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JP Digital Digest: Thinking about paywalls? Read this first...

JP Digital Digest: Thinking about paywalls? Read this first...

This is a really article, I got some ideas from it. Steve Outing talked about paywall, and he gave some tips for paywall, and he thought paywall will only work in certain markets.

Here is some tips for protecting newspaper:

1. Offer paid subscriptions to the newspaper that also include free access to a digital-replica edition.

2. Offer paid digital-replica edition subscriptions that mimic the paper in electronic form, for those second-home owners in the area and others who want to keep up with...news and developments and prefer not to receive the print edition by mail when the news is several days old.

3. Continue to keep all your Web site content -- including locally produced news -- free to all. And yes, that includes print subscribers who might be tempted to save money, cancel the print edition, and rely on the free Web site.

4. Have your Web manager focus on better ad targeting, in order to identify out-of-area users as potential tourists interested in hotels, camping, excursions, etc. and show them relevant ads.

5. Most importantly, devise other reasons for paying print and/or digital subscribers to keep paying -- primarily by value-added online, digital, mobile and even physical extras not available to non-paying users of the Web site.

Picture via Wikimedia Commons

Should we put paywall to mobile?

Google and Twitter (Wray, online, 2009)responded for the argument. They though the charge online could not work in this digital media era. As a website of searching and sharing, the Google and Twitter will not work as the “free” time, and they referred to the power of sharing. But, if someone bought an article on The Times, and he may sharing on the Facebook or Twitter, so that the Murdoch can get money form other readers.

The social bookmarking and blogs are the biggest challenge for charging online content. A Research reported that 90% consumers won't pay for online news, and 86% of the 16-24 age claimed they never to pay online (online, 2009).

Moreover, The Guardian said that they have no new paywall, and they will not join the Murdoch’ charging online (online, 2009). It means that reader will read on the free online news not on the charge online news, and Murdoch will lose readership and advertising.

The media company could consider about the mobile charging. Like the FT, FT as new apps to IPhone, there are three articles are free, and other article are paid for, but the FT still get loyal customers (online, 2009).

A survey showed that IPhone users are happier to pay for online (Wray, online, 2009), and China mobile gained 10 million customers for mobile news (online, 2009). It means that the market of mobile user is a place the charging online should be work.

Picture via Wikimedia Commons

Web first strategy

The reverse publication is a good way to combine online and print. Reverse publication is web first strategy, and print company put news online first. “This means having reporters and editors think first about reporting and producing text and multimedia stories for the web, then writing a text story for the print edition (Grabowicz, Stevens, Rue & Monti, online, 2009)”.

The feature of web first is speed. People could read news at first time, and it is easy for people to catch and undestand the news. The TOB.com launched and used web first strategy of online newspaper website in 2000 (Grabowicz, Stevens, Rue & Monti, online, 2009), and The Guardian decided online first in 2006 (Sweney, online, 2006). The two examples show that the web first strategy widely, and it create a huge readership and making advertising revenue from online.

However, the web first is not good for print. Because it is much quick than newspaper, people will focus on the online news instead of waiting for newspaper. So that the circulation of print will goes down. Mike Alexieff said that: “web is free and storied are speed, why pay for a late news on newspaper (edited by Patten, online, 2008)?”

The advertising is not good for print, online news attracted many advertisers and the classify ads going online. The advertising revenue is almost the mainly, even only revenue for online, so the “dual product” (Doyle, 2002) could not suitable for online.

At the same time, the geography changed, the economies of scale will total different, such as regional newspaper, Lancashire Evening Post. On other side, the online news still has some problems. Even though the online news is speed, it not deep discussion on that news, it’s just a brief induction, and somebody would doubt the truth of the report. And also it’s not work for old people and loyal customers.

Picture via Wikimedia Commons

Commercially funded TV and Public service TV

With the development of economics, some large media companies have enough money to buy, merger or build a TV station. But the first TV is public service TV. In developed country, the commercial TV has a big market, and people like the programmes of it. While, it rare and not popular in most developing and ‘Third Word’ countries, because government ‘controlling’ the TV station.

