Thad McIlroy blog

Remembering When Journalism Mattered

2008-07-24T03:52:04Z

This marvelous document appears on the Tell Zell: What You Really Think blog, "courtesy of Andrew Spencer, now 10. Sent in and used with the permission of his mom, Gail Gedan Spencer, a blogger and copy editor at the Sun" I'll just note a small part of her commentary, and encourage you to visit the site. "I'm sending you something that I've had taped up at my work station for the past few years. It's a worksheet on careers that my son did in first grade. As you can see, a love of journalism must have passed into his DNA from my husband and me. It's hopeful and sad at the same time. (He now has more sensible career goals -- cartoon voice artist or professional sports team mascot.)" I don't think we should despair about the future of newspapers. I think we should keep the faith.

Esquire Magazine Takes a Stab at the Future of Publishing

2008-07-24T01:20:27Z

A glowing article in last Monday's New York Times alerted readers that Esquire magazine, celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, has figured out a trick to gain admittance to the future of publishing party. The cover of its September issue, or rather the cover of the newsstand version of the September issue, will be "printed" with E-ink technology. It's not 100% clear exactly what kind of razzle-dazzle Esquire will be providing newsstand browsers as a result. It could be fun...we'll soon enough see. Esquire went to some considerable pains to make this technology leap. The article provides the details, including "first Esquire had to make a six-figure investment to hire an engineer in China to develop a battery small enough to be inserted in the magazine cover. The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China. They are shipped to Texas and on to Mexico, where the device is inserted by hand into each magazine. The issues will then be shipped via trucks, which will be refrigerated to preserve the batteries, to the magazine’s distributor in Glazer, Ky." The article notes that unfortunately the battery will lose power in 90 days, although any unsold copies will no doubt be in the recycling machines by then. It may however be a disappointment to the folks who are hoping for an eBay bonanza as a collector's item. The blogosphere has been underwhelmed by the announcement. Brian Lam at Gizmodo comments "This is really slick in some ways—as far as attention goes—but the bigger thing it shows is the terrible lack of understanding that most magazine editors have in dealing with the digital future of their publications." Later in his piece he even uses the "f" word! In the comments section of Paul Constant's brief entry on SLOG, we're treated to Fnarf's snarky comment: "When you open it, will it play a tinkly electronic version of a popular Christmas carol, like those godawful greeting cards that came out 20+ years ago?" Jubilation T. Cornball chimes in with a quote from the article in the NYT and then adds a comment: "'I fully expect that in 25 to 30 years, this cover will be in a museum,'" is noted in the original article. Mr. Cornball adds: "I fully expect ALL magazines will be in a museum by then." Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Tyson Homosexual Nearly Sets Two Records

2008-07-02T01:32:13Z

Many will have read the news that last Sunday Tyson Gay set a new record of 9.68 seconds in the U.S. Olympic track and field trials, although the victory was disqualified as a world-record because it was “wind-aided.”

The story making the blog rounds today is a hilarious footnote to his notable performance.

A posting by Amy Gahran at Poynter Online retells the story of OneNewsNow, a site run by the Christian American Family Association. The site’s automated filter substituted “Homosexual” for almost every occurrence of “Gay.”

This lead to some truly remarkable prose, including:

“Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.

“His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn’t count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here’s what does matter: Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he’s certainly someone to watch in Beijing.

“‘It means a lot to me,’ the 25-year-old Homosexual said. ‘I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.’”

And so this is one record for Tyson Gay that can’t be disqualified because it was wind-aided. It was aided by mere human phenomena.

Gahran provides her primary source for the story, the Sleuth blog on WashingtonPost.com, and admirably commends that blog’s author, Mary Ann Akers: “She includes a rundown of the bloggers who spotted and initially covered this story, with links to the relevant posts. This is not only the ethical thing to do (crediting the people who really broke the story, and sharing their insights) ̶ it also makes the story much more interesting, by allowing readers to dig deeper.

“Plus, when you link to original blog posts, readers also get to see the conversation happening in the comments ̶ which in this case are absolutely priceless.”

I’m not sure what the lesson is in all of this for the future of publishing: I’m happy to enjoy it just as is.

Live from New York: The Future of Book Publishing

2008-06-27T04:38:03Z

In February of this year the O’Reilly fiefdom held its second “Tools of Change for Publishers” conference in New York City. Though the title of the conference suggests that it was not limited to book publishers, books were indeed the focus. Details from the conference have been slow to emerge in cogent form.

Steve Paxhia, my colleague at Gilbane, offers a thorough overview in the May 29, 2008 edition of The Seybold Report, but unfortunately access is limited only to subscribers ($499 per year for the online version). The conference site, linked above, now also offers many of the presentations and other coverage of the event.

I was pleased to find today equally thorough coverage in the July-August 2008 issue of The Futurist, fortunately available online without charge. Senior editor Patrick Tucker perhaps enjoys an advantage in his coverage not available to Steve Paxhia: he is not intimate with the publishing industry, and by the nature of his publication is more focused on “the futurist” perspective than the insider’s perspective. As a result he makes an additional effort to contextualize his coverage of the presentations and highlights of the event.

The article struggles with the issues of balancing social media, new technology and the value of content in a very cogent fashion. Some of the ideas are familiar; others quite fresh and provocative.

My favorite quote is from Lewis Lapham, until recently the long-time editor of Harper’s magazine, and now the publisher and editor of Lapham’s Quarterly. From Tucker’s report, “To Lapham, the crudeness, silliness, and uncultured quality of today’s Web culture is a symptom of the immaturity of the new medium and the youthfulness of its users. The change will be gradual. ‘We’re still playing with it like it’s a toy,’ he said of the Web. ‘We don’t yet know how to make art with it. McLuhan points out that the printing press was (introduced in the West in) 1468; it (was) a hundred years before you (got) to Cervantes, to Shakespeare.’”

