More Business Bytes entries

Why Information Will No Longer Be Free
With more readers and classified ad dollars moving online, newspaper executives are increasingly looking to the Web to make money, leading to new subscription models, writes Michael Scherer in the Columbia Journalism Review. "The free ride that proved so costly for newspapers is coming to an end," he says. "Online news junkies will increasingly have to give up money or personal information to get their previously free fix." [3/5]

New High-Tech Magazine
These are tough times for high-tech magazines. Popular ones such as Yahoo! Internet Life, The Industry Standard, On Magazine, Red Herring and Upside recently closed down, and other established ones like Wired and Business 2.0 have struggled. So it takes a lot of guts to launch a new technology magazine -- and Fred Davis, the former editor of PC Week and PC Magazine, has guts. He's launched a new magazine, DigiT, aimed at the consumer masses. It's meant to be a "digital lifestyle" magazine, which features such as Dean Kamen's Segway Killed My Puppy! The pilot issue is on the newstands now. With its consumer approach and its timing -- as the ad market slowly picks up -- it might just succeed, if it's smart and avoids the excesses of the dot-com era failures. [3/5]

Salon's Costly, Controversial Content
In addition to the troubling financial news, Salon's recent quarterly report including some disconcerting statements claiming that advocacy groups that disagreed with content on Salon had targeted Salon's advertisers to persuade them to pull their ads. In a section titled, "THE CONTROVERSIAL CONTENT OF SALON'S WEBSITES MAY LIMIT ITS REVENUES," the company wrote: "Many of our websites contain, and will continue to contain, content that is politically and culturally controversial. As a result of this content, current and potential advertisers and Salon Premium subscribers may refuse to do business with Salon. Salon's outspoken stance on political issues has and may continue to result in negative reactions from some users, commentators and other media outlets. From time to time, certain advocacy groups have successfully targeted Salon's advertisers in a attempt to persuade such advertisers to cease doing business with Salon. These efforts may be a material impediment to Salon's ability to grow and maintain advertising revenue." If true, this means that groups unhappy with Salon's content may have contributed to the company's cutbacks and possible demise, stanching its freedom of speech.  [3/4]

Subscription Success
While the verdict is still out on charging for online content as a business strategy, a promising signs comes from the Financial Times Web site. Previously known for cash guzzling, FT.com has made a profit for the first time. Despite introducing subscriptions last May, the  the overall number of people using the site has continued to increase. In January, FT.com had a record 3.5 million users, a 30 percent increase from a year earlier considering the new charges of between £59 and £99 a year. [3/3]

Red Herring Dies
Technology magazine Red Herring has folded after 10 years. It's the latest in a string of deaths of technology publications, including Yahoo! Internet Life, Forbes ASAP, The Industry Standard, Upside, Smart Business and Silicon Alley. But Tony Perkins is already onto his next venture, the AlwaysOn Network, a collection of commentary by "celebrity bloggers." "AlwaysOn’s business model is even more significant than its approach to technology and business content. Perkins started the site with nothing more than a $150 blogging software package called pMachine, and put only about $50,000 into the site’s development," he told Fortune. "He has a tiny staff—only three full-time and three part-time employees. But from day one, he claims, his costs have been more than covered by his four paying sponsors." [3/3]

Online Registration Turns Profits
Newspapers are increasinly requiring online users to register before accessing their sites -- and it's proving profitable. The Dallas Morning News generated more than $1 million with targeted e-mail products based on registration data, Eric Christensen, vice president and general manager of Belo Interactive, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. And Digby Solomon at the Chicago Tribune said the paper expects to generate $250,000 in additional revenue this year because of registration. Cox Enterprises and Morris Communications both plan to add registration on their sites this year. [2/20]

Google Buys Blogger
The news that Google has bought Pyra, the company whose Blogger software helped fuel the Weblog movement, was fittingly broken online in San Jose Mecury News columnist Dan Gilmor's eJournal Weblog. The deal is further proof that blogging has hit the big-time; the way it was broken demonstrates the impact Weblogs are having on journalism. [2/17]

Salon: The End is Near
Salon says it might not survive past February if it cannot raise more money. Things are so bad that the company lost $1.2 million during the final three months of 2002 and couldn't pay its rent in December. In a last-ditch effort, the company started requiring users to click through multiple screens of ads or pay for its content last month. As of Dec. 31, Salon's site had 47,300 subscribers. [2/17]

Money & the Web: Profit vs. Innovation & News
How can we balance commercial demands vs. the need for inventiveness in defining journalism on the Web? How can journalism in this medium move forward in defining itself as it's hit not only by sweeping technological change, but also crushing financial needs? How do financial pressures affect journalism on the Web? The Online News Association will be hosting a panel discussion on Feb. 18 at Baruch College in Manhattan. You can find more information about this and other ONA programs on this page at journalists.org. [2/16]

