Recovering Journalist

Stop Pasting Print Publications onto the iPad!

They're doing it again.

One of the biggest longstanding criticisms of newspaper and magazine efforts on the Web has been that many of them seem too much like print publications pasted onto a computer screen. Text-heavy, constricted by old-fashioned layout conventions, generally unimaginative—these sites have failed miserably to take advantage of the advantages and differences offered by the new medium: interactivity, video, community, search, what have you. 

And now comes a new digital medium, the iPad, and...yep, they're doing it again.

Some of the biggest names in publishing have made a big splash with the introduction of Apple's new tablet by releasing iPad apps for their publications. Alas, too many of them have fallen into that same old trap, trying to replicate a print experience on the iPad's screen. 

The iPad turns out to be a great device for casually consuming all sorts of media—text, video, audio—and it's already seeing some creative multimedia informational (you know, media) apps from non-media sources, such as Major League Baseball's excellent At Bat 2010, Elements Collections' dazzling The Elements: A Visual Application and Atomic Antelope's wondrous Alice for the iPad children's book. These are apps that truly use the power of the iPad to present information in new, imaginative and attractive ways.

Not so the apps from the likes of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time and Men's Health. They're back to pasting newspapers and magazines onto the iPad's crisp, glossy screen, and in the end, these apps are distinctly inferior to these publishers' own Web sites. That's a real problem, especially because many publishers see the iPad as some sort of a savior for their business, a platform for which they can charge readers. Good luck with that, given the products so far.

The Journal, for instance, thinks it can charge $17 a month for access to its app, after an initial free trial. Are they kidding? I wouldn't use this piece of crap for free (I'm a big Journal fan, but I couldn't delete it from my iPad fast enough). It's hard to navigate, it's only updated once a day, it's full of bugs and it offers little in the way of interactivity. Ditto the New York Times Editors Choice app, which is free for now but is reputed to be a cornerstone of the paper's plans to charge for online access. The Times app is a painfully cutdown version of the paper, with truncated stories, missing sections and hopelessly retro newspaper-like navigation. Fail. It's not the Times' design that's great about the Times: It's the journalism. Why sacrifice that to pretty fonts and layout?

USA Today's app is a bit better, but again, it's missing comments or any other kind of interactivity, and even underscores its pasted-on-the-screen design by lamely imitating the serrated top edge of newsprint. Puh-leeze. (And USA Today plans to charge for its app, too.) The Time and Men's Health apps—like Sports Illustrated's mythical and highly overrated tablet demo—are way too much like magazines pasted on a screen. Boring. Oh, and they want you to pay $4.99 an issue. Not gonna happen.

Bottom line: All of these publications' Web sites are all far better than their apps—and on an iPad, hello, the Web is just a screen-touch away. Not surprisingly, these apps get fairly low user ratings in the iTunes app store. Customers know when they're getting shoddy products.

To be sure, there are some interesting, if still unspectacular, iPad efforts from some traditional publishers. Entertainment Weekly's app focuses on the magazine's popular weekly "Must List" of media recommendations—and attaches direct links to purchase the videos, music and books it touts. Craven, but useful. The Guardian's Eyewitness app is devoted solely to photography, presenting one great hi-res photo a day from around the world. Not flashy (and it really needs some community and interactivity), but simple and very good-looking. 

Marvel comics' app brilliantly moves comic books onto the iPad screen—pasting them there, yes, but with a clever navigation scheme that allows readers to flip smoothly from scene to scene. Very cool. And Epicurious, Conde Nast's Bon Appetit- and Gourmet-based cooking app, presents clear navigation and a deep database of recipes. That's very handy as we begin to understand that the iPad is a really great device for casual computing around the house—indeed, Epicurious + iPad finally fulfills the longtime promise that a PC in the kitchen would be a great recipe reference. 

We're still very early in the game for publishing on the iPad, of course—the device has only been on the market for two weeks. It'll be a while yet before software developers really get the hang of it and create apps that take full advantage of the new power and user experience the tablet computer (and its coming competitors) represents. But publishers looking to the iPad as a miracle cure for their business problems are going to have to do a whole lot better than just pasting their publications onto the tablet's screen. That didn't work on the Web, and it sure doesn't work on the iPad.