The common point of commercial TV and public TV is that the quality of the programme, presentation of the report and the principle of journalism are no fundamental difference. On the other hand, the public TV is a government-funded service for the public. The commercial TV is client-oriented (Bai Du net, 2008, online).

Professor Zhan Li said that the commercial television is by capitalists or consortia, in order to ad-based revenue, and use the pornography, violence, crime and vulgar entertainment programmes to reach profit, but it also meet people’s demand. The public television refers to the national assembly by the government. It is funded by fees paid by the public and state funding, some supported by advertising revenue. The purpose is to make television services in strict accordance with the public, so that raise people's level of education by watching TV, the promotion of country development and the provision of high ideals and goals of entertainment( Mao, 2005, online).

Even though the commercial TV makes profit as purpose, it can not be denied the position that in people’s daily lives. Commercial TV offers a lot of entertainment for people to relax. Furthermore, the commercial television also made a lot of reform. For example, FOX television that is under News Corporation also has a series of non-pure entertainment programmes, such as news programme. The aim is to reach the audience's request, and change the commercial television’s original impression in the hearts of the most public.

Picture via Wikimedia Commons

China -- web is growing fast

Report of the Internet development of China in 2009.

The repeot is in Chinese, so I just translate some important part. More to see: http://www.gmw.cn/content/2010-01/22/content_1043010.htm

1. To December 30, 2009, the scale of China's Internet users reached 384 million people, coverage reached 28.9%. Internet users increase of 8,600 people by the end of 2008, annual growth rate of 28.9%, the scale of growth in Internet users in China has slowed down.

2.Broadband users reach 346 million people, compared with 2008, growth of 76 million. Although China's broadband penetration is high, but broadband Internet access speeds lagging far behind the developed countries.

3. The scale of China's mobile Internet users increase of 120 million, 2.33 million people, accounting for 60.8% of Internet users. There are 30.7 million users who only use mobile Internet, accounting for 8% of Internet users. Mobile Internet users access into a new growth point.

4. The Internet users in country reached 106.81 million, accounting for 27.8% of Internet users. An increase of 26.3%.

5.The proportions of using Internet at home continue to increase, in 2009, more than 80% (83.2%) of Internet users at home.

The problem of spread of mobile phone

Through mobile phone expand a new time of media, but there are also some problems. From these problems, we can use the mobile phone better and we can improve it.

①SMS spam
It is an indisputable fact that SMS have become a convenient way to communicate, but since the date of birth there are many SMS spam of it. Look at current situation and the proliferation of great potential, which will undoubtedly the lives of people a lot of distress.

“Utility messages”--Manufacturing emotional pressure; “bad messages”--audio-visual space pollution; “advertising messages”--forced brainwashing; “illegal messages”—harm the public.
SMS to refuse treatment has reached the point of no delay. But on the current situation, this work is not an easy task. We must have a strong legal guarantee to maintain common messages platform of the legitimate and normal.

②Copyright issues
Media and the problem of copyright is a more sensitive topic, in recent years, with the emergence of new media, the copyright issues always appear. There is growing awareness that the media culture should be protected by law, a person shall reap the profits, and the maintenance of reasonable and objective conditions for fair competition in the industry is to ensure the healthy growth of the key.

Pference: Xiaoyu Tong, Ji Cai & Lei Zhang (2006), The Principle Fifth media, China Telegraph Press, China

http://www.china.com.cn/v/news/china/2009-03/17/content_17454277.htm

Media companies in credit crunch

News organisation is changing the distribution models. Some companies will choose the online to maintain profit, and they wanted to use the digital skills to get profit. The SEO is way to get more readership. SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization, is a technical skill for online marketing (http://www.webconfs.com/, 2009) The SEO help the website to promote itself and it will show the ranking of the website, and the ranking shows the popularity of that website.

The SEO will help media company gain the readership when readers search online. Readers could search online from every place of the whole world, and it is different from traditional market (http://www.primaryposition.com/, 2009). Increased internet exposure is one of the SEO’s advantages. When people search online, they will prefer the high ranking website than low ranking’s, so that, the high ranking website could attract more readership.

