Congress could vote on the DREAM Act as early as tomorrow. Three University of Maryland colleagues and I just finished a semester-long multimedia profile of one young lady, Isabel Castillo, who is risking deportation to lobby for the bill. It would grant conditional legal status to people under 30 whose parents brought them into the U.S. illegally when they were under 16, if they go to college or serve in the military. Check out the full story under the "DREAM of a future" tab on this page:
College grad risks deportation to fight for DREAM Act
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Soccer helps sisters cope with dad's death
This didn't make it into print for space and time reasons, but I think it might be the best thing I've done at the Post so far. These are two strong young ladies.
( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110903897.html)
( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/09/AR2010110903897.html)
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Paywall pandemonium
Used to be that the newspaper industry was a cash cow. Set up your little publication on Main Street, start pulling in legal notices and classified ads and show up at the city council meeting and high school football game once a week and you were set.
The biggest challenge was the pesky cost of buying and operating a printing press. As it turns out, that barrier to membership might have been what kept the whole thing so profitable in the first place. Once the Internet came along, any Tom, Dick and Huffington with a computer and a modem could create or aggregate news and suddenly the competition for those ad dollars was much stiffer.
So what's a suddenly destitute publisher to do? Increasingly, they seem to be banking (quite literally) on online paywalls.
At least one publisher turned his back at the "everything-on-the-Internet-should-be-free" model with the express purpose of trying to return to the glory days of print. Last year the American Journalism Review reported on Albert K. "Buck" Sherman, who installed a $345 annual paywall on his Newport (R.I.) Daily News site (http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4813).
Why charge 138 percent more for an online subscription than a print one? In the hopes of driving more people back to the ink-and-paper Daily News (circulation 12,000), which was far more profitable. Newsweek reported that sales of newsstand copies of the Daily News went up by 200 a day and cancellations of print subscriptions virtually ceased in the wake of Sherman's uber-paywall (http://www.newsweek.com/2009/08/31/this-news-doesn-t-want-to-be-free.html). A year later, Sherman has retired as publisher but his wall is still standing (exceedingly) tall — a monument to a man who scoffed at the "everything-is-going-digital" conventional wisdom.
That seems to be a rare case, even as paywalls go, though. Other news organizations are looking for a hybrid model which will allow both their print and online products to make money. That's been the Wall Street Journal's modus operandi for more than a decade, offering some free online content and putting some behind a paywall.
That's also the direction NewBay Media went in Oct. 4, ending its practice of offering everything that was in its Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News magazines online for free (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=132&aid=192098).
"We charged for a subscription and then we were taking all the content of the magazine that came out every week and putting it up on the Web for free, which wasn't really fair to our subscribers," Tony Savona, NewBay's marketing director, said in a phone interview. "Also, at the same time we were paying [to produce] some quality content that we were just handing over there as well, so we really did it just to put a value on both our content and our subscribers."
NewBay is still offering breaking news online, updated daily, for free. Savona said the deeper analysis of those events will be in the print product or behind the online paywall. Through the paywall's first week, Savona said complaints have been minimal.
"We haven't really seen too much negative stuff," Savona said. "It seems that people are using [the paid online content]. They're registering, so... so far, so good."
It seems that paywalls can work for trade mags or the WSJ, but those are publications with specialized audiences. How would a mass audience newspaper fare, especially in a market bigger than Newport, R.I. (pop. 26,475), where it's competing with more than just Grandma Rudy's newsletter for audience share? Well, The New York Times is about to find out.
Yes, the Old Grey Lady, who herself has not been immune from the ravages of revenue-killing digital media, will be going paywall starting January 2011 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21times.html).
