ChasNote

In his Times column today, David Carr says print newspapers need “an iPod moment,” a disruptive technology that eventually revitalizes the industry it seemed destined to destroy. The problem for newspapers, as he sees it, is that reading them required your full attention:

For all the print newspaper’s elegance — it is a very portable, searchable technology — it has some drawbacks. A paper is a static product in a dynamic news age, and while every medium is after eyeballs, the industry has to take that quite literally. You cannot read this story while driving in your car — which is how most of America commutes — and you cannot have it on in the background. America is hooked on “companion” media, a pet platform that sits in the corner and pays attention to you when you pay attention to it.

I disagree. The problem with newspapers is less about reader attention (too much required or too little paid) than it is about marketing efficiency. Local papers used to be the great communications platform for neighborhoods, towns & cities. As such, they enabled streamlined, one-to-one commerce by way of classified advertising — the life-blood of the newspaper business.

So forget about an iPod moment, some innovation that entices more people to read print newspapers again. Yesterday I had a Craigslist moment, a taste of the service’s dreamy community-connecting power. I hadn’t purged enough old furniture before moving & found myself with a sun-bleached couch & a wobbly bureau that didn’t fit in my new house. I couldn’t track down a friend with a station wagon (to drive the items to Good Will), so I posted a classified at Craigslist in the “free” section. Forty-five minutes after uploading the ad, two young women hauled away the couch & bureau in their Subaru. Within an hour I was helping another guy take away my broken-down moving boxes. Service with a smile! It’s only services like this — not re-tooling its articles to be consumed as “companion” content — that will save newspapers.

The gang at PaidContent confirms that AOL has bought Jason Calacanis’s Weblogs Inc. No price tag announced (Update: Unofficial word is $25MM). They also have this quote from Gawker’s Nick Denton:

“The acquisition of WIN by AOL is exhilirating news, in many respects, most of which I shouldn’t list here. For what it’s worth, Gawker isn’t for sale. The whole point about blogs is that they’re not part of big media. Consolidation defeats the purpose. It’s way too early. Like a decade too early.”

Hmm. If consolidation defeats the purpose now, what’s going to change in 10 years (when Gawker goes up for sale)?

Zackary Rodgers in ClickZ compares Federated Media (my employer) with Philip Kaplan’s AdBrite — and talks about our common threat, Google.

Battelle’s Federated Media Publishing is sophisticated, services-driven and built for the A-list (to use a dirty word). We’re talking BoingBoing and Om Malik. Very CPM…..

Battelle’s FMP is also about giving control to publishers, but the deals are one-off and the sites are cream of the crop. The list of bloggers he’s working with — whom he calls “authors” — reads like a roll call of the best and brightest in online tech and tech-influenced culture. They include BoingBoing, Waxy.org, Om Malik, and Matt Haughey-run sites Metafilter and PVRblog….

“[Google’s new site-specific ad model is] kind of a mash-up of Pud’s and my idea,” said Battelle, referring to Google’s tests. “I think that’s fine, and I think that keeps us honest, and I look forward to proving that the relationship that we create is more valuable. I don’t take anything they might do lightly, believe me. I’m sure that if their ads perform better for all parties concerned than ours, people will use them. We’ll see.”

At least it was Pud and not Battelle who used the phrase “douche-baggy”!

If you can actually get readers to pay to visit your site, it must be just too darn tempting not to milk them for more. At least that seems to be the thinking at WSJ. But I don’t get it. I thought Dow Jones spent all that money on MarketWatch because the paid gate at WSJ.com — while generating substantial revenue — locked them out (mostly) from the bigger opportunity in online advertising. And, because marketplace cred is necessary if your business depends on advertisers or readers paying you, the paid-content model, which prevents other news sites (especially blogs) from spreading your news because they can’t link to your content, also limits your relevance among people who get their information via the Internet. Mike at TechDirt puts it well:

It seems that the WSJ is caught in some sort of bind, right now. It wants to experiment more and join back in with the online conversation by doing things like having an occasional free story — but the business folks are only looking at the bottom line and not the big picture. The reporting is still top notch in most cases, but the value may be decreasing as it doesn’t allow itself to be part of the conversation.

Glenn Fleishman at WifiNetNews on Google’s motivation for providing free city-wide wifi for San Francisco — super ad targeting that doesn’t violate consumer privacy:

They’re aiming to move more advertising dollars out of the devastated newspaper business in the city and suck more life from telephone book display advertising. National advertising in the U.S. comprised $45 billion the first half of 2005; local advertising, $26 billion. Because Google will run the network, they can deliver ads targeted to the city block for folks using their Wi-Fi network without knowing anything about the individual consumer, as it will be entirely based on the Wi-Fi network not consumer characteristics. I imagine Google views this as a massive experiment and money well spent.