Recovering Journalist

The Instant iPad App

For publishers, iPad apps are all the rage these days. Everybody's developing whizbang apps to take advantage of Apple's popular tablet—even though, when you get right down to it, most of the apps aren't huge improvements over the publications' existing Web sites, which are just a touch away on an iPad screen. Still every newspaper and magazine wants to have its own iPad app, so they're spending zillions to develop them, business models be damned.

But do you really need to build your own app? It turns out there are other tools out there that can create good-looking apps, from publisher's feeds, at minimal cost. Three of the best-known ones are Flipboard, Pulse and Zite, which create slick, high-quality iPad publications from various combinations of users' Twitter and RSS feeds. Good stuff, and I'm surprised we haven't seen publishers license private-label versions of these platforms to create cheap, easy iPad apps for themselves.

And now WordPress has made creating a news app—or at least an iPad-compatible blog—even easier. Got an iPad? Got a WordPress blog? Check out your blog in Safari on the iPad, and prepare to be amazed. (If you don't have a WordPress blog handy, here's a good hyperlocal one, by my friend Dan Woog, from whom I first heard about this trick. Sorry, I can't help you if you don't have an iPad!)

Very quietly, WordPress has rolled out a nice iPad "Onswipe" theme for all 18 million of its blogs, automatically making them iPad-friendly. You get a nice title page, an iPad-like layout of posts, and the ability to swipe across the screen to change pages—all requisite features of any good iPad app, all automatic for any WordPress blog. The popular blogging platform has had a similarly good-looking, simplified mobile version for smartphones for a while now. No muss, no fuss—instant compatibility with the latest in mobile computing.

The point is, you don't need a team of developers to create a good-looking iPad app or iPad-friendly site for your publication. Why waste the money building a custom app? WordPress, like Flipboard, Pulse and Zite, is proving that a simple, universal iPad-in-a-box solution may be a much better way to bring publications quickly and easily into the tablet age. 

 

The New York Times' Porous Paywall

I think there's a rule today that every media-business blogger has to weigh in on the New York Times' finally announced online subscription plan, and I'm going to do my part by deferring to Felix Salmon's excellent analysis, which I think is spot on:

What does all this mean for the New York Times Company? I can’t see how it’s good. ... By my back-of-the-envelope math, the paywall won’t even cover its own development costs for a good two years, and beyond that will never generate enough money to really make a difference to NYTCo revenues. Maybe that might change if the NYT breaks its promise to offer full website access for free to all print subscribers. But that decision would be fraught in all manner of other ways.

For the time being, though, I just can’t see how this move makes any kind of financial sense for the NYT. The upside is limited; the downside is that it ceases to be the paper of record for the world. Who would take that bet?

Agreed—this really looks like small potatoes, perhaps just a sop to virulent "we must get paid!" factions within the Times. I think it's just porous enough that it won't affect more than a small number of die-hard Times readers—and I'll bet most of them are already subscribers to the print edition, and thus will get the online version at a weird discount. 

Me, I'm in the latter camp—I still get the printed Sunday Times, so the online version will be free for me. Truth be told, as much as I'm a fan of the Times, I can't imagine paying for the online edition. As with the Wall Street Journal, the Times paywall appears to be porous enough that I'll be able to read what I want, through links and the occasional site visit, without triggering the subscription bar.

Critically, I understand that what I pay for when I subscribe to the print edition is printing and delivery of the paper. Those physical production costs don't exist online (per the comments below, advertising foots the bill for the journalism), and thus I don't understand why I'd pay $15 a month for NYTimes.com.

In any case, as Salmon says, it doesn't appear this is going to make a material impact on the Times' finances. Which really makes you wonder what the point of it all is, except maybe to make some sort of "we must be paid" statement. Sorry: Just wanting to be paid does not a business model make.

 

 

Gannett: Repainting the Deck Chairs on the Titanic

Circulation is down. Ad revenue is down. Staffers are facing week-long furloughs, yet again. There are whispers that USA Today is in trouble. The classifieds business is pretty much gone. Newspapers are dying. The broadcast business isn't much better. Even the company-backed Newseum is a disaster.

So what's Gannett going to do?

Change its corporate logo and slogan, of course. Of course.

That's the spiffy new logo—guess they laid off most of the company's designers amid all that cost-cutting. And that's the equally plain new corporate slogan: "It's all within reach."

Scintillating. That's really gonna make me run out and buy a Gannett paper. Corporate rebranding—yeah, that's the ticket. As has already been pointed out, it worked so well for Knight Ridder. Remember them?

What a joke. What exactly does Gannett gain from this farce? A fresh coat of paint on the corporate logo and a meaningless slogan aren't going to move the needle at all.

And what does Gannett lose? Do the math. How many hours of high-priced executive and consultant time went into choosing and market-testing the new logo and slogan? Plenty. How much is it going to cost to change stationery, reprint business cards, update signage, run ads, etc., to implement and publicize the new logo? Conveniently, Gannett isn't saying, although CEO Craig Dubow allows that it's "significant." It's safe bet that "significant" means millions of dollars. (Not to be missed: The voluminous corporate-mandated guidelines on use, care and feeding of the new logo.) 

Those are dollars that could have been used to keep Gannett's staffers from being furloughed, or to invest in interesting innovations and startups, or even to hire a few more reporters at the chain's staff-strapped papers. Instead, they're being thrown to the winds in a burst of corporate-suite ego that's right up there with Gannett's elephantine—and increasingly empty—corporate headquarters in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. (Hey Gannetteers: If you haven't been to corporate HQ, you've missed the eye-popping experience of strolling across the highly polished marble floor of the building's vast, arena-sized lobby to the security desk located about a football-field's length from the front doors. I kid you not. See photos below. The annual costs of heating and cooling that cavernous empty space probably could pay for another round of city hall or cop reporters at several Gannett papers.)

Gannett's not totally dumb—the company has some interesting local and advertising initiatives going on. For instance, check out TheBoldItalic, its sharp, stealthy San Francisco site for 20-somethings. Smart stuff.

But spending millions for a corporate rebranding to adopt a blah new logo and dumb slogan? Not so smart.