And Verily, Steve Jobs Came Down from the Mountaintop With a Tablet, and It Was Good (But Version 2 Will be Better)

After all the fevered buildup, we now know the actual details of Apple's iPad tablet. Probably not surprisingly, it doesn't quite live up to all of the pre-release hype and speculation (including my own). But it still appears to be a remarkable device that, in its first generation, has the potential to change a few corners of the media world. And that's just the beginning.

Out of the box, the iPad is a very interesting reading device. Lying flat on a desk or table, it can mimic a lot of the readability and convenience of print (and adds a lot of bells and whistles). It makes the Kindle look like an antique. It's light and easily portable. The iPhone, despite its small screen, isn't a bad reading device, and the iPad greatly expands on that. Does it portend a whole new business model for newspapers and magazines? Not at first glance. But you'll be able to buy books on it, and maybe that will extend to periodicals in same way. For sure, advertising will look a whole lot better on it.

The iPad seems to have real potential as a portable movie and TV viewer, with a screen much larger than most current portable devices and a form factor much more comfortable than watching a movie on a laptop. It's easy to imagine curling up with a movie on the iPad.

Of course, the iPad runs most iPhone apps, on a bigger screen, and that's a real positive, given the massive iPhone app ecosystem. The development of iPad-specific apps that take advantage of the larger screen will make it even more valuable. It also looks like a pretty good laptop substitute--indeed, perhaps the best description of the iPad at this point is that it's the world's slickest netbook computer.

Not visible yet, at least in this version: more integration with large-screen video and movie devices, easy connectivity to projectors, printers and other peripherals, and a built-in camera that could make it a great portable video-conferencing and Skype device. Others have pointed out additional shortcomings.

But hey, this is Version 1. Just a couple of years ago, the original iPhone had its own limitations, and over time it added a rich set of features and capabilities—apps, for instance, didn't come along for the first year or so, and a video camera and good GPS were second-generation upgrades. So we'll have to see how the iPad evolves. It looks like a very nice product now, at surprisingly reasonable price points. Version 2.0 could be a real killer.

Do I want one? (Everybody asks!) Are you kidding? I've already got my name on the waiting list. I can't wait to get my hands on it. And every media company should feel the same way--and be thinking about how to develop new kinds of products for this very interesting new type of device.

Apple's Tabula Rasa

As the new year rolls in, the talk of the tech world is Apple's allegedly upcoming tablet computer. The New York Times has even dubbed 2010 as "the year of the tablet."

Sites and publications that cover Apple and the tech industry are abuzz with the usual frenetic levels of speculation that always precede the secretive company's future product releases. Nobody really knows anything, but the guesses have taken on a life of their own, creating a froth of hype that Apple itself probably couldn't achieve if was being forthcoming. 

The consensus of speculation seems to be that the tablet will be called the iSlate, it will be a cross between an iPhone and a laptop, it will have a nine- or 10-inch high-resolution color screen, it will have Wi-Fi and cell network access to the Internet, it will cost somewhere between several hundred dollars and $1,000, and it will be announced later this month and be available in the spring. Or maybe not. Everybody's guessing.

There's a lot of chatter about the tablet in media-industry circles, as well. The idea of a portable device for reading newspapers and magazines has been kicking around for nearly two decades, dating back to concepts promulgated by erstwhile Knight Ridder new media/tablet guru Roger Fidler (who's still chasing his dream). In all those years, the mythical tablet has been a sort of holy grail for publishers, the electronic version of papyrus and newsprint. That dream has been renewed lately by the ability to crudely publish newspapers and magazines on Amazon's Kindle, as well as by a much-hyped demo of an electronic version of Sports Illustrated that frankly doesn't advance much beyond what Fidler and others among us were demo-ing in the early '90s. (Can we get over the electronic page-turning metaphor, replete with sound effects? Please?) 

And now, or very soon, comes Apple's tablet. Publishers look at it and see that text reader they've always dreamed of. TV and movie execs look at it and see a portable video device. Gamers and software developers see it as a new kind of lightweight computer.

