Law 10 – Media and Marketers Find New Ways to Mix and Match

That’s the dream that the MediaNews’ new made-for-the tablet, TapIn taps into. Potentially — and I cannot emphasize that word too much — it may become a prototypical product for the news industry, pointing a new way out of the hollowing-out landscape into which the news industry has meandered. TapIn, which launched today, is parent company MediaNews Group’s big play for the iPad, “a better version of Patch,” says MediaNews exec Steve Rossi.

As we look at the newsonomics of NPR Digital Services, we can see big potential impacts and dollars. We also see that the public radio movement, and the effort to enlarge it to become public media (“‘Public Media’: $100 Million Plan, 100 Journalists Per City“), is now re-emerging. As politicians used NPR as a convenient pinata in the budget battles and NPR offered a couple of sticks, in the Juan Williams firing and Ron Schiller/phony sheik incidents, public radio put its head down, the better to avoid the fire, which it had done to some degree. It is now peeking back up, seeing if the coast is clearer.

It sounds like a dream come true: cut costs and maintain control of the business. The risk: What will the FT — which won’t be selling digital subscriptions through Apple’s stores — miss out on? What about the lead generation Apple’s 200 million registered (with credit cards on file) users can offer? That’s one potential downside, finding its competitors, including the Wall Street Journal in iTunes, but no longer the FT. Another: what if readers — we who have been lately conditioned to believe in the miracle of sprightly presentation of apps, as compared to the mundane “online” world — don’t take the web app jump?

What’s coming: Tablet specials on sports events, leisure, travel, health, and other social events. In other words: the range of what newspapers traditionally cover in feature sections, but with the content and presentation thought out with a magazine approach. That’s why iPad specials or singles should be big, whether produced by newspaper or magazine companies. Some American publishers are already thinking about home and garden, sports commemoratives, personal finance, and travel.

Treat News ADD: In a world of plenty, really infinities of news, opinion and information, it’s not how much content you can push to the market, it’s how much reader attention you can earn and depend on. In describing Domino, Godin says, “The only asset we care about is attention.” You’ve got to ask, he says, “What are you doing with the attention you have.” That’s a highly relevant question. In print, news publishers used to engage lots of reader attention, gaining four hours or more per month of attention (reading time) of 40%-plus of the households in their markets. Online, most news sites have gotten 10-15 minutes per month of reader engagement, reader attention. The tablet, and e-readers, offer new opportunities in treating this attention deficit disorder, with the early signs showing more attention spent. Innovative approaches to publishing — what you offer, how you offer, how you package, how you engage readers — can be the best medicine. “It’s a huge opportunity for journalists. They can be the concierge of attention,” he says, as editors pointing to best, most useful content, their own or others.