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MediaShift: On-Demand Magazine Publishing

2 Feb

I have a new post up at MediaShift covering some of the new opportunities in on-demand magazine publishing. Here’s a favorite selection from the piece:

“I don’t think that computers and the Internet make real people’s need for real physical media go away,” said Powazek of MagCloud. “There’s content that deserves to be archived in print and some that doesn’t. For moment to moment updates about news, the web does that really well, but longer-lasting community-based niche content will still have a home in print. I hope that some magazines that have fallen on hard times will find their way to MagCloud and publish their whole back catalog there.”

So which magazines deserve to stay in print? As environmental resources become more precious and distribution channels multiply, we’ll have to determine what content deserves print status.

I also see a lot of potential in these on-demand services for student publications. Though that wasn’t a focus of this piece, it would be hugely convenient for journalism educators to use on-demand publishing to create student magazines or other collections of student work. Students could be provided copies and then order additional copies themselves to distribute to friends and family, while readers elsewhere in the world could even become fans. This seems like a cost-effective and innovative way to create student projects.

Will Young People Pay for News?

20 Jan

My students won’t pay for the New York Times.

When it implements its metered system in 2011, the New York Times is probably going to lose some of its most needed readers – young people who are slowly building an appetite for news.

I hope I’m wrong, and if I am, maybe some of my students or other young people will comment here and set me straight. But I think that today’s youth are so accustomed to free content, news and otherwise, that it will be difficult to change their ways and begin asking them to pay for news.

Photo by Flickr user striatic.

My students are not interested in paying for news, or for the entertainment they value: music or movies or TV shows. They’re used to getting all of these for free, either legally from sites like Hulu or through less ethical channels. I’ve asked them semester after semester about these issues, and they just aren’t willing to pay for any of it. They have always read news for free online, and asking them to pay is going to be a difficult demand.

It seems to me that a good starting point for getting young people to pay for news is to work with formats they have always paid for. For example, my students with iPhones are used to paying for apps. They don’t pay much for them, of course, but they do shell out a few dollars here and there. This is a media format that has always cost them money – not a new imposition of charges that will be seen as exactly that, an imposition and an “unfair” change in news organizations’ policies.

Working on young audiences first through these more familiar paid formats might be one strategy to open their minds to the need to pay for news. For example, The Guardian‘s iPhone app is $3.99, and may at some point involve further subscription fees. The McSweeney’s app is $5.99 and requires later renewals to keep new content coming. And yet the New York Times app is free. This seems like a missed opportunity to begin getting young people to pay for news access.

Photo by Flickr user LoveSystems.

I’m not personally opposed to the NYT‘s metering policy; I read the site extensively every day and will certainly end up paying for their content. I believe that if we want good journalism in the future, we have to put our money where it counts. I don’t think news organizations are obligated to provide their product for free, and I’d rather pay a reasonable amount for news than have it become solely reliant on advertising revenue and thereby even more subject to advertisers’ whims.

However, I’ve been socialized into believing that because I grew up in a family where newspapers showed up on the breakfast table daily, because I was required to engage with news throughout my education, and (especially) because I went on to graduate school in journalism and now teach it. I know that not everyone shares these values.

Therefore, I’d argue that beginning to ask younger generations to pay for online news – or at least the current generation of young people that is going to be most startled by this transition – needs to be accompanied by education about the value of journalism to our society. These young people, I fear, will be doubly skeptical of journalism: first because of the general public doubts about the value of the news media, and second because of what they may perceive as a “demand” for their money in return for online news.

Overcoming these doubts will require a great effort of education and positive public outreach on the part of the news organizations that hope to sell news to all their potential customers, young and old.

Crowdfunding News and the “News Mutual Fund”

4 Dec

I’ve been looking lately at some of the “crowdfunding” models for journalism, in which audience members donate money to specific stories whose production they want to support. Here’s my idea for a “news mutual fund” – a concept slightly different from the crowdfunding models I’ve seen so far.

One well-known crowdfunding project for journalism is Spot.Us. This organization provides a platform for public donations to proposed stories in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. Potential donors can read a pitch for the story, follow the reporter’s blog and see other content related to the proposed story.

The Spot.Us site.

I’m afraid, though, that it’s a bit optimistic to expect the audience to evaluate, donate to, and follow up on stories at the international, national, state and local levels, as would really be needed to make this model widespread and effective throughout journalism. Not only is it a financial commitment, but it’s also a time commitment that goes beyond what most people will consider for news. I doubt most people will make this investment in news, especially given current levels of public appreciation for journalism.