But I believe all of these views are way too limited. With a nod toward the parable of the five blind men evaluating an elephant, it's important not to look at the forthcoming tablet through the prism of individual media types. Most of those speculating about Apple's tablet aren't thinking big enough. They're concentrating on narrow possibilities—it could be a book reader! It could play movies!—without seeing the much bigger picture of what Apple may be on the verge of creating. To its users, it will be: All Of The Above. And that's huge.

Indeed, I believe the Apple tablet has the potential to strikingly transform large swaths of the media business, from newspapers to television to movies, pretty much all at once. Reading the tea leaves of all the rumors, and making guesses based on following the company closely for 25 years as a reporter, fan and (full disclosure: very small) shareholder, I think there's a significant chance that Apple may swing for the fences with its new device—and the services that surround it. 

Apple's tablet has the potential to change the way we consume and pay for media—many different types of media—as substantially as the company revolutionized the computing business with the original Macintosh, the music business with the iPod and iTunes and telephony and handheld computing with the iPhone. Probably more so, in fact.

It's also important to think of the Apple tablet as more than just the device. It may be part of a larger technological/media system that will also include a greatly expanded iTunes store and perhaps even a greatly enhanced version of Apple's long-simmering AppleTV product.

With that in mind, let's speculate on how the tablet could impact different types of media:

• Newspapers: Roger Fidler's tablet finally comes to life, with all the attendant multimedia and interactivity possibilities. Big deal—the Web has done that for years. What the tablet will add is location-awareness, giving publishers and advertisers the ability to tune their messages to where the user is. This is the ultimate in personalized news. We've already seen glimpses of this on the iPhone, Android and other smartphones (which are surprisingly good as text-based newsreaders). Imagine the same thing with a big screen. There might even be a subscription model for the best, most unique content, since there are already signs that smartphone users will pay for the convenience of certain kinds of quality niche content or apps. (But hey, newspapers: No simply pasting print content on a tablet screen, OK? Take advantage of the medium.)
• Magazines: The flashy Sports Illustrated demo is frustrating because it's so superficial. A portable magazine reader is important only if it greatly exploits the ability for interactivity that will finally make magazines (if they're smart) tap into the vital special-interest communities that are their subscriber bases. I don't just want to watch video that goes with Sports Illustrated stories—I want to be able to instantly discuss those stories with other SI readers. Incidentally, the Apple tablet will make the magazine's industry's belated efforts to create its own magazine-reading device completely superfluous.
• Books: It's assumed by just about everybody that the Kindle is pretty much roadkill the moment that Apple's tablet hits the market. Instead of a single-function, black-and-white book reader, the iSlate would provide readers with full-color displays, access to an expanded iTunes store for book downloads—and the ability use the device for countless other functions. Sure, it will be more expensive than the Kindle (at first). But it will provide much more value. If you're going to carry a book reader, wouldn't you rather it be one that does tons of other things? (Especially if the reader can provide gorgeous color multimedia and interactivity—portable online book discussion groups?—at the same time.)
• Television: This is where things start to get really interesting. The tablet could finally bring the long-dreamed-of "TV everywhere" concept to life, with a portable device that provides a la carte access to all sorts of video content—from YouTube, TV networks, studios, etc. Apple already is reported to be in talks with broadcast networks to provide access to their content on the tablet on a subscription basis; extend that to cable networks, plus the existing iTunes and Hulu video-on-demand services, and users will be able to watch pretty much whatever they want whenever they want. But wait, there's more: That viewing wouldn't be limited to the small screen of the tablet. Combined with a much-expanded version of the TiVo-like AppleTV platform, the tablet could act as a controller and source for watching that same video on the big screen at home. You could switch seamlessly between large and small screens. And the business models for this—subscription, pay-per-view--could upend the advertising-based model for broadcast TV. The possibilities here are fascinating.
• Movies: Along the same lines, the tablet plus AppleTV could be a marvelous bridge between portable movie-viewing (on a much better screen than watching movies on an iPod or iPhone, which is surprisingly popular) and home viewing. Netflix and others are hurtling toward ubiquitous digital delivery of movies; Apple could beat them to it by providing the devices that are the missing link.
• Communications: The tablet will work on cellphone networks, but who wants to carry a phone that big? Wrong question. Telephony would be merely a sideshow on the tablet. More importantly, always-on access to communications via cell networks and Wi-Fi, plus a user-facing camera, could make the tablet a powerful video-communications tool: Skype in your hands or, to hearken back a few decades, the ultimate PicturePhone. 
• Apps and Gaming: The secret weapon of the iPhone has been its tens of thousands of apps, which give the device countless additional uses—any iPhone user will gladly demonstrate for you the latest app that has made his or her life easier (or at least cooler). Here again, the iTunes store is the enabler, and it's reasonable—especially if the iSlate uses a variant of the iPhone operating system—to expect that the apps ecosystem will transfer to the new device, enhanced by the larger screen size and other enhanced features. The portable gaming possibilities alone are enormous. So are the possibilities for interesting and innovative social applications. (Video Twitter, anyone?)

