DESIGN is the new BLOG!

Looks like our boy DyePack went straight to the source instead of wasting his time here - scroll to the bottom of the link.

 

This guy is wanting to sell newspapers like one would sell fast-food burgers. The USAT style was tried; then newspapers decided to go back to a more retro style (even USAT to an extent). Saving newspapers is one thing, but not at the cost of not being a newspaper anymore. His disdain of important reporting is obscene. And his credibility factor flew out the window when he cited Maxim as the model.

 

Especially since he's just plain wrong. Maxim does have stories.

 

I PMed DyeP this link last night because I thought he'd get a kick out of it. He probably hasn't posted here because he's on the way to the guy's house. Oops.

 

Maybe you killed him. :'(

Congrats!

 

DP is _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ and posted a comment at the end of the article.

The two things I agree with from the article.
• Editors should be more concerned with sales and circulation and doing things to improve them.
• Papers should focus more on analyis and what it means, as opposed to straight news coverage.

I don't think earlier deadlines are the key. I think it should be a shift away from giving away expensive coverage online. Free websites have to rank as among the worst ideas ever, but it would take a huge shift to move away from that. Readership isn't down, it is up. It is circulation that is down. Like why should I buy my local metro, when I can read every story, local and national online? Just to see the ads. Why do that? I have a tivo and don't even watch TV ads anymore.

If it is first-read coverage, very local stories that won't have been on CNN o making national headlines, then I think straight coverage is perfect.
But if it is a big national or international story, then I would think analysis would be better.

 

wow pringle, the next-to-the-last post was so much dye it's sick.

 

Jacobsen is the cat who sold our place on a Web site re-design that subverted content art to ads. He insisted that the only 2 Web sites in the business — the NYT and the Wall St. Journal — that turned a profit did so because they followed that model.

He spun away when I asked him if he thought each's content and profile might have had something to do with their success.

He sold us on a new design but then bailed as it was being implemented. It's OK, an improvement over the last one but quite a bit of it is still underdeveloped.

We didn't need a monorail in Springfield but he sold us one anyway.

The biggest problem with this business right now is the preponderance of consultants, many of whom, I'm sure, are full of it.

 

Tom, get me the president on the phone.

 

Jay, you make a good point and it's something I've been saying since 1998. New technology is killing advertising by making it easy to circumvent and by illuminating how ineffective it really is, relative to its cost.

That is certainly a major issue here. Advertising has always been overpriced and basically an annoyance to everyone except the publisher or whoever makes a profit from it. Now, it's becoming apparent to advertisers that their money might be spent more wisely.

Free content might be a stupid idea, from a business standpoint, but it's how the Web was conceived by the nerds who put it together. Like a modern day Pandora's box, free content — unless something that can't be found elsewhere — is going to stay free.

Newspapers are media outlets, first and foremost, and if they have to break their news over their Web site, that's what they'll have to do. Circulation numbers are never going to go back up but that doesn't mean people aren't reading the on-line edition.

 

oh, that's right, you might of missed it since i screwed it up. i said "that's alright col., the pres. would just tell you to blow him" you smug fuck.