CNN Rebrands CNNSI.com as SI.com
The CNN online network rebranded CNNSI.com, the online version of AOL Time Warner's Sports Illustrated magazine, as SI.com on Thursday. " The change to SI.com is our way of making clear to our longtime friends and to our new visitors that we are Sports Illustrated's home on the Web, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Managing Editor Steve Robinson said. The site, with roughly 3 million unique users a month, trails well behind category leader ESPN.com in traffic, which regularly surpasses 7 million. [2/6]

Romenesko's MediaNews Renamed Romenesko
Romenesko's MediaNews has been renamed Romenesko due to the threat of a lawsuit. MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton's lawyers told Poynter: "The Jim Romenesko column entitled 'MediaNews' has just come to our client's attention." (On what planet has this media company been living?) The attorneys asked Poynter to "immediately cease from any further use of 'MediaNews' as a trademark." Poynter President Jim Naughton says the Weblog will be renamed Romenesko to recognize "Romenesko’s singular contribution to journalists and the ways in which his name has become its own brand." Read the back-and-forth legal letters here. [2/5]

Big Day for MarketWatch
Online financial news provider MarketWatch.com Inc. achieved its first quarterly profit, raking in net fourth quarter income of $854,000 after the company slashed operating expenses. CEO said the company expects to be profitable for the current year. This is a pretty significant landmark. Web properties of old-media companies such as Nytimes.com have made profits, but this is the biggest online journalism start-up to do so well. [1/29]

MSNBC.com Names New Editor in Chief
MSNBC.com has hired Dean Wright, one of MSNBC.com's original producers, to succeed Merrill Brown as editor in chief. Wright helped launch the site in 1996, starting as a producer and becoming managing editor for news before leaving in 2000. Wright most recently worked for AOL Time Warner, leading efforts to repackage content from Time Inc. to appeal to AOL customers. He told The Associated Press he wants to make MSNBC.com "a bit more populist" with more coverage of lifestyle and entertainment. [1/27]

Newspaper Sites Showing Profits
Newspaper publishers, both large and small, are beginning to show increased revenues from their online units. The Washington Post Co., Knight-Ridder, the Wall Street Journal and Davenport, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises are among those reporting promising returns of late. Lee, which publishes 38 newspapers, reported last week that its online revenues increased 43 percent in its latest quarter. [1/27]

Cox TV Joins IBS
Internet Broadcasting Systems continues expanding, adding all 15 Cox-owned television stations in 11 markets to the roster of local news Web sites it manages. With the addition of the 15 Cox stations, the IBS Network now includes 64 TV station sites and covers 93 percent of households in the largest TV markets. [1/22]

Last-Ditch Business Plan for Struggling Salon
The struggling Salon, in a last-ditch effort to stay alive, is expected to announce this week that it will require all readers to either buy a subscription for full access to stories or agree to click through several screens of advertising to gain limited access, the Los Angeles Times reports. "There's no free lunch on the Web anymore," Salon founder David Talbot says. "There's no viable media without developing a base of revenue." Sad to say, it's unlikely the new strategy will save Salon. The publication has already become a watered-down version of the independent journal it once was, while free competitor Slate has grown in audience and quality. Paul Grabowicz, the director of the new media program at the UC Berkeley school of journalism, says Salon's only hope is to be subsidized, considering how many other general interest publications exist online and in print. "It's just very hard to see how a publication like that can have revenue that exceeds expenses." [1/21]

Digital City San Jose Shuts Down
AOL free-lancer Jill E. Vaile write in that the company has shut down its Digital City San Jose office and site and merged it with its San Francisco site, creating one San Francisco Bay area site. [1/20]

Netscape News Makes Top 20 News Sites
Netscape News, which primarily sucks in content from CNN.com, joined Nielsen//Netratings Top 20 Current Events & Global News Sites rankings for December, bumping off Cox Newspapers. Here are the ratings for December 2002. [1/15]

New Interactive Yellow Pages Models
Internet Yellow Pages offer a great opportunity for pulling in revenue and driving consumers to Web sites, but many newspaper sites are missing out -- research by digital-media consultant Borrell Associates Inc. shows that 43 of the top 100 newspapers have no Yellow Pages offerings. In an analysis for The Digital Edge, Borrell's Peter Krasilovsky outlines some of the ways newspaper sites are employing interactive yellow pages online and some new technologies that show even more promise for the near future. "One aspect in which newspapers enjoy a clear advantage over rivals is in placing Yellow Pages ads in context with relevant content," he says. "Just as well-placed groceries (peanut butter and jelly) lead to greater grocery sales, well-placed links and buttons ('Obits and flowers,' 'Travel and vacation homes') have been shown to increase yellow-pages traffic exponentially." [1/15]

