than the dazzling new gizmos coming from Apple, Microsoft and a host of other technovators. This has to change fast. As my friend Mark Potts ably noted here, tablets have the capability of revolutionizing newspapers, magazines, book publishing, television, movies,

Hefty cost cuts fueled surprise news-stock rally

Second of two parts. The first part is here. Call it heroic or barbaric. Call it strategic or suicidal. Call it whatever you want.But there can be no doubt that the chief reason for the improbable rally in newspaper stocks last year was the industry’s ability to radically shrink its cost structure.As reported here yesterday, the value of publishing shares counter-intuitively rose by an

News-stock surge: Boom or dead-cat bounce?

First of two parts. The second part is here. Although last year was the worst in the history of the newspaper industry, stock prices on average doubled for the publicly traded publishing companies fortunate enough to avoid bankruptcy. The boom could be interpreted as a vote of confidence from Wall Street in the battered industry. Or, it could be a dead-cat bounce, an