It seems to me that if this model is to succeed, it needs to look at another model of investments that has been very successful: the mutual fund. As I see it, today’s crowdfunding possibilities – limited as they are – are like individual stock investments, with a “socially responsible investing” angle. A donor chooses to donate to X story because he or she feels that it has long-term value for a personal information “portfolio” and for a community.

But just like investing in individual stocks, picking those stories is a lot of work. People like mutual funds for their financial investments because they eliminate that detailed effort. In a mutual fund, a trusted manager with a proven track record is given funds to allocate based on a chosen model of investment. Many different mutual funds exist: some that are more risky, some that are less so, some that invest in particular industries and some that express particular ideological perspectives.

Maybe this is how crowdfunding could be approached – as a news mutual fund, rather than as a stock-picking process. Spot.Us does provide an option to simply donate money and allow the organization to choose where the funds are assigned. But little transparency is provided – as far as I can tell – as to how that selection is made.

In a news mutual fund, a manager would determine where news investors’ money was directed according to defined story selection parameters.

Sound like an editor? Does a news mutual fund sound a bit like buying a newspaper subscription and hoping your money goes to the “right” stories? Sure.

But most of the audience doesn’t know how editors select stories, and they have never had any input into that process. A more open “news mutual fund” process would lead to greater credibility and audience engagement, while eliminating the detail work on the audience’s behalf of doing the story selection work themselves. It would also maintain a degree of audience accountability for the manager, because if stories began to deviate from the investors’ chosen parameters, they could redirect their money to a different news fund.

I’m sure there are weaknesses to this model as well, just as there are in mutual fund investing, so the option to invest in individual stories – some of which could be collaborations among news producers – should still be available.

In a post on MediaShift, Spot.Us founder David Cohn noted that the site was able to fully fund a project that did not yet have a reporter assigned to it, meaning that the site’s managers developed the idea and then, once it was funded, could hire a freelancer to work on it. He says that the logistics of this process are much easier for the site, and also open up the chance to market the story to traditional news organizations that could reimburse Spot.Us its funding in exchange for first publication rights to the story. So here’s a case where Spot.Us could operate like the news mutual fund manager that I’m envisioning here. They control the funds and their allocation, and have already told the audience how this money will be spent. The development of the story, its assignment and its distribution would ideally be equally transparent through updates provided on the site.

The crowdfunding model for journalism is still in its early days, and there will no doubt be lots of experimentation. Testing the public’s willingness to invest in news is a daunting (and somewhat frightening) task, but with a variety of approaches, it might turn out to be an exciting and engaging process for journalists and the audience both.

Making a Subscription a Source of Pride

30 Oct

“Engagement” is a buzzword in discussions of the survival of print media. In a world of shiny digital objects that distract readers from traditional print media, readers have to be more engrossed and invested in their uses of print, both within the print product and when they visit affiliated Web sites. (I wrote about this concept a bit in a recent MediaShift post with regard to the late Gourmet.)

natl geo

National Geographic maps. Photo by Flickr user retro_traveler.

One of my favorite books to pick up on occasion is a heavy, glossy volume called Magazines that Make History by Norberto Angeletti and Alberto Oliva. Browsing through it today, an interesting paragraph on National Geographic jumped out at me:

To [Alexander Graham Bell, who became president of the National Geographic Society in 1897], the National Geographic Magazine was a way to build a larger organization that would welcome into Society membership everyone interested in the world, exploration, and discovery. Until then, the privilege of contributing to the grand private expeditions that fascinated the nineteenth-century public or to accounts of unknown peoples, inaccessible places, and stern trials to overcome had been reserved to men of science and men of wealth. Bell understood that, even for the simplest of men, supporting these investigations was a source of pride. So he set out to open the Society’s rosters to all who were willing to contribute $2 a year for a magazine subscription, whether they were scientists or schoolmasters, aristocrats or artisans. Some members of the board of trustees opposed the proposal vigorously, but in the end it carried.

After starting this new program and hiring a new editor in 1899, the society and the magazine’s readership grew nearly tenfold by late 1905, to almost 11,500 members, say Angeletti and Oliva.

By opening the opportunity to contribute to previously inaccessible projects, National Geographic increased its readers’ investment – literal and figurative – in the magazine. Both magazines and newspapers today could experiment with similar models, by having readers contribute financial resources or time to larger projects as well as adding content to digital or print editions.