What Sites Would You Pay For?
Suppose one morning the sites you visit regularly -- whether for work or for fun -- started charging $52 a year for unlimited access. Would you pay up? WSJ.com columnists Jason Fry and Tim Hanrahan came up with a list -- a short -- list of the ones they'd ante up for: Google, Jim Romenesko's Medianews, eBay, Rebelscum.com, NYDailynews.com, NorthJersey.com, ESPN.com and AOL Instant Messenger. [1/14]

Tough Times for Tech Companies
Four the fourth time in two years, Cnet Networks has reduced its staff, this time firing 80 more employees — about 5 percent of its work force. The latest purge will leave Cnet with slightly more than 1,500 employees, down from 1,900 workers at the end of 2000. [1/14]

Remembrance of Dot-Com Idiocy Past
As James Ledbetter's "Starving to Death on $200 Million a Year" reveals, "the Industry Standard pissed away a fortune out of mere carelessness,"  writes Andrew Leonard in Salon. [1/12]

The Seven Deadly Sins of Free Content
What can the Seven Deadly Sins teach us about the online news industry's historical proclivity for all things free? These sins are not just applicable to individual properties, but to an entire interdependent dysfunctional industry, writes Robert Spears for PaidContent.org. [1/12]

Does it Pay to Charge for Online News?
"If I were to look in a crystal ball, I don't foresee a day when you have to pay for on-line news," says Michael Zimbalist, executive director of the New York-based Online Publishers Association. "There will always be resources out there that are free." [1/8]

News Surfers' Changing Habits
A new study finds that news site surfers' habits change throughout the day, with profound implications for the online news industry. "By morning, our users are almost as interested in news — breaking, local, national, business and sports — as they are in e-mail," says Rusty Coats, whose MORI Research conducted the 2002 Online Consumer Study for the Newspaper Association of America. "By afternoon, with the importance of news waning, entertainment-category features such as movie times, maps and directions, and offbeat news are on the rise. In the evening, our ability to connect users with jobs, cars and homes becomes central, along with our ability to facilitate their online-shopping needs — from researching products to actually purchasing products." Coats points out that the findings could help online news sites become as important to nighttime, at-home users as they currently are for daytime, at-work users, and reports that many companies already have begun to redesign their Web sites based on these findings. [1/8]

WSJ Online Not Laughing Anymore
WSJ.com thought it was pretty clever when it launched an ad camapign called Biz-O-Rama mocking its free counterparts. But The New York Times reports that the Journal appeared to have lost its sense of humor when MarketWatch tried to place an ad on The Journal Online that asked, in a preliminary version, "Where does The Wall Street Journal advertise — when they need to reach the online business audience?" The ad's answer: CBS MarketWatch. Dow Jones not only rejected the ad, but then pulled its Biz-O-Rama ad from MarketWatch.com. The curious will be able to find the ad next week in the online and print editions of Advertising Age. [1/6]  

Yahoo Sells AP Content
Yahoo has launched a pay-for-use archive of Associated Press news stories.
The search engine on Yahoo News will be able to search the AP Archives going back to Jan. 1, 1998, and display a list of results. Articles listed will cost $1.50 to access. [12/18]

Pathfinder, Deja Vu
AOL Time Warner's decision to move Time, Inc. content behind its subscription wall continues to raise eyebrows. "This service, which started in the autumn of 1994 and closed in the spring of 1999, was called Pathfinder and proved two things: Selling Time Warner content on the Internet was pretty much a nonstarter, and the people at Time Warner lacked a certain flair for the Internet," writes Michael Wolff in New York Magazine. "We just don't get it, they said. Which was the essential reason for merging with AOL. Now, in a fascinating and comic turn of events, AOL has come full circle to an idea that eerily resembles Pathfinder." [12/17]

Newspapers Bank on Web Sites
Here's a switch: Newspaper executives are now predicting the Web will produce more revenue next year even as ad spending in papers picks up -- and are starting to view their Web sites as money makers. At The New York Times, online ad sales were up 33 percent this year, compared with single-digit growth in print ads. [12/16]

BBC online faces inquiry
The British government is launching an investigation into the BBC's online services in January to determine if the £100m it spends annually on its Web sites is justified. [12/11]

ESPN.com is Profitable, Playboy.com to be in 2003
ESPN.com will be profitable this year, the company says. Playboy.com says it will be profitable in 2003. [12/11]

