Some publishers, including thought leaders like John Paton, have cited the potential of using Open Source software to develop low-cost digital newsrooms. In the blog of the Journal Register’s Ben Franklin Project, they write: “we will be using only free web-based tools” and they then deliver a catalogue of such tools. T. S. Eliot, when speaking of the “Free Verse” movement, wrote “No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.” In Silicon Valley there has long been a similar saying that “Free Software is never really free.” The issue at hand is what business and finance folks call TCO: Total Cost of Ownership. TCO is the measure of the true cost of a system, including acquisition, customization, support, maintenance, training, and several other cost factors. Open Source software is also known as Free Software, as in the Free Software Foundation, the non-profit body that supports the Open Source movement and who wrote the most common Open Source license, the General Public License or GPL. But “free” refers to the freedom to use and distribute the software; it does not actually refer to price. “The word free in the term free software refers to freedom (liberty) and is not at all related to monetary cost.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software) For newsrooms, “free” Open Source software may well be the most expensive option available. Now, before I get too deep into the issues with Open Source newsrooms, I want to go on record as saying that I am a proponent of Open Source software myself. I love WordPress, and all its fun plug-ins (look, I am blogging in it right now). My company’s web site runs on WordPress and our cloud-based newsroom software runs on the free Open Source Linux/MySQL platform. I am among other things, a tech geek with a team of open source developers. I even write code myself, when the developers aren’t looking. I can afford to use Open Source. But most small newsrooms (and a lot of larger ones) do not have the technical depth to use Open Source, software, and if they do, that technical depth is part of the cost of an...
Read MoreDigital Editions and Portable News
I just returned from Publishing Expo 2012 in London, where I was interested (among many other things) to see what newspaper and magazine publishers were doing in the area of offline delivery, or content-to-go. Print has long had the advantage of being able to travel easily with the reader. So in the transition from print to digital delivery, the ability to save stories on a device for offline viewing (available when there is no Internet connection, such as in a subway or on an airplane) is still a necessary requirement. It’s worth mentioning that subway systems and airlines are already experimenting with wireless Internet, so “offline storage options” can be considered a transitional technology until the day, not too far off, when the Internet cloud will available almost everywhere. When that happens, offline portability of news will cease to matter. This is already a vision that companies like Microsoft and Google are touting for corporate information and office applications. But today I am interested in what publishers are doing with digital editions–the online version laid out more or less precisely like their print edition–and how many are moving toward tablet and mobile apps capable of storing articles on the device. Last week I received an email from Ziff-Davis, a reasonably forward-thinking magazine publisher, announcing that they were abandoning digital editions for one of the titles I subscribe to: “To ensure we focus our innovation on channels that have proven most useful for our readers, we will no longer be sending .pdf versions of CIO Insight, otherwise known as Digital Editions. We experimented with this over the last few months and have now decided to put it on hold. We expect you will continue to enjoy our always improving content through the major channels highlighted above.” Those “major channels” included their web site content and their tablet and mobile editions. In a recent post I wrote about how different media need to be supported by different interface models; online is a very different user experience from print, and just placing the print edition online (as a PDF) isn’t really a valid model for the way people want to consume articles online....
Read MoreWhy Blogging Writes?
When I first conceived of this blog I had intended to write about the remarkable technical work that rocketed DNAinfo.com, the hyperlocal Manhattan news site, from 0 to 1.2 million visitors/month in about 18 months–something of a record in a town known for the competitiveness of its news outlets. (Here’s a link to an article that gives context for how my alma mater is faring in the battle for New York.) I can’t lay claim to the real driver of DNAinfo’s success–the remarkable editorial quality that made it so popular among New Yorkers. For that I have to credit the editorial staff, especially Leela De Kretser, who now runs the show. But like a proud father I had “bragging rights” to the technology that enabled that content. After all, while content is king, you can’t leave orbit without a rocket ship. (And while I may mix metaphors on occasion, I do know how to build those web-enabled rocket ships.) Technology almost always serves a greater business purpose. I’ve been a consultant to the Fortune 1000 for many years, and I’ve always told my clients that, before we embark upon a web or mobile project, we first need to look at the business case. We have to make sure we are solving the right problem; too many projects are completed successfully yet without actually making the business more successful. So I decided to turn that business thinking to the newspaper industry, and last year I co-founded iMedia Revenue in order to pursue not just technology, but to solve the real problems faced by struggling newspapers who must learn to think like digital media outlets (or face extinction). Blogging Writes is therefore a business blog, about the news industry, for the news industry. Technology is just one important component. What I propose are largely online (web, mobile, tablet) solutions, so whether you are an online news outlet looking to support yourself with online revenue, or a print newspaper looking to survive in the digital age, you’ll find more than valuable insights in this blog: you’ll find real actionable solutions. In Blogging Writes we’ll look at trends, business drivers, revenue models, and the technologies...
Read More