The Newsonomics of the Washington Post’s Reader Dashboard 1.0

We’re into an era when we can no longer play ignorant. We can decry the “content mill” methodologies of the Demand Medias, Examiners, and AOLs, but unless traditional news people understand — and apply as they see fit, working with their own long-standing news principles — data-driven knowledge ...

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Inside the NYT Lincoln Deal: It’s About Dollars, Traffic and Conversion

Let's start with the 100,000 readers. These weren't picked at random. They are non-print subscribers (since subscribers are getting access included within their print subs now). They are heavy NYTimes.com users. As such, they represented an opportunity and a threat. The threat: facing the pay ...

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The Newsonomics of the New York Times Pay Fence

It’s a high price, a gamble, and a big hedge — see Test 5 below — against print subscribers migrating too quickly to the tablet. Since it is not charging print subs, it’s going to be an uphill battle to get non-print people to pay a minimum of $195 a year for something that was free, and it ...

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The Newsonomics of AOL/Patch’s buying Outside.in

Yet it parallels the HuffPo buy in a major way: It’s an attempt by AOL to get bigger faster. Look at AOL’s financials and it’s clear Armstrong is in a race against time. As one savvy newspaper veteran pointed out to me last week, AOL looks, ironically, a lot like a newspaper company. It has a ...

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The Newsonomics of Overnight Digital Customers

That’s right. You’re no longer a “user”, a hateful term if ever one were invented, or a “visitor,” or a brother from another digital planet. Overnight, you’re a customer again. In this psychology, a news company has put a value on what it produces. You, the customer, now are being shown that ...

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The Newsonomics of Google Grouponomics

Therein we can see the newsonomics of Google Grouponomics. How quickly can Google double its, maybe, 1.5 million merchants? Let’s say those additional 1.5 million merchants spend only 25 percent annually of what the first 1.5 million spend, which is about $27 billion a year, at the 2010 run ...

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The Newsonomics of Kindle Singles

In fact, Kindle Singles may open the door even further to wider news business application, for news companies — old and new, publicly funded and profit-seeking, text-based and video-oriented. It takes the old 78s and 33 1/3s, and opens a world of 45s, mixes, and infinite remixes. It says: You ...

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The Newsonomics of the Ad Recovery

So what we have here is a trend that’s held true from boom to bust through tepid recovery: newspaper companies’ continue to be the laggards, losing market share in ad revenue, by the week, month, and year.

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The Newsonomics of the Dead Cat Bounce

Are there any positive growth numbers to report? Which categories may be turning positive — maybe national or retail display ads — as the sagging economy continues to plague the traditional classified strengths of auto, recruitment, and real estate?

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The Newsonomics of Content Arbitrage

Is there a danger in content arbitrage? It’s value-neutral; it’s all in how you do it. Let’s remember that journalism is essentially a manufacturing process, with as much or as little value added as we want.

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