WSJ.com vs. 'Biz-o-rama'
As more companies move toward charging for online content, The Wall Street Journal Online is going all out in promoting the concept. It's launched a new television, print and online advertising campaign aimed at demonstrating the benefits of subscription content over free online content. The creative campaign pits the Online Journal against a fictitious free site called 'Biz-o-rama.com', to reinforce the message that if people want quality business news they can really trust, they should not rely on free sites but should subscribe to the Online Journal. The campaign launched on television stations such as ESPN, Fox News and CNBC this week, as well as on sites such as Motley Fool  and NASDAQ.com. "There's no denying the quantity of freely available business information on the Web, but it can't compete with the quality, breadth and depth of the Journal's business reporting," Scott Schulman, president, Dow Jones Consumer Electronic Publishing, said. "For a small annual subscription, users can access Journal-quality insight, news and analysis that they can't see anywhere else."  [12/10]


Coping With a Web That's No Longer Free
The increasing amount of subscription content online is bound to impact our lives in many ways. "We may be looking at a holiday season where a grandmother buys her grandson a season pass to Fantasy Football Insider," writes James Kiernan in Media Life Magazine. "There is even the scary possibility of a day where teenagers peddle yearly subscriptions to Web sites to raise money for their school." [12/10]

Behind the Scenes: Media Unspun's Demise
As Media Unspun prepares to shut down on Friday, publisher Jimmy Guterman says in a Q&A with CyberJournalist.net's Jonathan Dube that the only way for independent Web publishers to survive is by banding together as a network to "preserve our idiosyncratic voices, but share a business back end." He also says, "Journalistic Weblogs have to be two-way to work, otherwise they're either vanity publishing ventures or traditional columns pretending to be hip." Media Unspun, an online and e-mail publication analyzing media coverage of technology business news, will suspend publication on Friday Dec. 13, unless a major sponsor or investors is found before then. [12/9]

Publishers Divided on Free Content Online
Extra-fee premium services are the fastest-growing revenue source for many publishers. But despite AOL Time Warner's move to limit much of its magazine content to subscribers, publishers still say free, advertising-supported services will be around for a long time. [12/9]

Media Unspun to Die
Media Unspun, a publication analyzing media coverage of technology business news, will suspend publication on Friday Dec. 13, unless a major sponsor or investors is found before then. The publication was launched in January by the same team that produced the Media Grok for the Industry Standard, after it folded. "We launched a subscription- and advertising-supported email newsletter about the technology business during an economic slowdown that is having a particularly violent effect on the publishing, technology, and advertising industries," publisher Jimmy Guterman wrote to subscribers. "Despite the high quality of the newsletter, as evidenced by the feedback we receive every day, we can't fight a hurricane." [12/4]

Influential Online Media Sites
Jim Romenesko (the man behind MediaNews.org) and Patrick Phillips (publisher of IWantMedia.com) are arguably two of the most influential figures in the publishing industry, writes Folio. "These two Web sites are the virtual hubs for media news, gossip, speculation, and general industry-related hullabaloo. You ignore them at your professional peril." [12/3]

Electronic News Dies in Print, Lives Online
Reed Business Information has shut down the print edition of the 45-year-old weekly Electronic News, which had 46,000 subscribers and claimed to have coined the phrase "Silicon Valley." But Reed will continue running the Electronic News Web site, which provides daily news updates and an e-mail newsletter with 65,000 subscribers. [11/26]

WSJ.com Founding Publisher Leaves
As The Wall Street Journal Online moves toward profitability, its founding publisher, Neil Budde, announced he is leaving. Interestingly, Dow Jones is not going to replace him. "We have quite a strong team of executives who are in place," said Scott Schulman, president of Dow Jones's Consumer Electronic Publishing unit, which was cash-flow positive in the third quarter. [11/25]

Reuters Targeting Consumer Audience
The re-launch of Reuters.com in the U.S., as mentioned here earlier this week, marks the beginning of the company's first "direct-to-consumer publishing," meaning it will now compete with sites like CBS MarketWatch for eyeballs. The company is beginning this new initiative with ad-supported e-mail newsletters such as a pre-market opening report and a weekly funds review. But the site plans on adding "other new content, tools and functionality" regularly throughout 2003, including premium subscriptions and other paid-content products. The new site, the company said, also marks the first phase of a global expansion that will include companion sites targeted at other key markets in Asia and Europe within the next 12 months. [11/21]

Salon Delisted
Salon has been delisted from the Nasdaq. [11/21]

Salon in Trouble
The site could run out of money as soon as the end of November, the Associated Press reports. [11/20]

TheStreet.com Loses Subscribers to Technical Glitch
TheStreet.com says in its 10-Q filing that its subscription system is causing it to lose annual subscribers. "For the three months ended September 30, 2002, approximately 57 percent of the Company's net subscription revenue was derived from annual subscriptions, as compared to approximately 71 percent for the three months ended September 30, 2001. This decrease in the percent of annual subscriptions is partially due to the Company's need to outsource fulfillment of new email subscription products initially to a third party and that third party's technological inability to provide annual subscriptions." [11/20]

