Blog Goodies » Publishing

Another day passes, and Knight Ridder, a major newspaper company explores being sold.

I think there are five large problems newspapers are facing:

• inefficient ad sales (and online is only getting more efficient, with eBay offering up past transaction information and Google’s free web analytics product)
• increasing number of channels (TV, magazines, web, blogs, etc) and shifting of attention online, and new ways to consume information (TiVo, deals to rent shows on demand, and Google may even go into renting books). Online you can even get a rough estimate of channel demand before you create a channel.
• having to cover boring channels - online one can chose to only cover channels that are highly profitable directly via ad sales or indirectly via linkage data and attention
• lower publishing costs, easier profitability, and larger distribution for individuals - now anyone can compete with you, without there being a significant barrier to entry (other than possibly the time needed to grab the market’s attention and have leading information systems trust it). With online ad sales getting more efficient quality micro niche sites become more profitable. The lack of borders makes some poor niche topics profitable when combined with the ease of search. It is also easy to publish a number of channels in parallel.
• lack of topical interest or bias - sure media formats and publishing methods have some biases built in, but by being an individual you can get away with putting a lot more bias into what you do and focus your efforts on only what interests you. People are attracted to a bias they can trust.

I am not sure that I am smart enough to know the answer to the problems the newspapers are facing, other than strong online integration and reader becomes the editor or writer, but there can only be a few major players in any marketplace.

What other values can papers add that make them worth paying more for (either as a consumer or advertiser)?

The biggest reason I ask these questions is that a friend of mine has been giving me shit about not creating a network of sorts. My four fundamental problems with creating a network of sorts are:

• The value I can add to the topic.
• What I am doing now works well enough to get me by, and there is at least a small fear of change.
• I have some issues with authority, and it might be weird for me to be a boss.
• Ultimately demand and popularity follows attention.
• Long term profitability and permanence.

Breaking them down one by one…
Value I can add to a topic:

• I can get a channel decent exposure rather quickly and how to help stories spread.
• I have a good idea on how to chose channels that will be profitable.
• I know people in many markets. For example, so far I have partnered on one content site, and had a friend who buys ads on the site.
• I can provide a good bit of capital off the start, and could pay people above average rates to write.
• Although I have not done much in the lines of ad optimization, from chatting with friends and viewing sites I know a great deal about the topic.

One of my biggest problems with this concept is that I typically view the work of others as a big amazing combination of things, while minimizing my own work into the bits and pieces that it is.

Fear of Change:
To be honest I think I sorta was hella lucky with my market timing, and still have only created one hyper successful website. I also like that I am not stuck worrying about margins and money and business this or that everyday.

In spite of my work being profitable and decently linked, I still do not get much feedback on most of my posts. I am uncertain if that is due to my writing style, site format, or just me being me.

Authority Issues:
Not sure how to deal with that…

Ultimately demand and popularity follows attention:
As information systems evolve this will only become more and more true. I struggle daily with debating what is useful information to put in my ebook and when teaching more is giving too much and overwhelming people.

The point being with that last statement is that as information systems evolve that ranking number 1 may end up meaning you need to be number 1 from end to end.

Sure there is room for a variety of voices on any topic, but as topics get more competitive will hired writers who are writing about a topic because they are getting paid to write be able to outperform those who love their topics. If not, will I be able to add enough value to the equation to where my network is still profitable. If you knowingly put inferior content at the top of the search results is it wrong? I have done it in the past when I needed to to get by, but I find it a bit harder now. And then at that point where does one draw the line with what they are willing to do for a dollar.

Profitability:
And even with that there are some issues because some less than honest business models are far more profitable than their honest counterparts. Just look at the AdSense ads for SEO. Most of the site submission ones are open fraud. Although Google knows they support all sorts of fraud they don’t want to be forced to define where the limits are.

Feedback:
I have yet to get much feedback on this site, but if you run a network of sites what made you decide to start it, how did you know it was the right time, is this post out to lunch, etc etc etc.

Topix.net, the algorithmic news engine, has recently added 15,000 weblogs to their topical news feeds and search results. Algorithmically the blogs are on equal footing with the traditional news sources at Topix.net.

Rich Skrenta also discussed how they arived at 15,000 blogs and compares the number of blog channels vs mainstream news channels on each topic. Interesting that few bloggers blog the local and sports themes as compared to the mainstream news. From the 15,000 blogs tech blogs outweigh tech mainstream sources by a factor of about 6 to 1.