Like the WSJ, some NYTimes.com content will remain free, and print subscribers (even those who only take the 150-pound Sunday monstrosity) will have full access. The Times is doing this is an attempt to solve the "10 percent problem," (http://publishing2.com/2007/07/17/newspaper-online-vs-print-ad-revenue-the-10-problem/), which basically broke down thusly in 2007:
NYTimes.com online unique users (12-month average): 13,372,000
Print circulation (daily): 1,120,420
Print circulation (Sunday): 1,627,062
(Significance: The New York Times has roughly 10 percent of print readership vs. online)
Total advertising revenue: $483,594,000
Online advertising revenue: $51,000,000
(Significance: The New York Times gets roughly 10 percent of its ad revenue online)
In a nutshell, print circulation was about 10% of total audience reach, while online advertising revenue was about 10% of total ad revenue. Or, as the Publishing 2.0 technology and media blog put it: "The economics are nearly the perfect inverse of what they should be."
Obviously not a sustainable model. So, The Times (in a surreal and odd bit of shameless self-coverage), quoted its own executives saying they decided on a hybrid free/paywall website because "they wanted to create a system that would have little effect on the millions of occasional visitors to the site, while trying to cash in on the loyalty of more devoted readers."
A beautiful thought, but is it possible in a city where residents can turn to two other daily newspaper websites for free local news and CNN.com for free national and world news?
It hasn't happened at The Times of London, which went paywall along with many of Rupert Murdoch's other News Corp. holdings in July. The Guardian reported (perhaps gleefully, as one of The Times' top competitors) that online readership at thetimes.co.uk dropped 90 percent in the first month of the paywall — from 150,000 registered users to 15,000 paying registered users (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/20/times-paywall-readership).
Yet Murdoch persists with his paywall. Is he just a stupid businessman who can't see the writing on the wall? Forbes says he's worth $6.7 billion, which seems to suggest he knows a bit about making money. Given the paltry ad revenues that come from online users, it might just be that Murdoch would prefer to have 15,000 pairs of paying eyeballs than 150,000 pairs of freeloaders.
And if some people decide they'd rather pick up a printed copy than pay online, then so much the better, financially — with a nod and a wink to Mr. Albert "Buck" Sherman.
The biggest challenge was the pesky cost of buying and operating a printing press. As it turns out, that barrier to membership might have been what kept the whole thing so profitable in the first place. Once the Internet came along, any Tom, Dick and Huffington with a computer and a modem could create or aggregate news and suddenly the competition for those ad dollars was much stiffer.
So what's a suddenly destitute publisher to do? Increasingly, they seem to be banking (quite literally) on online paywalls.
At least one publisher turned his back at the "everything-on-the-Internet-should-be-free" model with the express purpose of trying to return to the glory days of print. Last year the American Journalism Review reported on Albert K. "Buck" Sherman, who installed a $345 annual paywall on his Newport (R.I.) Daily News site (http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=4813).
Why charge 138 percent more for an online subscription than a print one? In the hopes of driving more people back to the ink-and-paper Daily News (circulation 12,000), which was far more profitable. Newsweek reported that sales of newsstand copies of the Daily News went up by 200 a day and cancellations of print subscriptions virtually ceased in the wake of Sherman's uber-paywall (http://www.newsweek.com/2009/08/31/this-news-doesn-t-want-to-be-free.html). A year later, Sherman has retired as publisher but his wall is still standing (exceedingly) tall — a monument to a man who scoffed at the "everything-is-going-digital" conventional wisdom.
That seems to be a rare case, even as paywalls go, though. Other news organizations are looking for a hybrid model which will allow both their print and online products to make money. That's been the Wall Street Journal's modus operandi for more than a decade, offering some free online content and putting some behind a paywall.
That's also the direction NewBay Media went in Oct. 4, ending its practice of offering everything that was in its Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News magazines online for free (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=132&aid=192098).
"We charged for a subscription and then we were taking all the content of the magazine that came out every week and putting it up on the Web for free, which wasn't really fair to our subscribers," Tony Savona, NewBay's marketing director, said in a phone interview. "Also, at the same time we were paying [to produce] some quality content that we were just handing over there as well, so we really did it just to put a value on both our content and our subscribers."