Newspapers Win Back Online Recruitment Share
Newspapers have taken a small but significant slice of help-wanted advertising market share from online players in the past year, according to a Goldman, Sachs & Co. research report. [11/19]

Who Needs a Pretty Website Anyway?
"Galling as it may be to Internet aesthetes," writes Ian Mount in Business 2.0, Knight Ridder Digital "is proving that Web design that's unfriendly to users may be just fine, as long as it's friendly to advertisers and cheap to operate. [11/16]

El Pais Goes Subscription
The Spanish daily El Pais has begun charging for access to all parts of its Web site, elpais.es, making it the first big general-interest paper in Europe to put its entire interactive newspaper behind a paid subscription wall. A few European general-interest papers -- notably El Mundo in Spain and Le Monde in France -- charge for access to some content. [11/18]

The Street.com's Serious Business
The Street.com continues its move into subscription content, announcing plans to start offering equity research as a product. TheStreet.com intends to bring in between six and 12 analysts during the next 12 to 18 months, The Wall Street Journal reports. [11/15]

News Sites Fail to Attract Big Advertisers
Online news sites are not getting their fair share of national advertisers because the metrics that have been used haven't been very understandable, reports Editor & Publisher's Carl Sullivan. [11/14]

Web Publishers' Ad Revenues Up
Internet publishers saw advertising revenue jump 36% in the third quarter versus the same period last year, editorandpublisher.com reports. An Online Publishers Association survey of 18 Internet publications also found that year-to-date advertising revenue increased 24% from the same period a year ago. [11/13]

This Column Brought to You By...
Borrowing a technique from broadcasters, here's a new twist on Web sponsorships: On this CBS Marketwatch story about Reuters facing mounting challenges, a 3M logo not only moves across the screen, but audio automatically fires when the page is loaded, announcing, "This column is brought to you by 3M." [11/13]

Slow Growth of E-Editions
Electronic magazine editions are still more of a novelty than anything, but they got a boost last week with the unveiling of the Tablet PC, which is ideal for reading such publications and actually came preloaded with digital editions of four machines: BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, Technology Review and PC Magazine. Six other publishers say they will provide issues available for download sometime in 2003: The New Yorker, Forbes, Slate (owned by Microsoft), the Financial Times, and two international economic magazines -- France's Les Echoes and Germany's Wirtschafts Woche. PC Magazine, for its part, says its electronic edition had 6,700 subscribers as of June -- out of a total circulation of 1.2 million readers. Publisher Tim Castelli tells AdWeek the number is growing rapidly and should reach around 100,000 by the end of the year. [11/12]

MarketWatch on the Prowl?
After failed efforts to aquire TheStreet.com and 10K, CBS MarketWatch is reportedly in talks to acquire Edgar Online, a provider of Securities and Exchange Commission filings, sources told The New York Post. [10/11]

MSNBC.com to Add Video Subscriptions
MSNBC.com plans to add a video subscription service that will offer viewers higher quality video. The site will continue offering free video.  [11/6]

Broadcasting & Cable Starts Charging
Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News having begun charging for their Web sites.  [11/6]

Weather Channel Begins Subscription Alerts
The Weather Channel has begun charging for a subscription service that delivers weather alerts via home telephones, cell phones, pagers or directly to their e-mail address.  [11/5]

Electronic Edition Helps New York Times Post Gains
The New York Times electronic edition helped the newspaper report a  circulation increase for the six months ending Sept. 30, since newspapers are allowed to count them in the figures reported to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Times Co. spokesman Toby Usnik told E&P Online that about 3,600 consumers have purchased The New York Times Electronic Edition since the product was first offered. For the latest ABC reporting period, about 2,200 Monday-Friday Electronic Editions were counted as paid circ, and about 1,700 for Sundays. [11/5]

Wash. Post Co. Reports Online Revenue Gains
The Washington Post Co. joined the list of newspaper publishers reporting gains in their new-media divisions during the third quarter.

Is the End in Sight for 'Free' News on the Web?
An increasing number of news outlets across Europe are charging readers for online features like online horoscopes, crossword puzzles, advanced peaks at magazine articles and for full-fledged subscriptions, Reuters reports.

Better Than Losing Money...
FT.com is expected to break even by the end of the year.

Consumer Reports' Web Site Reaches 1 Million Subscribers
ConsumerReports.org, the subscription-only Web site for Consumer Reports magazine, has reached 1 million subscribers, a first for a major Web publication. Subscriptions, which cost $24 a year, have grown sharply, rising from 690,000 subscribers last November.

The Economics of Electronic Editions
Poynter examines the economics of electronic editions of newspapers. "They might be most useful for small papers with a competent design desk but a small (or nonexistent) web staff. As long as the paper is creating digital pages at some point in the production process, it's no great leap for those to become PDF files on the web."

