Comments on: A question for publishers: Where does brand fragmentation end?

By: Eternal

Eternal — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 08:47:54 +0000

It is not we choose the media,but the media choose us.

By: Michael, Portland Afoot

Michael, Portland Afoot — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 03:01:36 +0000

Isn't this only a problem in a world where all information is commodified? I can count on a Rolling Stone blockbuster finding its way to me from other national outlets, but I can't count on a Lund Report scoop about my local hospital doing so. Now, it may be a problem for the Lund Report that its very uniqueness limits its access to modern distribution channels (that is, the people formerly knowns as the competition). But that's not the same problem.

By: Paperboy

Paperboy — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 07:00:12 +0000

I think Tim’s (Comment #1) music biz analogy is bang on. Like newspapers and magazines, it too is an industry trying to figure out how to move away from selling aggregated content in a physical medium (CDs) to individual pieces of digital content (singles on ITunes). It’s probably quite a bit further down that road however than newspaper/magazine publishers.

Nobody goes to a record label or individual artist’s web site to buy their music – so too perhaps the future of news lies in liberating individual articles from branded web sites and sending them forth to ITunes style aggregators, with teaser extracts flooding forth as bait via RSS.

The main hurdle however might be overcoming people’s expectation about having to pay for news. While most media outlets have tried to make free, ad supported web sites work, the music industry has never embraced the idea of giving it’s product away, and is therefore better placed to get people make the 99c psychological leap to purchase.

By: Surviving In An Age Of Brand Fragmentation « Leap Media Partners

Surviving In An Age Of Brand Fragmentation « Leap Media Partners — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:58:15 +0000

[...] Earlier this week Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan wrote that Rolling Stone has little hope of capitalizing on the notoriety of Michael Hastings’ profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal to increase newsstand sales and drive more subscriptions. As Nolan writes, “[w]hereas once people would have rushed out to newsstands to pick up copies of Rolling Stone and read what all fuss was about with McChrystal, now they either A) read that one single story on RS’s website, for free, or B) read it at the competition’s website for free, which is what happened in this case.” (Rolling Stone’s inability to get its own story online in a timely fashion remains frankly mind-boggling.) Nolan argues that Rolling Stone, Esquire and Vanity Fair put out stories as Read More [...]

By: Atomization of Content « Media Myopia

Atomization of Content « Media Myopia — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:57:04 +0000

[...] And now these bits are transforming an entire industry by the atomization of content. [...]

By: This Week in Review: Weigel and new journalism values, Google News gets personal, and Kos’ poll problem | Mark Coddington

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:30:28 +0000

[...] and what this flap might mean for them in the future. On another angle, the Lab’s Jason Fry used the story to examine whether the fragmentation of content is going to end up killing some news [...]

By: Question for publishers.

Question for publishers. — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:23:09 +0000

[...] to simply come to your home page. You have to get your home page to the people.” Jim Brady. More. « Tweet [...]

By: Question for publishers. « NWSAD COLLECTIVE

Question for publishers. « NWSAD COLLECTIVE — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:19:40 +0000

[...] to simply come to your home page. You have to get your home page to the people.” Jim Brady. More. This entry was written by adam, posted on 07/07/2010 at 10:19, filed under Theory. [...]

By: The ASCAP example: How news organizations could liberate content, skip negotiations, and still get paid » Nieman Journalism Lab

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:01:23 +0000

[...] Fry suggested in a post here last week that current paywall thinking might be just a temporary stop along the way to adoption of [...]

By: Online, Brands Are Built One Atom At A Time : Bonehook – A Creative Services Company in Portland, Oregon

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 16:50:48 +0000

[...] The Newsroom, wonders what content atomization means to media brands. On Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, Fry argues that media brands are increasingly meaningless today because we, as readers, [...]

By: Jeff Vidler

Jeff Vidler — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:31:17 +0000

Interesting entry. Especially about the increasing pointlessness of a home page / front page. But I can’t say that I agree with Nolan’s characterization of the New Yorker and the Atlantic as niche content brands or, in turn, his analysis. For my (unapologetically populist) tastes, the New Yorker in particular would fall into the “Good Stories, Bad Magazine” trap. I read several New Yorker articles on line every year, but would never buy a magazine that includes as many (for me) long, time-wasting, dense and pompous articles as I’d have to read to justify parting with my (limited) disposable income to subscribe or pay its hefty newsstand price. In fact, the New Yorker has an audience niche, not a content niche. It has an older, upper-income, decidedly print-oriented, audience that has kept the magazine largely immune from the cannibalization of the Internet. The Web offers only upside for the New Yorker because its “good” articles exposes populist, web-oriented readers like me to a publication we would normally never touch with a ten-foot pole.

By: This Week in Review: Weigel and new journalism values, Google News gets personal, and Kos’ poll problem » Nieman Journalism Lab

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:03:04 +0000

By: Connor Tomas O'Brien › Links: Magazines Without Personality

Connor Tomas O'Brien › Links: Magazines Without Personality — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:20:13 +0000

[...] Fry, over at the The Nieman Journalism Lab, meanwhile, asks, “What if no publication can pull its discrete articles into a coherent [...]

By: alex

alex — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:21:13 +0000

products sell, yes, but outlets still need to have a destination. you can’t get away with having a crappy site or no site at all (at least, not yet — tho if anyone has an idea, i’d love to hear it). it’s still a question of limited resources for too many projects — good destination, plus all the products that are spokes off that wheel, plus the people necessary to sell them to the peanut gallery.

By: Jonathan Stray

Jonathan Stray — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:07:08 +0000

I wonder if the value is no longer in the story, but in the search and browsing tools. Think iTunes: people don’t buy music there because it’s not available anywhere else (hah!) but because it’s the most convenient place.

I still haven’t seen a news website/app that gave me the interface to then world’s news that I wanted. Google News comes closest, but it’s pretty bare bones.

By: Howard Weaver

Howard Weaver — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:22:04 +0000

This would be a lot more persuasive if it were not that Rolling Stone appears to be enjoying spectacular newsstand success with this issue — Gawker notwithstanding. http://huff.to/am6NpN

By: Tim Barkow

Tim Barkow — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:26:56 +0000

I think you can make a pretty strong analogy that the publishing business is becoming similar to the music business: where the product is the marketing (a song is played to sell that song; an article is read to sell that publication). Problem is, articles have little to no repeat value.

But publishers have the advantage that they can, in most cases, control the pages their articles appear on — assuming they publish them online (Rolling Stone faltered here). Which provides a rich opportunity to sell products to readers.

What publishers need to do is rebuild their business model from the bottom up: starting with that single, shared article.

You can’t sell “brand” anymore, especially unfocused brands subject to that “Good Stories, Bad Magazine Syndrome” you mention.

You can sell lots of other products, however. So, looking at that single article, publishers need to ask themselves: What is our product? And how are we using this article’s popularity to drive consumers to purchase that product? How does the article and the page help create that transaction?

In a world buffeted with information and content, publishers need to provide a strong, clear value proposition — magazines like Rolling Stone probably never will, and they will likely suffer to consequences.