Video Plays Key Role In Digital Magazine Future

ALTHOUGH ONLINE VIDEO ISN'T YET a profit center for many magazine publishers, it should achieve profitability in the near future, according to a panel of magazine executives discussing online video at "Magazines 24/7," a conference hosted by the Magazine Publishers of America in Manhattan on Tuesday. One key was closing the gap between online video ad rates and those of traditional TV.

Paul Maidment, the editor of Forbes.com and executive editor of Forbes magazine, noted that Forbes.com's video streams reach more daily viewers than CNBC's traditional TV ops. But "they still get ad revenue in multiples, and multiples of multiples" of what Forbes receives, Maidment said. Even if online video doesn't achieve parity with traditional TV, the disparity suggests there is "a big pot of money out there" for magazines delivering online video.

In the short term, magazines will continue delivering and expanding their online video content even if it isn't a big profit center, said Todd Unger, senior vice president of Time4 Digital, recently acquired by Bonnier. "If we don't provide it," he added, "there are people in these verticals" that will. Likewise, Ann Shoket, editor in chief of Seventeen magazine, warned: "If you don't have video, you can't have viewers. It's as simple as that."

Asked what form effective video advertising will finally take, Maidment conceded, "no one has yet found a workable advertising model. At the moment, we're mimicking TV." However, this is already changing, he noted, predicting that ads will "get shorter and shorter ... you're now seeing pre-rolls getting down to three seconds. You'll see more things heading that way."

Source: OnlineMediaDaily

More Journalists Join Political News Venture

Voilà un exemple intéressant qui devrait inspirer la communauté des journalistes qui s'inquiète ou pire, ne verrait rien venir...

Mike Allen, a reporter who covers the White House for Time magazine, and Roger Simon, the chief political correspondent for Bloomberg News, are joining the new multimedia political news venture being overseen by two former Washington Post journalists.

That new enterprise now has a name — The Politico, which is its newspaper, and thepolitico.com, its Web site. The name supplants The Capitol Leader, which had been its working title until it broadened in scope.

Both the newspaper and Web site are to begin publication on Jan. 23, the date of the president’s State of the Union address, one of the most-covered rituals on the Washington political calendar. In addition to writing about Congress, The Politico will focus on the 2008 presidential campaign.

The moves by Mr. Allen, 42, and Mr. Simon, 58, mark another step by traditional “old media” journalists toward a “new media” venture that is largely online, although both are writing or have written for the Web, and Mr. Allen will stay in Time magazine’s print version with a new column about the White House. The Politico is being financed by the deep pockets of Allbritton Communications and overseen by John Harris, the former political editor of The Washington Post, and Jim VandeHei, a former national political reporter for The Post.

Mr. VandeHei said that although The Politico is entering a field crowded with sources of political news, it will try to distinguish itself by hiring a half-dozen reporters who have established reputations, as well as about 15 or 20 energetic journalists in their 20s and 30s who are building their careers and are eager to break news.

“What we can add is fact-based content, and that’s what people on opinion pages and blogs feed off of,” he said. He said Politico reporters would travel on campaign planes, write with a conversational tone, send back video and tell readers things that traditional reporters tend to talk about but not to write about. The staff will also make appearances on CBS News.

Mr. VandeHei said that Mr. Allen was essentially the “prototype” for the sort of journalist The Politico is seeking. “He’s embraced the Web, he’s embraced technology, he goes on television and he breaks news,” Mr. VandeHei said. “That’s where journalism is headed.”

Mr. Allen is leaving a magazine whose print circulation is declining, but which still has more than 3.2 million paying weekly subscribers and a total weekly readership — including passed-along copies — of more than 19 million. The magazine has also invested heavily in its Web site, time.com, which has 3.9 million unique monthly users.

Mr. Allen, who joined Time in August 2005 from The Washington Post, will become The Politico’s chief political correspondent. He said in an e-mail that Time was “the world’s most essential magazine” but that The Politico was the first time that “a political newspaper and Web site will have the same DNA.”

Mr. Simon, chief political correspondent for Bloomberg, the financial news service, will become a political columnist. He said that he perceived Allbritton as having a good business plan, and while there was some risk involved in a startup, “this venture is as secure as any media venture out there and more secure than some.” He also said that life should not be only about avoiding risk but having fun. “We won’t re-invent the wheel,” he said, “we’ll just do it better.”

(NewYorkTimes)

The Small Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is pushing more news coverage to its Web site and offering more space for analysis in a smaller-sized newspaper

We will know for sure when it launches on Jan. 2, but the revamped, skinnier Wall Street Journal will be the first major American paper to push significant portions of traditional newspaper functions onto the Web. Or so goes the rhetoric at this conceptual stage. Journal executives promise to direct more breaking and this-happened-yesterday news to its well-trafficked Web site, leaving the paper itself to focus more on what the news means.

This is a much nicer framework for the Journal's management to erect around the move than if they were merely to admit they're chasing cost savings. The Journal's redesign will squeeze its pages, which will sport five columns of text instead of its current six, and net the company $18 million in newsprint-related savings. Last year the segment at Dow Jones & Co., of which the Journal is by far the largest entity, lost money. It's expected to be profitable this year, but publisher Gordon Crovitz admits the Journal's profit margin "is not what it should be." Staffers, naturally, brace for job cuts, a topic Crovitz won't address.

And hence the changes. In the U.S., there is the five-column, skinny broadsheet, like the Chicago Tribune and USA Today, and there is the denser and wider six-column format of The New York Times and WSJ. This extra width makes the Journal's print edition that much more satisfying for gray-haired legacy-media types like, oh, myself. It also makes it a pain to print and distribute in certain areas. No printing plant in Hawaii, for instance, can handle the Journal's current dimensions, which means the Journal must fly in its copies every day, which must cost an amount that I am glad I don't have to justify to my corporate overlords. Six columns also means a nonstandard ad size. There were times when the Journal could bear these costs of inconvenience, but there was also a time when boxers didn't use gloves. (The Times has plans to shrink its page size as well.)

Not the Same Animal

All that said, the Journal plays a different game than any other American newspaper. It's the only one that can charge $99 for a year's worth of its Web site. It has long covered a space in which the shelf life of a scoop is measured in minutes, so it has pushed more breaking news to its Web site for much longer than other dailies. This gets into why—if I may get simultaneously retrospective and futuristic—it now seems inevitable that whatever will happen to news will happen to business news first. In business, information is literally currency. If your job touches on investing in any way, not reading the Journal can cost you enormously, in the same way that getting certain data first can make you rich. This made the investment class among the earliest adopters of ultradigitized and BlackBerried media habits. Thus the Journal's new approach follows its readers even as it leads U.S. newspapers. It is commendable that the Journal is shoving summation-news out of its newspaper pages, but perhaps the more piquant question is: What took them so long? (The answers may have to do with journalistic habit and institutional sclerosis—which, of course, are hardly exclusive to the Journal.)

The business of business news hasn't been a happy one of late. (Major exception: CNBC, which is having a banner year.) But new entrants, like upcoming magazine Condé Nast Portfolio, pile in for one crucial reason: Men's attention to old-school media may well be waning, but business remains one of the best ways to reach affluent males. Thus, the moves to protect and squeeze more out of existing franchises. On the day the Journal unveiled its redesign, CNBC announced a beefed-up Web site, including a premium pay area. "We know we are getting new competition next year," NBC Universal Television Group CEO Jeff Zucker told an investor conference that day. He means, of course, the still-unannounced Fox business channel, for which some expect a more aggressive talent search to begin early next year. The business of business news may not be great, but it will be one of the most interesting media arenas in '07.

(BusinessWeekOnline)