Latimes.com Launches ``NewsDirect'' Subscription Service
Latimes.com, the online Web site of the Los Angeles Times, has launched NewsDirect, a personalized subscription service delivering news alerts, full-text articles and other information directly to latimes.com users' desktops, e-mail boxes or mobile devices.

NY Times Digital's Revenues Up
New York Times Digital has achieved an operating profit for the fifth-consecutive quarter, with revenues increasing 26.8% to $18.2 million in the third quarter. Meanwhile, the number of NYTimes.com surfers have surpassed the number of print subscribers.

Wall Street Journal's Online Health Edition
The Wall Street Journal Online's health industry edition, the company's first electronic industry vertical, may well show how a publisher can profitably repurpose content, Ad Age reports.

Consumers Like E-mail Newsletters
E-mail newsletters are a powerful tool to push content to readers who might not visit a site regularly, and now there's a new study backing that up. People connect more to content sources through e-mail newsletters than through Web sites, according to a new study. "Newsletters feel personal because they arrive in your e-mail inbox, and you have an ongoing relationship with them. In contrast, Web sites are things you glance at when you need to find an answer to a specific question," said Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman Group, a Freemont, Calif., research group that conducted the study. The study also found that 23% of the newsletters were read thoroughly, 50% were skimmed or partly read, and the remaining 27% were never opened.  [10/10]

How Much Would You Pay for Your Onion?
The infamous and hilarious humor site The Onion is considering adding premium content that it would charge users to read. No joke. But the site says it would still give readers the content they read now for free. The Onion has a loyal readership that might be willing to pay, though online content is always a difficult sell. "The majority of internet users still don't want to pay for content," says David Strassel, managing editor of the Intermarket Group.  "For just about any type of content there are multiple alternatives." [10/10]

More Tech Magazines Fold
Forbes ASAP was one of the first print magazines to exclusively cover the Internet and its rapid growth, but after 10 years, it's folding. "There is no market for a dedicated new-economy publication," Monie Begley, spokeswoman for Forbes, told The New York Times. Meanwhile, Upside magazine announced it is also shutting down, and Red Herring said it is selling itself to a majority investor in an effort to restructure financially. [10/9]

Losing Out
There are only a handful of cities--including Madison, Wisconsin, and Raleigh, North Carolina--in which local TV sites meet or beat newspaper sites. AJR's Barb Palser looks at how this imbalance evolved and why it continues. And she says local TV management needs to get get serious about the Web. "If broadcast managers don't relate to their online efforts as key components of their news, promotion and profit strategies, they'll continue to lag in local markets." [10/7]

More Electronic Newspaper Editions
Two more newspapers have launched electronic editions: The Akron Beacon Journal and The Star Tribune of Minneapolis.

Content Sales Lessons From NYTimes.com
ContentBiz looks at NYTimes.com's experiments in charging for specialized online content and what the site has learned from them. Since NYTimes.com had been pulling in $1 million a year from subscriptions to its archives and crosswords, the site decided to launch several new subscription products: Editor's Picks; Topics in Depth;  and TimesTalks Online. Deputy General Manager & Director of Operations Stephen Newman says Premium Products have not been "the easy home run" he and the rest of the business team had initially hoped for.  Sales for 2001 were $1.4 million, but this income was mainly due to Crosswords and Archives sales, which had accounted for just over $1 million the year before. "Repurposing archived content is not as easy as it sounds, especially when the content is not digitized. It takes time to go through original and offline archives. Those repackaging costs can start to add up pretty quickly if you're not careful." But here's a number that will wow you: When The Times raised the price of the two Editor's Picks products from $9.95 to $24.95 in June, sales didn't drop at all.

At-Work Users Consume More Online Than on TV
More evidence on the importance of the at-work online media consumer: Digital ad firm Avenue A reports that  Internet media consumption is 22% higher among at-work users than for home-only users. Even more interesting, the time at-work users spend consuming online media exceeded their TV-watching time by 1.4 hours per day, or 46%, according to Avenue A. This should make companies that advertise on TV but not online think twice.

Send in the SMS
More than 45 million people use text messaging, also known as SMS, or Short Messaging Service. But media companies are only just waking up to its potential. And it has a lot. Response rates for SMS advertising are as good or better than television and radio advertising. [9/24]

Top 20 Current Events & Global News Sites
Nielsen//NetRatings has released its list of the Top 20 Current Events & Global News Sites for  August. August is usually a slow month, but this one was unusually busy, thanks to the West Nile Virus, the ongoing drought, wild fires and the run-up to Sept. 11 coverage. As a result, traffic to most sites increased.  [9/20/02]