Newspapers may have a hard time creating projects like this out of fear of losing their purported objectivity. However, one possible reason for declining news readership could be the sense among the audience that their subscriptions provide them with little information that actually can be used to make a difference in their communities.

Civic journalism was (is?) an effort to include the public in the development of news content so it would better suit their communities’ needs. Citizen journalism, the actual production of news by citizens, is a more direct way to incorporate readers’ interests, as is crowdsourcing journalistic projects.

One magazine that has adopted a model similar to that of National Geographic is Good, which donates all subscription proceeds to a charity selected by the subscriber. The subscriber also chooses the price: $10, $20 or $50.

Good‘s rationale [PDF] is that magazines make so little on their subscriptions anyway that it’s worthwhile to make the subscription fee a donation, then sell advertising to pay the bills. Good has now donated over a million dollars to various charities using this method, while also drawing a spendy, attractive audience with a $100,000 household income.

Clearly, something about this model is working, and while Good‘s content is strong and interesting, the magazine is also likely pulling in readers through a sense of shared investment in social justice.

good party

Good Magazine also has events where readers and Web users can gather. Photo by Flickr user chuck_heaton.

So what else can print media do to create a shared participation in a mission, one that makes reading and continued subscription worthwhile? This task goes beyond just making a Web site interactive or encouraging reader submission of content. It’s a feeling of community and purpose that is intangible, but may be crucial to sustaining an active readership.

Magazine Customization: Avoid New Yorker Syndrome

12 Oct

Upon the demise of Gourmet this week, I’ve been pondering the reasons why some magazines have stayed in my life and others I’ve canceled without ever looking back. A few that didn’t make it lost me simply because they published too frequently, despite quality content.

I feel like a journalistic impostor for admitting this, but that sad category of cancellations included the New Yorker and Rolling Stone.

Magazine overload: ur doin it rite. Photo by Flickr user Tiago Ribeiro.

Magazine overload: ur doin it rite. Photo by Flickr user Tiago Ribeiro.

As much as I loved the content of those magazines, I developed a serious problem. There was just too much to read in their weekly issues, in addition to all my other print and online reading.

I tried valiantly to keep up, but a teetering stack of these magazines grew, with lopsided layers of oversized Rolling Stones concealing multiple New Yorkers. The glossy pages threatened an avalanche at any moment. And, when we moved from Texas to California, the entire pile hit the recycle bin. I couldn’t bear the guilt any more (nor another heavy box of paper).

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has suffered from New Yorker Syndrome. In fact, I know I’m not. A college friend and fellow literary magazine editor posted on her blog recently that she sacrificed her New Yorkers to the demands of a move as well. I felt better.

But what if these weekly publications took an alternative publishing approach using digital reader feedback and customization?

I’d like to see weekly and biweekly magazines offer a monthly or bimonthly digest version of their publications that would feature a personalized selection of their articles published within that period. The digest could be standardized for all recipients or (even better) could be customized for each edition based on a pre-publication online form.

For each digest, a magazine could send me a link to an online form where I’d check off the content I wanted from what was planned for that month. Additional items might be included in everyone’s issues by default, such as recurring columns or pieces introducing new authors and topics. Then, I’d be mailed (or would digitally receive) my custom digest, ideally on a time interval that I specified.

Maybe I’d even pay for the magazine based on the number of items I selected from my customization form, with a certain minimum charge, of course. And naturally, it would likely still contain ads (though for an additional charge, I could perhaps opt for an ad-free edition).

The data a magazine could gather about me through this customization process would be extremely specific, allowing advertisers to target me almost perfectly (too perfectly, perhaps). It would be a much more effective customization than what we saw in Mine, that flawed recent experiment by Time. I was actually repulsed by the issue of Mine that I received. It assumed that because I was female, every ad needed to mention how much I liked shoes or how many grocery bags would fit in a Lexus. Incredibly annoying – and that was before I saw how outdated and uninteresting the actual content was.

Magazines need to find some new ways to innovate. Why not let readers suffering from information overload choose the best a magazine has to offer for their unique interests, on a schedule that fits their needs? Advances in on-demand and lower-cost printing technologies can surely make this happen (see MagCloud for proof). A truly customized magazine is a lot less likely to end up stalled in a dusty pile by the bed, like my poor old New Yorkers.

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