Dec 28th, 2006 | Media 2.0 | 2 Comments
I missed this one due to an excess of eggnog, but the Washington Post says that Google’s newspaper advertising program — which was launched in November, when I wrote about it here — is going much better than the search engine-cum-advertising company thought it would, and so it is expanding it.
According to the Post story, by a tech writer with one of my favourite names (Sara Kehaulani Goo), in just three weeks of the program, Google sold out all the newspaper ad inventory it had expected to sell over a period of three months. The company says it plans to expand the program, which was launched with 100 advertisers and 66 newspapers.
Newspaper executives seem to see it as a worthwhile thing, but something like the Triple A baseball league is to the majors — a good place to start, but not somewhere to stay forever. Says one New York Times exec:
We think it’s a wonderful way to introduce advertisers to the New York Times and print overall… we’d look to up-sell and migrate those [smaller advertisers] to bigger programs and better positions [in the paper] and move them out of the Google system.
Although there is bound to be some resistance from newspapers to the idea of giving some of their business to Google to manage (not to mention some resistance from ad-buying agencies), it seems like a total no-brainer to me. Is running an advertising camapign or maximizing inventory a newspaper’s core competency or purpose? No.
I would argue that handling advertising is merely a necessary evil that newspapers engage in to help pay for the journalism. If someone else can do it better — or even as well — then why not let them? As Don Dodge says in his post, it’s about “an efficient advertising system that satisfies advertisers, content providers, and consumers.” Greg Sterling calls it a “marriage of necessity.” He’s right. Google needs to expand, and newspapers need help.
Dec 25th, 2006 | Media 2.0 | No Comments
Dec 25th, 2006 | Blogs | No Comments
Just a quick note to my legions of devoted fans to say that posting will likely be sporadic over the next few days, as a result of the combined holidays of Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa and Festivus — all of which I have chosen to celebrate, in an attempt to accumulate as many presents and as much food as possible. If you have a lot of time on your hands and want to stroll through some Ingram family photos from the past year, our digital Christmas card is here. Best wishes (of whatever season) to all of you.
And now, the standard disclaimer, as approved by my solicitors:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all together with a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2006, but not with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make Great Britain great not to imply that Great Britain is necessarily greater than any other country and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or otherwise or sexual orientation of the wishee.
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Dec 23rd, 2006 | Social Media | 1 Comment
In a recent blog post, Anil Dash of SixApart wrote about the fallout from a comment that Seagate CEO Bill Watkins made to Fortune magazine, in which he said that his company’s products help people “buy more crap and watch porn.” The comment — which was made during an informal dinner with bloggers and reporters in San Francisco — apparently got Watkins into some hot water within the company, and so he sent out a memo to employees saying:
Unfortunately, and unwisely, I also used pornography as an example to illustrate a point. Fortune Magazine chose to focus narrowly on this example in their headline.
They are in the news business and eager to get their reader’s attention and I should have known better. Even though I believe Fortune’s headline writers took my comments out of context, I want you to know that I am sorry if this has in any way offended anyone.
As the original Fortune piece noted, Watkins is well known for being a colourful personality who likes to speak his mind. Some of those writing about the incident, incuding commenters on the followup post on Fortune’s The Browser blog, are afraid that the magazine’s choice to feature the quote prominently (including in the headline) might dissuade Mr. Watkins and other CEOs from being candid.
That may be — but it’s unlikely. What’s more likely is that the Seagate CEO feels completely comfortable with what he said, but issued the memo as a face-saving measure. After all, his comment wasn’t as bad as the one Ratner Jewellery CEO made in 1991, when he said (among other things) that a decanter set his company sold was cheap because it was “total crap.” The company’s share price fell by almost a billion dollars and he was soon the ex-CEO.
As Anil notes in his post, the Seagate incident was the result of a series of otherwise reasonable decisions: Watkins jokes around with bloggers at dinner, Fortune spots a salacious and funny quote, and an editor highlights it (editor Jim Ledbetter discusses his decision in the comments on the followup item). The Seagate CEO then says he is sorry, and life goes on.
Update:
John Furrier of Podtech has posted a comment on my work blog to say that he was at the dinner with Watkins, and that he described in a post here that he thought Fortune blew the Seagate CEO’s remarks out of proportion.
Dec 18th, 2006 | Social Media | 1 Comment
Over at Mark Potts’ site Recovering Journalist, he’s got a post with some advice for newspapers that want to allow comments on their news stories (as the Globe and Mail does) — and good advice it is too. Mark came up with the post after the Arizona Daily Star said it is reconsidering its decision to allow comments on its news site. The Star’s “reader advocate” says:
We hoped for tough but respectful debate. We posted guidelines prohibiting certain kinds of comments, but for the most part, we stayed out of the way and let readers speak. In the past month, though, more and more comments are violating our standards. Instead of offering constructive criticism, too many posts are just plain coarse.
To which Mark Potts responds with a list of things newspaper sites can do to prevent that sort of thing, including:
- Require registration and reader log-in… if you ask for registration and a valid e-mail address, it a) frustrates the drive-by crazies… and b) provides the newspaper with a way to identify participants so that, if need be, they can be admonished or banned from the site.
- Put a profanity filter into place… an upfront profanity filter forces people to calm down a bit and be more articulate
- Add “report abusive comment” links to every comment… this lets the audience pitch in to help moderate what goes on in the comments.
- Somebody should be monitoring the comments. Not editing them, not moderating them; just keeping an eye on what’s going on and acting immediately to zap anything that’s untoward and to notify members who get out of line.
As Mark says at the end, “Setting the proper tone for behavior in a comments area goes a long way toward enforcing that behavior: If participants see that the conversation is intelligent, they’ll tend to keep it that way. If it gets coarse and full of trolls, they’ll behave accordingly. Think of a comments area as being like a local bar: If it’s well-lighted and classy, it will attract a better crowd than the dark, nasty biker bar down the street.” Good advice.