Sept. 11 Traffic Boost
For those who wondered whether readers really were interested in the saturation coverage of the Sept. 11 anniversary, a new analysis from comScore Media Metrix shows that they were, in droves. Compared to the average traffic on Wednesdays this summer, Media Metrix reported significant increases: "CNN.com  drew 3,400,000 U.S. visitors, up 49 percent from the average Wednesday; MSNBC.com followed close behind with 2,596,000 visitors, up 43 percent; Time.com climbed throughout the week to reach 1,563,000 visitors, up 148 percent; NYTimes.com reached 954,000 visitors, up 54 percent; and USAToday.com drew 630,000 visitors, up 37 percent." Large numbers of surfers also visited other sites dedicated to memorializing the day, the report found: 911DigitalArchive.org drew 49,000 visitors and September11News.com reached 34,000 visitors. [9/20/02]

Columbus Dispatch to Charge for Site Access
The Columbus Dispatch will join the growing trend of charging for online content Oct. 1, when it will start charging $4.95 a month to people who don't subscribe to the newspaper and want access to its Web site. The newspaper's editors make a compelling argument that doing so is only fair: "We can't continue to ask our print subscribers to subsidize the cost of the Web site for those who do not subscribe." Dispatch Editor Benjamin J. Marrison adds, in a column, that continuous improvements cost money, and "if you want to milk dispatch.com for information, you're going to have to help feed the cow." He also says what many experts have been saying recently: "We expect more and more newspapers to adopt a pay model for their Web sites as their investments grow." [9/17/02]

Thousands Want Chicago Tribune's 9/11 CD
The Chicago Tribune has been getting thousands of orders from all over the country for its Sept. 11 commemorative CD-ROM containing stories related to the attacks; streaming-video interviews with 25 Tribune reporters who covered the story; an interactive that tracks the flight path and chronology of each hijacked plane; and video and more than 300 photographs of related images, including many never published before, according to a customer service representative. The representative told CyberJournalist.net that daily call volume has nearly tripled, from about 6,500 to 18,000 a day.  "It's mind-blowing," she said. The CD-ROM was designed simply as a give-away to subscribers, but those who don't can buy the CD-ROM here. [9/16/02

Ad or Article? Can You Make the Call?
Sony's $10 million online ad campaign is distributing advertisements that look like editorial content. Advertising Age has reported that The New York Times turned down the ads, and now Consumer WebWatch reports that CBS MarketWatch has as well. Good for those sites, but what's disturbing is that 75 other sites have agree to publish 60 of these "article" ads, according to Consumer WebWatch. The story looks at the problem of there being no "clear" Web site guidelines to label and separate advertising from editorial. "It's unfortunate," Consumer WebWatch Director Beau Brendler tells CyberJournalist.net. [9/16/02]

MarketWatch Deal
CBS MarketWatch has begun licensing its content the professional and institutional market, making its news available on the Thomson One platform, FactSet Research Systems Inc., LexisNexis Information Services, NewsWare and Track Data Corporation. Individuals who utilize these systems in their daily business responsibilities will now have access to CBS MarketWatch news as part of their overall service, or as an opt-in service. This is a big deal for the company, as its licensing business has increasingly become a dominant revenue stream for MarketWatch.com, representing 52% of total net revenues in the quarter ended June 30, 2002.

A Time To Compare Numbers
Advertising measurement experts seek to standardize online traffic, print circulation and broadcast audiences, Martha Stone reports.

Forbes.com guarantees ad effectiveness
Forbes.com, the Web site for Forbes magazine, now says it will guarantee to marketers some measure of ad effectiveness after 60 days of advertising or their money back.

Oxygen Layoffs
Oxygen Media is laying off nearly two-thirds of the staff at its oxygen.com Web site and is scaling back the site's content because of difficult business conditions, the Associated Press reported.

Nando Times Adds Registration
Requiring users to register continues to become more common among news sites. WashingtonPost.com just began asking readers for information, and now the The Nando Times began asking users to complete a registration form Aug. 26. Interactive news director Tom Rouillard says in a note to readers that registering will enable readers to "personalize certain aspects of the site, continue to search our free 30-day archive and receive our information-packed e-mail newsletters." The announcement makes no mention of whether the site plans to use the information to better target ads and thus increase value to advertisers. But to those who hesitate to enter personal information online, he promises, "you have our word that the information you share with us will not be sold or given to other companies." It's a comforting policy and one all other sites that move toward registration should adopt.

CyberJournalist.net Partners With API
CyberJournalist.net has formed a publishing alliance with The Media Center at the American Press Institute to jointly encourage better online and multi-platform convergence journalism. The site will remain much the same, but you'll notice a few changes: a new banner, and a new resources section that now combines the jobs, books, education and other resources pages. CyberJournalist.net will become a service of The Media Center, incorporated with its other information and training services.  Read the announcement.

