Brand Central Station

In a recent post on B2B Magazine’s web site, Stephen Brill, L. Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery announced the launch of Journalism Online, a company designed to help newspapers, magazines and other media get paid for content distributed online.

And publishers of every print media could use the help.  Magazine revenue dropped nearly 25% this past quarter. Newspaper and other medias are down big, too.

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The marketing news site ADOTAS caught my eye with this article on the growth of local news sites earlier this week.  While dozens of companies have been trying to develop the sites to tap into local ad dollars, there are some problems.

The lure of billions of advertising dollars (an estimated $32B will be spent by 2013, ADOTAS reports) is attracting developers but the big problem is content.  Will these local sites be able to afford the reporters, et al, neccessary to provide relevant (and readable) content local news consumers will want?

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An ad promoting NBC’s edgy, new copy show, “Southland” has set journalistic purists and other media watchers on edge by not only appearing on the front page of the LA Times but showing up in the guise of a newspaper article strategically placed next to a display ad for the show.  The article/ad was designed to look like a report about the series’ hero.

While running ads on the front page is nothing new for the LA Times (they’ve been doing that since 2007), this is the first time the paper has run mock news article on page 1.

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From the Animal blog by way of Copyranter.  See other newspaper objects d’art here and here.

Our friends at the Financial Times launched an online “test” of its new homepage design to gather thoughts and responses from readers.  (You can check out the new home page here.)

In an e-mail to past and current subscribers, the FT explains its web site overhaul is an attempt to achieve three important goals:

This is the first step in a series of design changes and functional improvements that will be rolled out across the rest of the site as they become available. These include:

 

• expanded coverage of important subjects such as macroeconomics,
  energy and technology

• better integration between market data and news, to give context
  to market movements

• more opportunities for users to become part of the Financial Times
  community by contributing to our discussion forums and blogs

Of course, many of the things we’re working on we hope you’ll hardly notice at all. Planned improvements to the behind-the-scenes nuts and bolts of our publishing system will make the site quicker and easier to use. Please bear with us while we get there.

Is sharing all of this a good idea?  We think so here at Brand Central Station.  Here’s why:

1. The campaign is all about soliciting feedback – a critical step in making sure a major design change doesn’t turn off more readers than it entices to the FT.
2. The effort creates “buzz” among readers and first-adopters.
3. Analysis of how the sample home page is reviewed and used will help drive further site enhancements down the road.

All in all, a this test (and the upgrades to site service and design) are good ideas from a well-run news organization.  Kudo’s FT.

Crain’s NY Business reports the New York Times will be cutting 100 positions out of their newsroom by the end of the year.  From the sound of things, it sounds like some of the editorial leadership will have to leave, too:

“[The] low-hanging fruit is gone, and so is some of the high-hanging fruit,” said Times executive editor Bill Keller.

Late last year, the Times cut half a dozen support positions and instituted a hiring freeze. The paper’s ad revenue dropped 4.7% in 2007, compared with about 7% industry-wide. For the year, the company reported earnings of $209 million on revenues of $3.2 billion.

The Crain’s article credits this piece on Gawker for the tip.

Romenesko points to this post in the NY Times (reg. required) covering the final days of one of America’s premiere newspaper companies.

Gallup Poll Analyses – Are the News Media Too Liberal?

Here’s an interesting study just released by the Gallup Organization showing how American’s view the bias of their media (and, we assume more specifically, news coverage). Almost half of those surveyed felt the media’s bias leaned too much to the left, while nearly 40% of those surveyed thought it was about right. A significantly smaller slice of the public thought the media was too conservative.

Looking inside these numbers reveals some interesting facts, as well. Of those people surveyed who consider themselves to be “liberal”, nearly one in five thought the media’s bias was still “too liberal” while half felt the media gets it about right. Of those Americans who identified themselves as “conservatives,” on the other hand, 29% felt the US media got it right and only 9% felt the media went too far to the political right.

What’s this mean? Two things:

1) Fox News’ intuition/market research identified a significant market when they spotted a need for what they call “fair and balanced reporting” and what many others call “conservative news bias” among a significant population of Americans. By playing to relatively common perceptions, Fox News has been able to carve out a lucrative niche.

2) Americans are becoming more savvy news consumers whether they like it or not.

All news reporting, for that matter all media, has some kind of editorial bias. It has to. People need a plot to follow in order to stay engaged and in the news business it means you have to have a point or focus to the story. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into.

What erodes the trust in the media (which has eroded over the past 25 years, by the way) is the inability or unwillingness of the media to identify their point-of-view and consistently stand behind it. Instead, many media outlets have insisted on fighting a losing battle – claiming impartiality and then waffling from one position to the next.

When we talk about brand value, we explain that value is built by consistency in execution and point of view. A brand depreciates when a company’s actions (or, in this case, positions) are inconsistent with what’s been said and done in the past.

If the media wants to build credibility, it needs to come out of its closet and admit to editorial bias.