Content Bridges

News Corp can try to make itself over, as completely and quickly as it can, as an American entertainment company, with global investments (Britain, Italy, Germany, India, the Middle East). That initiative — we may presume a new CEO some time in the not-too-distant future — will focus on non-newspaper assets, and try to divorce itself from the London-based mess. Of course, that strategy has its own issues, as the U.S., too, is dragged into the inquiry, due to alleged 9/11 wiretapping and more insistent calls for investigation here

Please, don’t tell me we’re “all guilty,” in the U.S., as well. We’ve heard a lot of citing of ABC’s checkbook journalism controversy with the litany of crimes apparently committed by those calling themselves journalists. Treading on society’s victims lives, paying off police for years and apparently conspiring to hide and destroy the truth all transcend checkbook journalism. Yes, we are all on increasingly slippery slopes as journalism quickly morphs these days, but there’s a big difference between sliding, debating that slide, and falling into cesspool of arrogant lawlessness. Let’s make sure we don’t confuse the two and take on those who purposely annex them for political gain.

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.

Who knew what and when did they know it? This is no longer hacking-the-royals affair, but a major criminal case. So the questions, up and down the News Corp/News International (parent of all UK newspapers) becomes which execs knew what, when. That’s from Rebekah Brooks to Rupert Murdoch himself, including Les Hinton, now publisher of the Wall Street Journal and head of News International for 12 years and James Murdoch.

For Americans, it’s a bit tough to understand. Where does NOTW fit in? How does the BSkyB acquisition figure into this? Is Murdoch’s power much different in UK than the U.S.? And: are there any implications for what happens with News Corp properties in the U.S.? That last question became newly interesting this morning when the Third Circuit Court of Appeals sent back the amended-in-2007 newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership policy to the FCC, citing procedural and due process issues.

My short take: expect this earthquake to produce lots of aftershocks. Rupert is the pro’s pro at absorbing shaking and quaking about his power, but the deepening revelations will make that maneuvering more difficult.

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?

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.

Am I the only one who doesn’t get Gannett’s branding campaign? Yes, the Gannett math — $33 million saved in furloughs, as much as $27 million potentially to be granted in exec bonuses — seems sadly clueless, but what about the money the company has spent on its branding campaign. New logo and then, in the TV ads, I’ve seen, ticking off the diverse Gannett brands — from newspapers to broadcast stations to recruitment site Career Builder, rich media ad player PointRoll, elevator ad play Captivate, the MomsLikeMe network. Narrates CEO Craig Dubow, “What you may not know is that they are brought to you by one company.” I’ve seen the ad on local TV (which makes no sense), though it seems mainly targeted to media buyers through Advertising Age, Adweek, Brandweek, and Mediaweek. Why would ad buyers increase ad buying at any of the individual properties because of the corporate ties? Maybe, it’s also a reinforcement of the brand and the company for Wall Street, as financial analysts question future performance. Overall, though, it reminds me of Knight Ridder’s big investment in green-and-blue rebranding, not too long before its demise, money, then, as now, that could be better spent on innovation itself.

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 fence, they’d bump into it, and then go elsewhere, lost to the Times, taking many page views with them and contributing to traffic loss. The opportunity: convert them all into digital subscribers, and the Times could take in as much as somewhere between $15 million and $35 million by the end of the year. The Times’ Lincoln gambit removed the threat. Presumably, these readers are glad to get free access and will go merrily using the Times. The opportunity, well, it’s an opportunity cost. In reality, the Times may have immediately converted 10% of this group. That’s 10,000 people at an average price point of $20 per four weeks or $2 million. Offset that $2 million with the added Lincoln money, and you can see the logic.

They ran into these realities of the newspaper business:

1. You can have the best technology in the world, and it’ll be a slow sell to publishers.
2. The news industry is small, and getting smaller.
3. The revenue streams are smaller, and JO’s share of them is smaller.
4. Nothing — meaning no one thing — is going to “save journalism.” This is a long-term struggle, and the Press+ notion — a good test of the market in my view — is simply a piece of the puzzle. We’re all like kids with blocks, and we’ve got to endlessly figure out how to reconstruct the hollowed-out cities of journalism.