The paid form distribution is mainly focus on online because of Murdoch situation. Murdoch thought that:” content is not free and quality journalism is not cheap." Some people from free newspapers and free website are though that charging online will not work because of the power of “sharing”. People will share content on the Facebook or Twitter. The Wall Street Journal’s online made money online, but Microsoft's online literary magazine Slate lost money online. So the charging online could improve the news quality, because media company will pay money to train journalist and create good news.

Reference: http://www.techcn.com.cn/index.php?doc-view-130731

Citizen journalist cf. professional

To compare the citizen journalist and professional journalist, they are different but interdependent with each other. For the quality of news, professional journalist could report in-deepth. The main stream media have money to support journalist to find deep report with a story. But the citizen journalist cannot afford for the money. For the control and training, professional journalist are better than citizen journalist.

However, citizen journalist could have more communication with readers. They publish articles on the websites at the first time, and they can manage their blog, so they can communicate with reader directly. The professional journalist put story on newspaper and online, they can only read the comments late and have little responds. What’s more, citizen journalist could provide a wide range of topics to meet the readers’ needs, so the “long tail” (Anderson, 2006) could work on citizen journalist. But the professional journalist only has their own area to report, and the topics will less than citizen journalist.

In addition, the main stream media are relying on citizen journalist. The professional journalist will look at Twitter or Facebook everyday, and check what the pubic are talking about. So the professional journalist will decide what story to report, and they can touch with people. At the same time, citizen journalist can get some news and professional tips from professional journalist.

Picture via Wikimedia Commons

Reference:

Allan & Thorsen (2009),. In citizen Journalism , Peter Lang, New York,

Hard news and soft news

There have two types of news story; they are hard news and soft news. Hard new generally refers to up-to-the-minute news and events that are reported immediately, while soft news is background information or human-interest stories. The topic of the soft news is not very serious. The hard news contains Politics, war, economics and crime, and the soft news is arts, entertainment and lifestyles.

Hard news has the following three characteristics: it directly relates to people vital interests and the survival of people; for personal development, people do everything possible to understand it; it has strong timing, expired news is completely worthless. So in the dissemination of information it should mainly based on hard news.

Soft news can be developed greatly by the changing of people’s life. People like celebrity gossip rather than policy news. At the same time, the soft news could gain a lot of advertising revenue and it could bring profit to the media company. However the hard news mostly about what happened of the society and the society cannot live without hard news.

Reference:
Bob, F., Martin, H., Mark, H., Marie, K. & John, E. R. (2005:66), Key Concepts in Journalism Studies, S AGE, London

Bob, F., Martin, H., Mark, H., Marie, K. & John, E. R. (2005:85), Key Concepts in Journalism Studies, S AGE, London

http://image.baidu.com/i?ct=503316480&z=0&tn=baiduimagedetail&word=%B1%A8%D6%BD&in=7993&cl=2&cm=1&sc=0&lm=-1&pn=7&rn=1&di=1888196835&ln=2000&fr=&ic=0&s=0&se=1

Paywall (1) -- What is paywall

Paywall is a number of mechanisms, different contents, and one must pay for other content from the network (Jon, online, 2009). Harpreet.seehra said that:”It’s often used by magazines or newspapers as an online business model trying to claw back income from readers who have abandoned buying paper copies of their titles(online, 2009).” Jargon thought that:” A website that restricts access to certain content only to paid subscribers (online, 2009).” So it seems that, the paywall is a way of making money from online for the content.

What is citizen journalists

With the development of online – web 3.0 and digital skills, many people use blog to publish their report and opinions on websites, and they can share the content to others. The citizen journalist affects professional journalist and media industry. This essay will talk about the citizen journalist and new online strategy.

Citizen Journalism is an evolving form of journalism through user generated content. (http://www.merinews.co/, 2009) The citizen journalists living in all sectors of society, so they have the ability to record what happened in the society. Citizen journalist expresses things around them or in this society. They often use digital platforms, like blog, Facebook, Twitter to publish the articles.

