Kiesow 7.0

If you like New England and you like digital media you have come to the right place. The Telegraph is hiring a Managing Editor / Online upon my departure on August 4. I will let the job posting below generally speak for itself but I have been here for 5 years and have loved every day of it.

The Telegraph has been named one of the best papers in New England for at least the past 5 or 6 years and we have done some great work in reader engagement, multimedia, enterprise reporting and community development during that time.

The staff and management of the paper buys into a Web-first approach and they are looking for a Managing Editor who is a good journalist and a digital innovator to take them to the next level.

Contact info is at the bottom of the listing but feel free to email me directly if you have questions about the position.

Job Posting
Managing Editor Online

Telegraph Publishing Company and its affiliate, the Cabinet Press, seek an online editor with a strong background in journalism, a thorough understanding of Internet technology, and proven leadership ability to help continue the transformation of our news organization in the digital age.

In addition to The Telegraph, of Nashua, N.H., (circ. 25,000, daily), the company also produces four weekly newspapers along with multiple niche publications and Web sites. The online editor is responsible for editorial content and presentation of NashuaTelegraph.com, Cabinet,com, and the company’s niche Web sites such as FeastNH.com, EncoreBuzz.com and TelegraphNeighbors.com.

The successful candidate will have at least five years of newsroom experience as a reporter or editor, and must be familiar and comfortable with the conventions of community journalism and the operation of a small daily newspaper. The online editor coordinates content, projects and communication between newsroom and digital media teams.

He/she must also:

• Understand online content, revenue models and strategies; lead our community and audience development efforts and play a lead role in the implementation of our social media strategies.
• Be familiar with all facets of publishing process from story pitch to publication in multiple media on multiple platforms including print, web and mobile.
• Develop work flows and training plans to facilitate publication of news, videos and photos to multiple digital platforms.
• Be immersed in the trends inside and outside the news industry that impact digital publication and audience development.
• Be comfortable working with print and digital vendors, including writing product specifications, project management and contract review and negotiations.
• Assist in building a newsroom technology strategy that supports mobile journalism capabilities for reporting and photo staffers.
• Be familiar with the technology of digital publishing including Web servers, HTML, CSS and Javascript.
• Assist in daily news coverage discussions and decisions and make independent judgments that serve both print and online coverage needs.
• Monitor metrics for all Telegraph sites and develop relevant business and content reports and strategies.
• Serve as a member of the Telegraph Editorial Board and contribute one editorial per month.

This is a salaried, management position; compensation commensurate with experience.

Interested applicants should apply via email to Executive Editor Dave Solomon, dsolomon@nashuatelegraph.com, with “online editor” in the subject line.

No phone calls please.

As a journalist, what are your favorite mobile tools?

Not just services like Qik or Twitter, or devices like the iPhone, but anything (I mean anything) you use for researching, reporting, publishing or interacting with the community when you are on-the-go.

Think of anything from power converters to WiFi locator maps. Everything from the MiFi to the EyeFi. What is in your camera bag or backpack or car trunk (or on your phone or laptop) that helps you do your job?

I am building a June webinar for Poynter’s News University (name and date TBD) and am looking for some great examples of people doing cool things with mobile tools. You can see an list of collected links for the project at delicious.com/dkiesow/newsu.

If you know what an OWLE is or have filed a 10 inch story from your Blackberry please let me know. I hope to use a selection of real-world examples for the webinar as well as expand on a few for the Mobile Media blog.

Please leave a comment below, email damon(at)kiesow.net, or ping me @dkiesow. Thanks!

In general I have given up arguing free v.s. paid content strategies. The terminology being used: ‘free’ v.s. ‘paid’ is in itself some assurance that in a recession many publishers are going to start charging for their online editions. Never mind that the debate is really ad supported v.s. subscription supported v.s. a hybrid of the two. And, never mind that if you sketch out a ‘paid’ strategy thinking ‘free’ is the other alternative you are probably going to get it wrong.