A More Solid Bet for Amazon

2008-06-25T16:29:47Z

According to a press release on Amazon.com’s Web site today, the online seller “announced the acquisition of Fabric.com, a leading online fabric store that offers custom measured and cut fabrics, as well as patterns, sewing tools and accessories.

“This acquisition will enable Fabric.com to further expand its selection of fabrics and accessories while enabling Amazon.com to offer its customers a wider variety of products in the sewing, craft and hobby segment….Launched in 1999 by Stephen Friedman, Fabric.com has developed a significant and loyal customer base of sewing enthusiasts, and today offers a comprehensive line of fabrics in all three major fabric categories, including apparel, quilting and home decor.”

Now that’s more like it, Mr. Bezos. I’m sure your customers will be buying lots of custom measured and cut fabrics, as well as patterns, sewing tools and accessories in 2012. Perhaps not $2.5 billion worth, but it should be a solid little performer. It’s those e-books that worry me.

The eBook Bubble

2008-06-25T03:10:33Z

If you’ve read the section on this site about eBooks and (what I call) eContent, you’ll know that I’m not a big cheerleader for eBooks. I lived through the first eBook “revolution,” featuring the forgotten standalone eBook readers like the Rocket eBook and the SoftBook Reader. That revolution never took off, and wound down more-or-less at the same time as the burst of the Internet bubble. Microsoft used to offer the Microsoft Reader software for eBooks both for its PocketPC and for don’t fit-in-your-pocket PCs. For some reason this software can still be downloaded from a page on Microsoft’s website that notes “Updated: May 19, 2005.” Microsoft is obviously not currently interested in the eBook phenomena.

But when Jeff Bezos and Amazon caught the eBook fever last November with the release of the Kindle, he managed to somehow erase everyone’s short-term memory and has re-kindled an explosion of interest in the eBook format. (Even The Economist found its short-term memory damaged, stating in a June 5, 2008 article that “… Kindle and its kind are merely the first generation [emphasis mine] of a product that is sure to evolve quickly in the coming years.”)

Yesterday I learned of CitiGroup’s Mark Mahaney who has calculated, with very slim data, that Kindle could add $750 million to Amazon’s top line by 2010. This prompted John Paczkowski on AllThingsDigital to label Mahaney as “an honor student at (the) Strained Credibility Academy.”

Well today I learned (once more with credit to Bob Sacks) that another student at The Strained Credibility Academy is looking for higher marks than Mark. According to a posting on paidContent.org, “Pacific Crest analyst Steve Weinstein argues that global e-book sales at Amazon could reach $2.5 billion by the year 2012,” and could add “as much as $330 million to operating income.” Wow!

Go back to my section on eBooks where you’ll see that the highest estimate of all eBook sales last year was $67 million. Then do the math on the CAGR through 2012, keeping in mind that Amazon, which was originally built on selling books online, currently accounts for only 6-8% of all book sales in the U.S.

Why did God give us analysts at investment banks? A Google search offers only one answer. According to an article on Innovating Tomorrow, “God gave some people the ability to analyze and measure situations. These are people who love to do this and have some deep seeded [I assume they mean “deep-seated”] talent for it. These are people and gifts God has given us to use in ministry.”

I think not. God gave us analysts so that businesses would have an external justification for making bad decisions that they have already decided to go forward with. The eBook gold rush is one of them.

Not a Good Week for Publishers

2008-06-21T03:03:06Z

It’s not as if the last few months have been exactly perky and upbeat around publishing offices across the U.S. But the last week seems to have been completely inundated with a dismal torrent of bad news. Both Hearst (3^rd largest magazine publishing in the U.S.) and Hachette (dropped out of the #10 spot in 2006, but presumably still in the top 15) lost their chief executives ̶ whatever language the companies used in making the announcements, these guys got the boot.

Meanwhile the big newspaper companies were reporting horrible financial results: Gannett Co., which publishes more than eighty U.S. newspapers, acknowledged that publishing ad revenue fell 14.3% in May. Its smaller rival McClatchy Co. reported a 15% drop in newspaper ad revenue for the first five months of the year and announced a 10% cut of its work force. New York Times Co. said last Wednesday that ad revenue dropped 12%. And on June 17, Bloomberg reported that “Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune controlling investor Sam Zell may be unable to stop the loss of advertising revenue leading him and other U.S. newspaper publishers closer to default on billions of dollars in debt.”

My take on all of this is the opposite of Robert Schiller’s well-known phrase (and book title) “Irrational Exuberance.” I call it Irrational Pessimism.

As I pointed out in my blog entry “Is the Internet Really Destroying Newspapers?”, quoting from a PEW report, “Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before. Online, for instance, the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience than in the legacy media.”

Yesterday I received the executive summary of PWC’s “Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2008-2012” (at 112 pages, it’s a little more than the average executive might expect in a summary!). The full report would take me offline for weeks, but the executive summary represents a marvelous chunk of research. Notable is PWC’s prognosis for the newspaper industry: continuing declines through 2009, followed by a return to modest growth.

As this chart from PEW illustrates, Hearst is not suffering in terms of revenue growth. The two firings, as suggested in several media reports, may have much more to do with internal company politics than with failed strategies. (A fascinating article in Fortune, “Intrigue at Hearst’s Castle,” examines the intricacies of Hearst’s corporate structure.)

These days it’s very easy to get on the newspapers-are-dying bandwagon. I think that the conclusion to this story is still to be written.

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