Kentucky basketball game tonight; flame away on me

That's a pipe dream. Very, very, very few writers have enough of a brand to pull off the type of sponsorships you're talking about. And even if you have a writer with the brand-name cachet to do it, you still need to have someone with the business acumen to make the brand financially viable. The writing is hard enough -- the business side, too? Good luck with that.

Joe Posnanski has his own Web site, and just got Google ads for it recently, but no way he could subsist full time on that income, even if he devoted himself to it.

 

Let me fix that for you.

$100,000 minus the cost to host the site, minus the cost of plane tickets, hotel rooms and rental cars (no paper to pay for that any more!) minus the cost of insurance (no paper to pay for that any more either).

Yeah, good luck clearing ANY money there.

 

Most of it, yes.

 

I'm not saying this is the answer, but somebody is going to figure it out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/business/media/18voice.html?_r=1&hp

 

I think that article is saying what I am saying. The newspapers are going to get rid of all the veteran reporters who can kick the shit out of the kids the newspapers will hire. These websites won't need a lot of reporters to make an impact. There's still the advertising problem but perhaps convince some heavy hitters that they should sponsor the sight with cash. These veteran reporters again will kick the living shit out of the newspapers, who shed their best writers in cost cutting moves. It will be the final death knoll to the newspapers. It will be fun to see them die this way. Revenge of those let go. I'm glad this story was written.

 

This line from the article is the key:

The fledgling movement has reached a sufficient critical mass, its founders think, so they plan to form an association, angling for national advertising and foundation grants that they could not compete for singly.

I think small media companies and newspapers need to have similar bonds to get national advertising. Podunk news can't get a ad deal with a major player but the 50 newspapers in Media Co. could all share the advertising through a centralized advertising sales and serving department. The department could offer 1 million hits across 20 sites for the latest blockbuster movie while a small sales department at each paper would work to sell the smaller contacts to local advertisers.

 

Well, we'll see. Longtime TV critic Ed Bark left the Dallas Morning News not too long ago. He was one among many "brands" of which that once-great newspaper could be proud. His blog at unclebarky.com is pretty good. But i doubt it's "kicking the shit" out of anybody. It has the same Netflix and Amazon ads as every other blog.

To "kick the shit" out of the local newspaper would take way, way more money than anybody's carrying away in severance.

And "foundation grants"? Well, now you're beholden, which cuts into credibility.

 

I think I agree, but perhaps not.

My point is this: just because a newspaper is online does not mean people are going to the newspaper site for news. The biggest mistake I think is the assumption that newspaper readers are going to the newspaper site, and it isn't a straight correlation. The ability to specialize, cheaply, is underestimated by the honchos.

Just because "Big Paper" is at the top of the website does not make it better.

Yes, there is a metric ton of yahoos doing poor online work, but there is also great work being done. People are going to find the great work. Vet/established/branded reporters have a leg up in both ability and credibility. And that's why I don't understand the papers letting go of the established folks--those people are their greatest asset.

The newspapers have to stop putting themselves at the center of the solution. It leads to way too many poor assumptions.

 

I agree that newspapers' decision to cut content providers is a short-sighted and stupid decision. However, the idea that good journalism will be discovered by readers is also not true. I also agree that the brand at the top of website does not necessarily mean that people will turn to newspapers' websites for information.

The advantage of the brand name comes from newspapers' potential ability to negotiate content providing agreements with portal sites such as google, yahoo, etc. That is where the money and website hits can be generated. YourCityLive.com or whatever other portal-like sites that companies have created are a failure. No one is going to go to google/yahoo for e-mail and go to some other portal site for news. Media companies need to start understanding that they are content providers and start signing sharing deals with major portals like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Start looking around at those portal sites and see how many content sharing deals they have. Heck, even Maxim.com and Sportsline.com have content sharing agreements.

Those independent news providers will have more trouble signing these content sharing agreements than the "brand name" newspapers. If someone at google is looking for a content sharing deal for local news -- who are they more likely to sign with? The local newspaper which everyone in town has heard of even if they are a shell of what they used to be? Or the unknown group of journalists who might be doing better work on their site but no one has heard of? The "brand name" is going to win every time.

 

Unsuccessful troll is unsuccessful

 

Nice 7th post...

("Now, what the fuck did Shot mean by that..."

He probably meant that before you call out individual posters, you should have established your own credentials with at least 40-50 posts which actually say something. That's all.

"OK. Thanks, Shot.")

 

Not to beat a dead horse, but check out the Ann Arbor News website right now (9:15 p.m.). It has full game coverage up there including another excellent column on the bush league Michigan coach. Why in the fuck do newspapers put all that content up for free right after the game? The column even ends with the word "today." Uh it's still Saturday because of dumb management types putting it on the web now. For what good reason??? I see one Michigan lottery ad on the page.
Current newspaper advertisers should be the ones pissed. Fewer people should read the actual newspaper with all the fucking stories on line tonight!!! Dumb. Gamers, sidebars, columns. Dumb dumb dumb. But at least they beat ESPN. And you wonder why this business is going out of business? We've been sold a bill of goods, folks.