That's quite a laundry list for a single device, but that's where Apple appears to be headed. Oh, and the tablet will be a computer, too. Why carry a laptop when the iSlate is lighter, has a full-sized virtual keyboard, maybe some sort of video-out capability and the ability to handle Word, Excel and PowerPoint files (plus whatever the apps bring to it)? I just wish they'd add a slide-in dock for an iPhone, so I could carry a single lightweight device.

The scenario I've laid out here is just as speculative as any of the other guessing out there about what Apple's up to. I'm certainly not alone: Daring Fireball's John Gruber makes a similarly sweeping prediction:

If you’re thinking The Tablet is just a big iPhone, or just Apple’s take on the e-reader, or just a media player, or just anything, I say you’re thinking too small—the equivalent of thinking that the iPhone was going to be just a click wheel iPod that made phone calls. I think The Tablet is nothing short of Apple’s reconception of personal computing. 

These are grand expectations. Truth is, nobody really knows what Apple is up to except Steve Jobs and a handful of other insiders. And certainly a handful of naysayers are suggesting that nobody really wants to lug around a tablet computer, and thus it could be a Newton-like bust (although the Newton, in retrospect, seems remarkably prescient). Indeed, Apple, full of hubris and swagger after the enormous success of the iPod and iPhone, could well blow it with an overpriced, unfocused product. 

But like Gruber, I'm betting on Apple to break ground, yet again, with its tablet, and in a big, big way. It could bring together so many threads of innovation that have been developing for the past few years. I truly believe that we could be on the verge of an important turning point for the way we get and use all sorts of media. I can't wait to see what Apple comes up with. It could change everything.

The New Media Audience

Tim Windsor posts a shout-out to Don Tapscott's book about the new generation of digital natives, Grown Up Digital, along with a telling photograph to illustrate that audience and why it's different from the audience that most of us are familiar with (and members of). As Tapscott writes:

If Wonder bread builds strong bodies in 12 ways, this generation is different from its parents in 8 ways. 

To wit:

• They want freedom in everything they do, from freedom of choice to freedom of expression.
• They love to customize, personalize.
• They are the new scrutinizers.
• They look for corporate integrity and openness when deciding what to buy and where to work.
• The Net Gen wants entertainment and play in their work, education and social life.
• They are the collaboration and relationship generation.
• The Net Gen has a need for speed–and not just in video games.
• They are the innovators.

That last point is critical. Those of us of the older generation (can't believe I'm typing that!) are really from a different age these days. We're have media and business behaviors and desires that are radically different from this new generation. We're a bunch of old fogeys, horse-and-buggy drivers in an era of supersonic vehicles.

Th members of that new generation are not only the new audience–they'll be building the new successful products (they already are, in fact). When I talk to journalism classes, I tell them to go out and create and build things that they and their friends will like and use–not what our generation wants. We're dinosaurs, and the way we consume media is fading fast. 

Everybody in the media business needs to be looking hard at this new generation's values and targeting products to them–and letting that generation take the driver's seat in deciding what those products will be. Seems obvious–but too many of us are still clinging to what is increasingly clearly past.

