John Arthur, the executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, was let go this week. The editor, Russ Stanton, said in a memo "we differ on the best approach to reaching our goals." At least, he conceded, "this decision is a difficult one."
I don't know Russ Stanton. But I know John Arthur. And his departure is yet another nail in the coffin of the Los Angeles Times. The "velvet coffin"--a term used to describe the place in the 80's and 90's--has become a real empty coffin, just waiting for the body.
John and I worked together when he was editor of the Valley Edition of The Times, and I was its president. I've continued to keep track of his excellent work ever since. I count him as a good friend.
He is a journalist's journalist. Not flashy. Solid. Analytical. Aggressive, but thoughtful. The fact that the Los Angeles Times will no longer have him around to decide what news goes on the front page means that its readers will be short shrifted, and the reporters and editors there will lose a great mentor and teacher.
Perhaps it is inevitable, this continuing drain of top-notch talent out of the print newspaper business. But it's not fun to watch.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
The Web's Dirty Little Secret: Flawed Measurement
Close readers of this space will recall that when I wrote about the decision by the Seattle Post Intelligencer to go web only, I reported widely different numbers for its monthly unique visitors. Compete.com had only 30,000, but the PI itself said that Nielsen reported 1.8 million unique visitors, and its own internal numbers had 4 million uniques.
Big difference, huh.
Today's New York Times tells a similar story for a much bigger site, hulu.
"Does Hulu, the Web’s most popular place for TV viewing, reach nine million people a month or 42 million? Millions of dollars in advertising revenue may hinge on the answer. But no one seems to know for sure how big the site’s audience is."
Nine million or 42 million????? That's like saying the circulation of the New York Times might be 800,000 or 4 million? You'd think you might pay a different price for advertising, depending on which one it was!
It's a problem that the industry has been wrestling with for some time. "The web has been around for more than 10 years as a medium, and it's been called the most measurable medium in history. Yet, web publishers at large media sites such as CNN.com or NYTimes.com have been dismayed to see that their direct counts of web visitors measured from their servers vary so wildly" from those reported by various measurement firms, says Mark Glaser.
It turns out that web measurement firms rely on two basic approaches, panel and census based. In simple english, the panel approach is similar to what has always been used for television or radio--track the habits of a supposedly random representative group and then extrapolate to the entire population. The census approach tries to track actual usage from the servers (but then has overstatement problems of its own because it might include counts for automated search spiders, spyware traffic and the like).
This may seem like inside baseball, but if I'm a media buyer and I can chose between a site that has 500,000 unique visitors or ten million, for the same price, it would be an easy decision, except that it's the same site.
The wildly divergent numbers demonstrate the nascency of the market for online video measurement. It’s “still the wild wild West,” said Rob Davis, a leader of the interactive video practice at OgilvyInteractive.
We are still at the infant stage for new media, still figuring out what the data means, how "efficient" it really is, and what it's worth. In the meantime, you can trust that the good sales people will be telling the best story--the difference from yesteryear is that instead of having to rely on the numbers brought in by the friendly radio ad sales person, you can go up to the web yourself and find whatever numbers you want.
Big difference, huh.
Today's New York Times tells a similar story for a much bigger site, hulu.
"Does Hulu, the Web’s most popular place for TV viewing, reach nine million people a month or 42 million? Millions of dollars in advertising revenue may hinge on the answer. But no one seems to know for sure how big the site’s audience is."
Nine million or 42 million????? That's like saying the circulation of the New York Times might be 800,000 or 4 million? You'd think you might pay a different price for advertising, depending on which one it was!
It's a problem that the industry has been wrestling with for some time. "The web has been around for more than 10 years as a medium, and it's been called the most measurable medium in history. Yet, web publishers at large media sites such as CNN.com or NYTimes.com have been dismayed to see that their direct counts of web visitors measured from their servers vary so wildly" from those reported by various measurement firms, says Mark Glaser.
It turns out that web measurement firms rely on two basic approaches, panel and census based. In simple english, the panel approach is similar to what has always been used for television or radio--track the habits of a supposedly random representative group and then extrapolate to the entire population. The census approach tries to track actual usage from the servers (but then has overstatement problems of its own because it might include counts for automated search spiders, spyware traffic and the like).
This may seem like inside baseball, but if I'm a media buyer and I can chose between a site that has 500,000 unique visitors or ten million, for the same price, it would be an easy decision, except that it's the same site.
The wildly divergent numbers demonstrate the nascency of the market for online video measurement. It’s “still the wild wild West,” said Rob Davis, a leader of the interactive video practice at OgilvyInteractive.
We are still at the infant stage for new media, still figuring out what the data means, how "efficient" it really is, and what it's worth. In the meantime, you can trust that the good sales people will be telling the best story--the difference from yesteryear is that instead of having to rely on the numbers brought in by the friendly radio ad sales person, you can go up to the web yourself and find whatever numbers you want.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Pass the Butter please
Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, tells a Senate Subcommittee:
“There is something in our collective DNA that makes us want to sip our coffee, turn a page, look up from a story, say, ‘Can you believe this?’, and pass the paper across the table.”
“Sure, you could hand them your BlackBerry or laptop…but the instinct is different. And who wants to get butter or marmalade on your new MacBook Pro?”
Reminds me when I told an interviewer ten years ago that you couldn't bring your computer with you into the bathroom to read.
Maybe that's true for folks in our generation, but not for our kids.
They'll be sharing their new large-size Kindle across the breakfast table.
“There is something in our collective DNA that makes us want to sip our coffee, turn a page, look up from a story, say, ‘Can you believe this?’, and pass the paper across the table.”
“Sure, you could hand them your BlackBerry or laptop…but the instinct is different. And who wants to get butter or marmalade on your new MacBook Pro?”
Reminds me when I told an interviewer ten years ago that you couldn't bring your computer with you into the bathroom to read.
Maybe that's true for folks in our generation, but not for our kids.
They'll be sharing their new large-size Kindle across the breakfast table.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Warren Buffet on newspapers
From the Wall Street Journal:
...his view on the future of the newspaper industry is dismal. “For most newspapers in the United states, we would not buy them at any price,” he said in response to a question about whether he would consider investing in newspapers. “They have the possibility of going to just unending losses.”
He continued," They were essential to the public 20 years ago. Their pricing power was essential with customer. They lost the essential nature. The erosion has accelerated dramatically. They were only essential to advertiser as long as essential to reader. No one liked buying ads in the paper - it’s just that they worked. I don’t see anything on the horizon that causes that erosion to end."
...his view on the future of the newspaper industry is dismal. “For most newspapers in the United states, we would not buy them at any price,” he said in response to a question about whether he would consider investing in newspapers. “They have the possibility of going to just unending losses.”
He continued," They were essential to the public 20 years ago. Their pricing power was essential with customer. They lost the essential nature. The erosion has accelerated dramatically. They were only essential to advertiser as long as essential to reader. No one liked buying ads in the paper - it’s just that they worked. I don’t see anything on the horizon that causes that erosion to end."
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