If I post something interesting on my other blog generally (with a few exceptions) it gets no news coverage. If a friend pastes the same post to his blog then it ends up on Moreover, Yahoo! News, and Google News. To be honest, I could do a much better job of editing and do not fault them for not including me in news results, but the times they are a changing…

Today Yahoo! took quite the plunge, and added blogs to their news search results. Jeremy Zawodny explained why:

Seriously, aside from all the stuff you might read, look at it from an insider’s point of view. Tasked with figuring out how to expose the growing mass of blog content in our index, we figured there were two options.

Option one is to build Yet Another Blog Search Vertical (Technorati, Feedster, Google Blog Search, etc.) that most people would never see.

Option two is to integrate the results somewhere that millions of people could see them in context.

There are some good ways to track buzz for free. With the added exposure Yahoo! News is offering bloggers you can expect a ton of automated posts about today’s top news, and expect that every day.

In a Forbes.com article Yahoo! stated the blog relevancy rankings may be due in part to the number of My Yahoo! subscribers.

How will Yahoo! determine which search results to display in its blogs column? That’s a closely guarded secret. Yahoo! is loath to give content providers the tools that might help them game the system for better visibility. The company won’t discuss specifics but says that blog-search results are based in part on the popularity of the blogs within MyYahoo, as measured by a computer algorithm.

You can try their news search with blogs on to the side, or search through blogs

Interesting to note that some are turned off by how they place blog content near where they normally place ads. In a bid to make advertising seem more appealing search engines may continue adding content to typical ad space.

This blog is all of 3 days old, and only has maybe a half dozen backlinks. This morning it was not in the Yahoo! Search index yet, and I subscribed to it via My Yahoo! at 930 am Eastern. I will mention when I see it in the news results.

Are bloggers journalists? The debate spins on. But does it matter?

Shield Law Sponsor: Bloggers ‘Probably Not’ Considered Journos :

Bloggers would “probably not” be considered journalists under the proposed federal shield law, the bill’s co-sponsor, U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.), told the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Monday afternoon.

What is so important or defining about being a real journalist? I understand the concepts that their right to report things, and how they report things, are both fundamental to the illusion of democracy, but the noise and chatter at the bottom often leads to the big stories, which frequently end up getting spun for political manipulation by biased pundits in the mainstream media anyhow.

Squashing public dissent is common to American corporate culture. Stories from bottoms up pieces of the non real journalism get picked up by big media & generally make silencing critics backfire badly. But it all works together as pieces of machinery. To separate it out is to miss the bigger picture of how it all works.

What happens if a blogger also wrote a book? What happens if they are a journalist and a blogger in their spare time? Does it really matter how you make your money?

What makes a person not a journalist just because they chose to use a blog to publish their thoughts? Lets say that blogs are classified as non journalism. What does that really mean? It doesn’t mean they get any less exposure than official media sites.

When I was recently mentioned on both Atrios.blogspot.com and News.com the Atrios blog sent me over 100 times the traffic News.com did.

Some journalists do not like the idea of defining journalists:

A key reason some journalists oppose the popular federal shield proposal is fear that giving Congress the power to define who is and isn’t a journalist could lead effectively to the licensing of journalists.

Licensing journalists wouldn’t make the profession any cleaner, better, or more honest IMHO. Good journalism is still going to look for stories wherever the conversations are. The best journalists are going to have to earn their credibility and trust with their readers and sources.

Ultimately how people are classified probably does not matter as much as what influence they have on the world around them. I will take uncertified person with reach over qualified without exposure any day. So long as the courts are willing to protect citizens rights then I am fine just being a blogger

Meanwhile, the unedited bloggers continue to gain new distribution channels.

[Warning: adult content link] It appears many adult oriented Blogger blogs are disappearing. The solution? Create many more in a far more automated way, host them remotely, or use a different blog service.

Understandible if they are pure spamblogs, but imagine if you were a blogger who just like writing about sex related topics. You do it for a few years and then out of nowhere your linkage profile, site history, and site vanish. A good example of why it is always best to keep control of your own data.

John Battelle announced he is testing ads for his new Federated Media publishing network on SearchBlog. John already has a number of heavy hitting influencers joining his network, including Om Malik, MetaFilter, & Boing Boing.

What makes Federated Media different than most blog networks is that John believes the ads and content should be kept separate. I am not trying to say that others are doing a bunch of advertorials, but John wants to gather a group of the best technology bloggers to sell influencer ad space. Unlike other blogging networks I believe he is partnering with the bloggers to sell their ads, instead of trying to own the blogging websites and hire the writers.

You can run into scalability problems during economic downturns if you hire hundreds of writers and create the associated corporate infrastructure.

John was a co-founder of WIRED & founded The Industry Standard. He was recently profiled in ClickZ & IWantMedia. No too long ago my friend Philipp interviewed him as well. If you can’t get enough John Battelle in your diet you may also want to see the guest lecture he recently gave at Berkeley