So in the short term some will get it wrong, possibly horribly wrong. But those paying attention to the fact that digital has changed our culture will hopefully get it right. And ‘right’ can include some level of subscription fees, the question being what cost, what content and what platforms.

But, the number one way to get it wrong is to believe that because content is expensive to produce, readers must and will subsidize its creation through subscription fees. Assuming you are entitled to be paid for something is not really a sound economic argument, especially in the face of an unlimited supply of information driving down the perceived value of your content.

I have not seen anyone map this on a simple supply/demand curve:

Disclaimer: the chart is for entertainment purposes. I am not an economist, not even on TV and the curves here are purely diagrammatic. If this was showing a real information demand curve the ‘supply’ line would be so far to the right as to be off the page bringing the quantity (Q1) with it and dropping the price equilibrium (P1) to zero.

Economics 101 is when supply increases prices decrease. In this case we could argue demand has also increased but not enough to match a limitless supply of information.

So what we have is an oversupply of information. Not news, not journalism necessarily, but information. And guess what, consumers are exhibiting a behavior that indicates 5.5 hours per day of ‘information’ on Facebook is at least a minimally acceptable substitute for paying for a daily newspaper or watching the evening news. If the news is important it will find them. Assuming there are any newspapers left to cover it.

Since the project officially launched a month ago (Jan 23) I thought it was time to mention I am now writing over at Poynter.org for their new Mobile Media blog.

‘Writing’ may be too strong of a word in this case. What we are doing is aggregating and briefing (as the tagline says) news about mobile & its applications & implications for media. The blog is co-authored by Poynter’s Regina McCombs with massive support and direction from Julie Moos and Steve Myers.

Needless to say mobile is the next big thing for journalism and the Web in general. Many of our posts so far have been focused on the iPad, Kindle and the coming war between Apple, Google and Microsoft. The first one to hire Arnold Schwarzenegger to go back in time to destroy the original iPhone prototype wins.

We are also looking for examples of media companies (large and small) doing cool things with mobile devices. This could include streaming live video from a cell phone, writing stories with a Blackberry, using location-based social media or creating a great mobile ad sales strategy. Basically anything journalism (or news revenue) related that does not involve a desk and a PC.

So, please go right now to http://poynter.org/mobilemedia and bookmark the site, or subscribe to the RSS feed and the daily email newsletter!

And, if you have any great mobile journalism story ideas that have yet to hit Gizmodo and Techcrunch email me: damon(at)kiesow.net. The help is appreciated.

I received no less than four competing direct mail offers for newspaper subscriptions this week. Oddly enough, only one of the papers actually publishes in New Hampshire – and it was not mine. (Yes, I do already have a subscription to my own paper.)

I found the coincidence of timing, and the various pricing strategies interesting. Each paper structured their offers differently, but basically:

7-day subscription (5 for WSJ)
Union Leader – $2.25 /week
Boston Globe – $7.75 /week (12 week special)
New York Times – $7.40 /week
Wall Street Journal – $2.30 /week

Weekender
Union Leader – $2.00 /week (Thu-Sun)
New York Times  - $5.20 /week (Fri-Sun)

Sunday Only
Union Leader – $1.00 /week
Boston Globe – $2.50 /week (for $3.24 includes Globe Reader)

Metered reading is apparently the new ‘black’ in journalism business circles.

In evidence: The New York Times‘ apparent move in that direction; two Ottaway papers this week; and the forthcoming launch of the Journalism Online project.

The bet is by allowing a small number of ‘free’ page views before instituting a registration or paywall, the respective sites can have their cake and eat it too. Ad impression levels will be supported by the large number of fly-by visitors and subscription income will be enhanced by a smaller but dedicated number of loyal readers.

No doubt the newspaper execs involved have sat through a year’s worth of Powerpoint presentations trying to guess how these thresholds would impact reader behavior and newspaper revenues.

Good luck to them. Isaac Newton created calculus to help predict the laws of motion and gravitation, but at the time there were only five planets. I doubt he would try his hand at predicting reader behavior on the Internet.