NewBay is still offering breaking news online, updated daily, for free. Savona said the deeper analysis of those events will be in the print product or behind the online paywall. Through the paywall's first week, Savona said complaints have been minimal.
"We haven't really seen too much negative stuff," Savona said. "It seems that people are using [the paid online content]. They're registering, so... so far, so good."
It seems that paywalls can work for trade mags or the WSJ, but those are publications with specialized audiences. How would a mass audience newspaper fare, especially in a market bigger than Newport, R.I. (pop. 26,475), where it's competing with more than just Grandma Rudy's newsletter for audience share? Well, The New York Times is about to find out.
Yes, the Old Grey Lady, who herself has not been immune from the ravages of revenue-killing digital media, will be going paywall starting January 2011 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21times.html).
Like the WSJ, some NYTimes.com content will remain free, and print subscribers (even those who only take the 150-pound Sunday monstrosity) will have full access. The Times is doing this is an attempt to solve the "10 percent problem," (http://publishing2.com/2007/07/17/newspaper-online-vs-print-ad-revenue-the-10-problem/), which basically broke down thusly in 2007:
NYTimes.com online unique users (12-month average): 13,372,000
Print circulation (daily): 1,120,420
Print circulation (Sunday): 1,627,062
(Significance: The New York Times has roughly 10 percent of print readership vs. online)
Total advertising revenue: $483,594,000
Online advertising revenue: $51,000,000
(Significance: The New York Times gets roughly 10 percent of its ad revenue online)
In a nutshell, print circulation was about 10% of total audience reach, while online advertising revenue was about 10% of total ad revenue. Or, as the Publishing 2.0 technology and media blog put it: "The economics are nearly the perfect inverse of what they should be."
Obviously not a sustainable model. So, The Times (in a surreal and odd bit of shameless self-coverage), quoted its own executives saying they decided on a hybrid free/paywall website because "they wanted to create a system that would have little effect on the millions of occasional visitors to the site, while trying to cash in on the loyalty of more devoted readers."
A beautiful thought, but is it possible in a city where residents can turn to two other daily newspaper websites for free local news and CNN.com for free national and world news?
It hasn't happened at The Times of London, which went paywall along with many of Rupert Murdoch's other News Corp. holdings in July. The Guardian reported (perhaps gleefully, as one of The Times' top competitors) that online readership at thetimes.co.uk dropped 90 percent in the first month of the paywall — from 150,000 registered users to 15,000 paying registered users (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/20/times-paywall-readership).
Yet Murdoch persists with his paywall. Is he just a stupid businessman who can't see the writing on the wall? Forbes says he's worth $6.7 billion, which seems to suggest he knows a bit about making money. Given the paltry ad revenues that come from online users, it might just be that Murdoch would prefer to have 15,000 pairs of paying eyeballs than 150,000 pairs of freeloaders.
And if some people decide they'd rather pick up a printed copy than pay online, then so much the better, financially — with a nod and a wink to Mr. Albert "Buck" Sherman.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Baltimore Orioles class project
Me and four classmates put together this website on the futility of the Orioles and how it impacts Baltimore. Kind of interesting, since most of the time sports coverage focuses on good teams.
http://bmore.jschool.umd.edu/summer11
http://bmore.jschool.umd.edu/summer11
Sunday, August 29, 2010
An odd encounter in Philly
So I met a lot of super-smart young medical students last week in Philadelphia while giving a presentation on meningitis at the University of Pennsylvania. I also met a guy named Joe on the subway.
Joe rolled onto the car in a wheelchair and stopped next to me. He was missing a leg and had some pretty nasty burn scars on the remaining leg. He noticed my hands and immediately asked what happened.
"I got a bacterial infection six years ago," I said. "A form of meningitis that got into my bloodstream and cut off the circulation to my hands and feet."