Gathering Lots of Moss

Hot news from the magazine world: Wenner Media, publisher of venerable music/culture magazine Rolling Stone, has just hired its first-ever executive with responsibility for all things digital.

Oh. My. God. What decade are we in?

Let's face it, Rolling Stone, once the hippest magazine on the planet, hasn't been anything like hip for decades. Dislocated hip, maybe, or broken hip. Something elderly-sounding. But even that's no excuse for how badly the magazine has missed the digital zeitgeist. This probably shouldn't be surprising, since it never really caught up with the music video revolution a generation ago, either, and is still largely stuck in the '60s and '70s in its view of music and culture. 

Its Web site is abominable, the worst sort of cut-and-paste print repurposing job, and founder and CEO Jann Wenner still openly worries about cannibalizing print readers by putting content online. (Good news, though: He's started reading the New York Times online! Far out, man!) Turns out, in fact, that RollingStone.com has basically been outsourced to Real Networks (another happening sort of outfit) for the past few years. Sheesh.

Now, finally, Rolling Stone is going to try to get with this digital thing all the kids are talking about–you know, that social networking stuff and those mp3s and iPod thingies they seem to be using to play music instead of vinyl LPs and 45s. What a concept. The magazine must be all-a-Twitter. Better (or worse) yet, the company's new chief digital officer comes from no less a cutting-edge publisher than...Readers Digest.

Best of luck to them, but this is just more proof that, when it comes to the online realm, magazines make even newspapers look forward-thinking. In the end, the lesson here may be, to twist a phrase on which Rolling Stone all but based its founding philosophy back in 1967: Never trust any magazine over 30.

Local Ad Dollars, Slip Sliding Away

There's a good but depressing article in the Wall Street Journal about how newspapers are continuing to fall behind in the local online advertising derby–even as their print ad revenues are ebbing away. According to Borrell statistics cited in the story, newspaper share of the local online ad market has fallen to 27.4 percent from 35.9 percent two years ago. Things aren't going in the right direction. That's not good–especially when the overall local online advertising market is growing, ahem, at a 57 percent annual clip.

The Journal story lists several reasons for the newspapers' local online advertising problems, unfortunately well-known to anybody who's been around newspaper online ad sales operations:

• It's hard to get sales reps interested in selling less-lucrative local online ads.
• Small local advertisers generally don't buy banner ads favored by larger national advertisers (and still the standard ad on most newspaper Web sites).
• Strategies of bundling print and online advertising may cause more cannibalization than added sales. 
• Local online ad growth is coming from small- and medium-sized business–which traditionally haven't been significant advertising customers of most good-sized dailies.

That last point is particularly interesting. In print and online, most papers, by covering a broad metropolitan area, are more attractive to larger local advertisers like car dealers and banks. Smaller advertisers–the pizza parlors, nail salons, mom-and-pop stores–don't want the broad geographic reach that papers offer, and can't afford the high rates. And they're harder to sell to (and the commissions aren't as large). 

So newspaper sales reps traditionally haven't called on those smaller advertisers. But there are lots of them, and other media are moving in–community papers, local Web sites and blogs, even Google, Yahoo and specialty sites like Yelp. That's what's crowding the newspapers out of their own markets, online.

At Backfence, we saw that there was definite interest by these small merchants and service providers in advertising online on a focused local site. But newspapers, for the most part, still don't have significant offerings of that type. Not only are they not selling the ads, they often don't really have the strong local online products to sell them on. Want to dominate the local online market? Start with a killer local entertainment guide. But most newspaper sites still haven't figured out how to provide readers–and advertisers–with a topnotch local events guide. And hyperlocal coverage, which gives those small local advertisers access to customers nearest to them, is still a pipe dream at most newspaper Web sites.