The problem is there is no ‘average’ reader with ‘average’ behavior. Predicting the potential loss of traffic following a metered plan involves knowing the frequency and pages-per visit for any number of reader cohorts.  Most news sites have a large number of one-time visitors and a smaller number of loyal visitors, and each group may be worth about the same number of monthly page views.

So, while loyal visitors may have a good incentive to convert to registration or subscriber status, those that do not extract a significant toll on the bottom line. And, since loyals will hit the page view threshold early and often, their reaction to it will make or break the strategy.

In blue and red a 10 page view threshold looks something like this:

(click to enlarge)

The shades of blue represent fly-by, occasional, weekly, daily and loyal visitors and the typical days of the month of their return visits to your Web site. The height of each bar represents their percentage contribution to total page views for the day.

In the chart ‘loyals’ (in the lightest blue) visit on Jan 1 and Jan 2 before hitting the ten page view limit. ‘Daily’ readers visit on Jan 1 and then return on Jan 3 and Jan 5 before hitting their ten. After that they turn red meaning they are over their limit for the month.

So, assuming a zero conversion rate, the red bars indicate current page views that would be at risk under a metered reading strategy. Obviously a few more then ‘no one’ would either register or pay for access.

That’s where the calculus comes in – and it is still just a guess. If you run the numbers, a five page view threshold with no conversions puts about 50% of your traffic at risk. At the other end of the spectrum a 30 page view threshold with a 75% conversion rate might translate to only a 13% decline.

So if the answer lies somewhere between a 13% and 50% loss of traffic and your likely total conversion rate for an online subscription is less than 5% – how much do you need to charge for that subscription to make up for the resulting loss in online ad revenues?

Two Ottaway / Dow Jones papers in New Bedford, MA and Stockton, CA launched paywalls this week. This creates a great opportunity for the rest of us to watch the impact on reader traffic through the magic of Quantcast.

Both sites went live with subscription access on January 12. Each is offering metered access to for non subscribers and registered users, topping out at 10 pages per month.

Basic details on their plans are here (the plans look to be identical for non-print-subscriber access):
Recordnet.com
Southcoasttoday.com

I love gadgets. If I was in a higher tax bracket I would live at CES and buy everything there that would allow me to record and stream and time-shift and sift and mashup and share my news and TV and music and photos and movies. Hey, last week I installed open source firmware on my Wifi router, so don’t tell me I don’t love gadgets. Did I mention I want two of these new iPhone controlled helicopters?

But, I don’t care for the Kindle.

Being in newspapers (as opposed to being in a higher tax bracket) means I typically wait a bit to take the plunge to invest in new tech.  As in getting a refurbished iPhone for 50% off a year after the 3G launched. Or getting the 6″ Kindle this week, just ahead of the release of the Kindle DX next week. (And actually the Kindle belongs to work, so it doesn’t really count.)

We purchased the Kindle at work as we are finally getting around deciding if we want to produce and deliver a version of the newspaper for it. After just an afternoon of downloading, reading and testing I am tempted to ask, why would we?

Compared to the iPhone it has an irritatingly limited user interface. The display is about perfect for a paperback book, but nowhere near big enough to browse through a newspaper’s worth of daily content. Not to mention the screen is black & white and of a resolution that makes images feel more akin to lithographs.

That is the long way to say that it is a good tool for reading books: 6 inches of black text on a white screen that requires simply turning the pages to go from chapter to chapter. Yes, I do intend to download a few e-novels to see how it fares.

But from a newspaper business perspective, it is not the interface or the screen that is the problem. The issue is the thing is an expensive closed box.

You can only get content onto the Kindle in three ways. One: Through the Amazon.com store. Two: Emailed to your device through a dedicated account. Three: Via a USB cable attached to your computer.

As we found out in a wave of stories on the topic last year, selling through Amazon.com is an quick and efficient distribution system that returns 70% of the subscription revenue to Amazon and 30% to the publisher. So that $10 a month for the Chicago Tribune returns $3 per customer to Chicago. Not a great revenue builder.