Up to that point, the conversation was not all that unusual for two amputees. Then it took an odd turn.
"You get that from shootin' dope?" Joe asked.
"Excuse me?" I said.
"You get that from shootin' dope?" Joe asked... louder.... in a crowded subway train.
"Um, no," I said.
I explained that I supposed one could get sepsis from shooting up with dirty needles, but that in my case I got it from a bacteria that lives in people's throats.
I'm not sure how much of that he understood, but he immediately launched into a long, involved, graphic story about his own injuries. While a lot of people around us gave him uncomfortable glances.
The more he talked, the more mumbly he got. In fact, by the time he'd gotten through the backstory, I never did quite catch specifically how he was injured. But as the story went on, I kept hearing the phrase, "When I was on fire..."
Three possible explanations for why that phrase kept coming up: 1. He used to play basketball and was quite a good shooter. 2. He spends a lot of time at Christian revival camps. 3. He was actually engulfed in flames at one point in his life.
I'm guessing it was No. 3. And, based on his questions for me and his inability to articulate properly, I'm guessing it might have been the result of a meth lab accident.
Then I got off the train, walked around Chinatown and found a place advertising $5 haircuts in the window. So I sat down and got my hair cut next to a guy with a tattoo of a naked girl with gigantic breasts on his arm. No kidding, those things were freakishly big.
Joe rolled onto the car in a wheelchair and stopped next to me. He was missing a leg and had some pretty nasty burn scars on the remaining leg. He noticed my hands and immediately asked what happened.
"I got a bacterial infection six years ago," I said. "A form of meningitis that got into my bloodstream and cut off the circulation to my hands and feet."
Up to that point, the conversation was not all that unusual for two amputees. Then it took an odd turn.
"You get that from shootin' dope?" Joe asked.
"Excuse me?" I said.
"You get that from shootin' dope?" Joe asked... louder.... in a crowded subway train.
"Um, no," I said.
I explained that I supposed one could get sepsis from shooting up with dirty needles, but that in my case I got it from a bacteria that lives in people's throats.
I'm not sure how much of that he understood, but he immediately launched into a long, involved, graphic story about his own injuries. While a lot of people around us gave him uncomfortable glances.
The more he talked, the more mumbly he got. In fact, by the time he'd gotten through the backstory, I never did quite catch specifically how he was injured. But as the story went on, I kept hearing the phrase, "When I was on fire..."
Three possible explanations for why that phrase kept coming up: 1. He used to play basketball and was quite a good shooter. 2. He spends a lot of time at Christian revival camps. 3. He was actually engulfed in flames at one point in his life.
I'm guessing it was No. 3. And, based on his questions for me and his inability to articulate properly, I'm guessing it might have been the result of a meth lab accident.
Then I got off the train, walked around Chinatown and found a place advertising $5 haircuts in the window. So I sat down and got my hair cut next to a guy with a tattoo of a naked girl with gigantic breasts on his arm. No kidding, those things were freakishly big.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
My first Capital News Service wire story
Here's the link:
http://www.journalism.umd.edu/cns/wire/2010-editions/08-August-editions/100818-Wednesday/FirstsThird_CNS-UMCP.html
It's an article about the 1st District Congressional race in Maryland. A Republican has put up almost $500,000 of his own money to campaign against the party-endorsed candidate in the upcoming primary. Could have national implications — the seat seems primed for a Republican takeover, but a fight between the two Repubs could help the Democratic incumbent stay in power.
http://www.journalism.umd.edu/cns/wire/2010-editions/08-August-editions/100818-Wednesday/FirstsThird_CNS-UMCP.html
It's an article about the 1st District Congressional race in Maryland. A Republican has put up almost $500,000 of his own money to campaign against the party-endorsed candidate in the upcoming primary. Could have national implications — the seat seems primed for a Republican takeover, but a fight between the two Repubs could help the Democratic incumbent stay in power.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