All of this is quite unfortunate, since newspapers at this point need every ad dollar they can find, and those small local businesses represent a largely untapped pool of potential ad revenue. To get it, newspapers need to really change the way they approach their local market, online. Some suggestions:

• Build a strong local product to attract local advertisers–an entertainment guide, hyperlocal sites, a site targeting a specific local demographic, whatever.
• Push the cost of ad sales down as low as possible. No more high-salary, high-commission sales reps who can only score decent bucks by selling another car dealer ad. Try commission-only telemarketing reps smiling and dialing to blanket small local businesses.
• Self-serve advertising tools. Make it easy–really, really easy–for small advertisers to come online, create, place and pay for an ad. That drives the cost of sales way down. Did I mention it has to be easy? Most newspaper sites haven't mastered that concept for simple things like placing online classifieds, unfortunately.
• Seminars for local businesses on online advertising (see the Bakersfield Californian example in the Journal story). It's still new to many, many small business owners. Educate them on the value of online advertising and how to take advantage of it. 
• Don't sell only your own products. Deploy ad reps with a portfolio of offerings to local businesses that might include ads on Google, Yahoo, or even the Yellow Pages. You've got the feet on the local streets--use them.
• Experiment with new online advertising forms. Banners and tiles aren't the only way to advertise online. In fact, they're quite tired (clicked on a banner ad lately? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?). Try everything from text ads to interactive ads that couch the ad message in a game or quiz. Sell sponsorships of various elements of the site. And don't forget video ads, which are becoming very popular among local advertisers. Real estate walkthroughs, chefs describing their restaurants–these videos seem obvious, but they're still few and far between on newspaper sites. 

Newspaper competitors online already are doing all of these things. Just as on the news side, too many papers are still trapped in a business and operational model that dates to just after the days of Ben Franklin and John Peter Zenger. Local online advertising represents a significant source of badly needed advertising revenue. Newspapers can't afford to let it slip away.

A Smart Outsider Looks at Newspapers

There's a terrific angry blog about the music industry by a guy named Bob Lefsetz, a former industry executive who delights in pointing out how record companies, led by ossified management, have been totally eclipsed by the Internet and changing technology to the point where they're in danger of going out of business.

Sound familiar?

Anybody who's interested in the music business, or in changing industries, should read Lefsetz regularly. If nothing else, he's great fun–every blog should have his spirit and passion. There's nothing like a good Lefsetz rant.

But today he turns his sights on....the newspaper business. It's the view from an outsider who's a fan of quality news but understands how change can roil an industry. It's well worth a read, with a warning: Lefsetz has nice things to say about Sam Zell's Tribune crowd, including chief innovator Lee Abrams, who came from the radio industry–another business in upheaval that Lefsetz knows well.

Quoth Lefsetz: "The traditional news business is excoriating Lee Abrams. For his endless memos, complaining about his grammar. For his occasional gaffe. And for his new ideas. If those running the newspapers were so damn smart, they wouldn't be in this predicament. Lee Abrams is looking to save their business." He's got a point, similar to something I've said before. Trying something different, even if it seems nutty, is far preferable to stubbornly going down with the ship.

It's a great read, and worth pondering as an outsider's perspective on what some of us have been saying for years about the need for true fundamental change.

Well, It Could Be Worse

Just to bring a small amount of good cheer to bear in the new year, at least in a relative sense, ponder this: While we all know that newspaper circulation and advertising are falling precipitously, the newspaper industry's got nothing on the music business.

Variety reports that CD sales during the holidays—traditionally the industry's strongest sales period—were down a whopping 21 percent. For the full year, CD sales look to be down in the double-digits. Those single-digit advertising and circulation drops don't look so bad now, do they?

There are some troubling parallels between the newspaper and music businesses and their dual decline: technology, changing consumer habits, hubris and sloth are contributing equally to the erosion of both businesses. And they're both desperately in search of a new business model (and product offering) to try to stem the decline. In both cases, ultimately, it may be irreversible: plastic CDs, like print newspapers, are increasingly obsolete, and both have much better digital analogues. (Sorry, I couldn't resist that.)

There's another industry heading for the same technology-induced precipice, as Marc Andreesen points out: DVDs. Online distribution of movies is coming on fast—did you notice last week announcement that Apple will start offering movie rentals via iTunes? A year or two from now, the movie and DVD industry will be another big story of a business struck a mortal blow by the conversion to digital. Wonder if there will be any newspapers around to cover it?