Web Pays Well
The average starting salary for 2001 journalism graduates with bachelor's degrees dropped to  $26,000 from $27,000 a year earlier, and for graduates with master's degrees dropped to $30,120 from $31,304, according to the University of Georgia's annual survey. But there was one exception: those going into online publishing. Fewer graduates found work in the field, but those who did find jobs got considerably higher salaries than did 2000 graduates: $33,500, versus $30,004 a year earlier.

AP Buys CapitolWire.com
The Associated Press has bought CapitolWire.com, a subscription-based Web site that covers state capitals in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Virginia.

Tribune Launches Print-Online Job Ads
Chicago's Tribune Co. introduced integrated print and online job listings called CareerBuilder FlexAds at the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel and The Hartford (Conn.) Courant. Later this year the Tribune's nine other newspapers will roll out the new print ads, which include a Web ID code that, when entered in a Web browser, link to the online job posting including a full job description on CareerBuilder. It will be interesting to see if many people go to the trouble, when simply searching the ads online could save them time anyway.

Net Surfers are Getting the Message: Pay up
"As dot-coms continue to bomb, a plethora of sites have decided it's time to start wringing money out of us freeloaders," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. "And they're doing it by slapping a price tag on the content and services we've grown to love and depend on."

'The Model for Great Quality Content'
Christopher M. Schroeder, CEO and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, tells IWantMedia.com he thinks advertising -- not subscriptions -- "is the model for great quality content." Why? In part because Internet advertising reaches people in a way TV and print ads don't. "I truly think that next year the Internet story people will be talking about is the efficacy of online advertising. There are times of day when you can reach people with your ad information on a regular basis, i.e., at the desktop, which you couldn't do before. People are on-task when they're looking at their screens. They're not getting up and making a sandwich when the ads come on."

Merrill Brown Joins Rival
Merrill Brown, who left Microsoft Corp.'s MSNBC.com in June after six years as editor-in-chief, will become a senior vice president at cross-town rival RealNetworks. He'll oversee RealNetworks' impressive consumer subscription businesses, which offers exclusive news, sports, music and video games to customers paying a monthly fee -- including content from CNN, ABCNEWS and Major League Baseball.

Firm Awarded Newspaper Web Ad Patent
Global Network Inc., a New York-based ad-placement firm, says it holds a new patent that gives it exclusive rights to serve national advertising to newspaper Web site networks, but some newspaper-industry executives tell E&P's Carl Sullivan they're skeptical.

Content is Everywhere
Corporate America lost billions on the Internet, but hat doesn't mean the medium has no value, just that the moguls remain clueless about where it lies, writes Salon's Scott Rosenberg. "How does the tradition of professionally created journalism and entertainment fit into the dynamics of a wide-open Web? No one has a definitive answer to that question, and that includes us here at Salon."

The End of Free?
"Sure, the era of free stuff on the Internet was grand fun while it lasted; it also was a four-alarm disaster--something that many entrepreneurs, silly enough to have gone along for that ride, can testify to," writes Cnet's Charles Cooper. "There's no way this free content smorgasbord can last."

'Phone Sex'
Playboy has agreed to a three-year licensing deal that could put images, games and editorial content involving Playboy's nude Playmates on mobile phones and handheld computers.

Financial Video News to Go
WebFN will now deliver 4 "channels" of financial news segments across the Mazingo network to PDA's, 802.11 and next generation mobile devices and cell phones.

Red Herring Layoffs
The technology magazine industry is still hurting from the dot-com collapse. Red Herring has laid off 35 percent of its staff.

Digital Replica Editions Spread
More than 60 newspapers now offer digital replicas of their print editions that users can download and read for a fee. The Washington Post, with its new "Electronic Edition," now adds its name to that growing list,  which includes The Globe and Mail, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. The Times, one of the first to roll out such a service last fall, now has roughly 3,000 digital delivery subscribers, who pay $26.80 a month, The Times reports. Only a handful of magazines offer digital downloads, including PC Magazine and The Harvard Business Review, but others are starting to do so. MIT's Technology Review magazine launched one Monday, after a month of testing that attracted 3,000 subscribers.

Freedom Papers Start Charging
Four Freedom Communications Inc. newspapers have started charging for online access: two dailies, the Northwest Florida Daily News of Fort Walton Beach and The News-Herald of Panama City; the twice-weekly Destin Log and the weekly Walton Sun.

Online subscription services attract customers
Infogate CEO CliffBoro discusses the San Diego-based company's business providing subscription-based online services for media companies like CNN and USA Today in this video interview. The company is getting a large business audience, he says: more than 50 percent of customers are getting reimbursed by their companies.

Survey: Web Doesn't Affect Print Readership
Newspaper Web sites do not cannibalize print subscriptions, according to a survey by Belden Associates. This is the sixth such study Belden has done, and all have found that Web sites rarely affect how often people read the newspaper, while a

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