As a complement of mass media, citizen journalist in order to provide more media source, and interact with the mass media. Citizen journalists offer inexhaustible "source." for traditional media. In general, the mass media has its own dedicated team of professional journalists, but the power of professional journalists are limited, and any advanced technologies can not guarantee that professional journalists can record everything. The citizen journalist can make up for the lack of mass media resource.

Reference: http://www.eywedu.com/Zgbj/zgbi2006/zgbi20060511.html

http://www.merinews.com/citizen_journalism.jsp

Allan & Thorsen (2009),. In citizen Journalism , Peter Lang, New York

Digital strategy of News Corporation

In order to get more profit, many large media company began to enter the online industry, and they put a lot of money to make sure the position on online. Of course, as one of the large company, News Corporation also made effort on it.

Because the internet is in the ascendant and "Media Empire" News Corporation is full of vigor and it moves the strategic stress into the internet. News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said that the next few years, the News Corporation will have an increase of 10 billion dollars, continue to expand business of networks and strive to become the” outstanding" in this field. News Corporation’s investment which is used to develop the internet will increase to 20 million. The group believes that in view of the rapid growth of Internet advertising and changing of the people's viewing habits, the News Corporation has to adjust to the wave of change.

Fox Interactive Media was founded in July 2005 and has acquired several Internet companies. In addition to these enterprises, News Corporations found that the combination of relevant content and quality is most powerful, it makes truly profitable. Murdoch thought that the challenge over the coming month is to establish a common navigation between these enterprises and existing webs. It allows users to switch to-and-fro various attributes. The objective of the conglomerate is to make up for the shortages and provide the best internet experience at any time.

Reference: http://ent.enorth.com.cn/system/2008/10/30/003749894.shtml

4 business models for online business

The development of science, technology and digital created the Internet and the Internet economy. As a kind of journalism products, the Internet's economic model has a certain difference with other journalism products. Internet economy is more interactive, personalized, virtual sex and globalization. Internet economy is not only confined to the audience and advertising, and there are other ways to obtain profits.

There are four business models for online business :

Profitable way 1: C2C (consumer to consumer) model
C2C stands for consumer to consumer. This model is mainly in the form of personal auction. The world famous C2C sites are eBay, Google and yahoo. The operation of such sites is hard. It is hard to establish credibility and the cost of operation and promotion is very high.

Profitable way 2: online ads
It is the common way to make profits from online ads. It has diversified forms, for example banner, logo, flash multimedia animation, online video and so on. From the view of charging, now charging based on click rate is very popular. Search engine like Google and BaiDu mainly take advantage of such ads. In 2005 the revenue of Google is 3.1 billion dollars, most of they originate from this kind of ads.

Profitable way 3: online retailing (B2C)
When talk about the online retailing, the initial response is Amazon. Amazon is the biggest online retail store in the world. Last year the revenue of Amazon was more than 6.9 billion dollars. Usually the online retailing has two ways to operation: one is to distribute your own products through the internet, another way is to build retail platform and help other people to sell their products through your site.

Profitable way 4: B2B
B2B stands for business to business. That’s to say the business between manufactory. Common parlance, the buyers and sellers ate both businesses. They make use of internet and different business net platform to complete the process of deal. This can help enterprises to reduce costs.

The E-paper

This video is quite clear to explain what is e-paper, and how does it work. The e-paper was produced by technology, and it may helps print.

Electronic paper, e-paper or electronic ink display is a display technology designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper.

E-paper has broken the traditional model of reading. Some people think that E-paper will replace paper appears in people's lives, and more environmentally friendly. But I think not. Newspapers play irreplaceable role in people's lives.

Although the newspaper really done some damage on the environment, but many newspapers are recycled. And, with the development of electronic, newspapers have indeed been some impact, but newspapers are still reading way of many people choice.

However, E-paper have own benefits and provides a reference for the future transformation of the newspaper. If the newspaper agencies publish some own or cooperative E-paper, so what will happen?