Emailing content directly to the Kindle sounds like a great alternative. But, that process will cost the customer .15 cents per megabyte downloaded, rounded up to the next MB. I sent myself a small PDF this afternoon as a test. It cost me 30 cents. Talk about your micropayments.

So, for a publisher interested in publishing to the Kindle, your choices are either give up 70% of your subscription fee; convince your customers to pay .15 cents per MB to read your content; or choice number three, get readers to manually download and sync your publication using a USB connection. Given the fact that that wireless connectivity is a major selling point of the device, I would wager most customers don’t even know they have a USB cable.

It is hard to begrudge Amazon their business model. Their constant sync (which works like magic) is made possible through the ‘Whispernet’ system, a wireless connection to the Internet over the Sprint cellular network. That arrangement with Sprint can’t be cheap and the connectivity charges are covered as part of your subscription fees. But seriously, .15 cents per MB for the personal document delivery service is less meant to cover costs and more meant to destroy the business model for non-Amazon.com purchases.

One would guess that is also why there is no WiFi on the Kindle. WiFi would allow publishers to circumvent the Amazon.com store and most likely they all would. Immediately.

So, are we going to create and publish a Kindle version of our newspaper? Maybe, leaning toward probably. I certainly would not bet all my money on the Kindle to ‘save’ newspapers, but it does have an audience and is a good platform for us to experiment with. Hopefully as open standards and storefronts develop the market balance will tip back a bit more in the favor of publishers. Until then we need to learn as much as we can about the technology and how readers want to use it.

But what I wouldn’t give to see a nice color tablet with touch screen controls, Wifi and 4G connectivity, open document standards and a variety of e-commerce options for downloading content including text, photos and video. If we could get that in a flexible plastic form and for say $99 that would be great too.

I read the Harris Poll on ‘time spent online‘ with some interest a few weeks back. The average Web user spent 13 hours per week online in 2009 – nearly doubling the average from the beginning of the decade.

That same week E&P reported via Nielsen the top newspaper site in November for time spent per visitor was about 6 minutes per week (AJC.com). Skip the math – that is less than one percent of the average netizen’s total time online.

To be fair six minutes is the average for all visitors including fly-bys which skews the results a bit low. So, taking those industry reported averages, along with the reader cohort behaviors we see on our own site:

Click to see a larger version of the chart.

These numbers are rough guesses but I don’t see any scenarios that change the result substantially.

The bottom line is that even your most loyal readers, those who likely visit your site every day, are only worth a half-hour per week. That is three percent of their overall 13 hour web use window.

Is three percent enough to convince most people to pay for your news? No matter how unique it is or expensive to produce, readers right now are voting with their mice.

After seeing Steve Yelvington’s paywall infographic this week I was struck by two things.

1) I recognized the pattern

2) it seemed to underestimate (graphically speaking) the effect of loyal visitors we see on our own site.

Take a look:

Click on that graphic to see a slightly larger version. Basically, we see about 50% of our traffic come from the 3% of our readership representing our two most loyal cohorts: ‘daily’ and ‘loyal’ visitors. Those readers come to the site at least 5 times per week. There are not many of them, but they are persistent.

So, that upside-down and lopsided Bell Curve causes a few problems. If you wanted (hypothetically) to put up a paywall – where do you put it?

The readers on the far left are not highly engaged with your site, many are one-time visitors even if they are local. But, there are a lot of them!

The readers on the far right are highly engaged, mostly local but they are probably too few to build a subscription model with.

That leaves the happy medium – the occasional and weekly visitors who visit often enough, and generate enough traffic to be valuable both for CPM and potential premium offerings. But of course how would you target them with any premium model without risking either raw uniques of the fly-bys or the massive page view generation of the loyals?

No seriously, how would you? And that probably explains why we are hearing a lot of talk about paywalls this year, but aside from some unique instances – not much action so far.