Tag Archives: Associated Press

May 21, 2012 · 9:59 AM

Is Facebook Already Dead?

Facebook stock is trading around $33.50 a share as I type this post, down $4.50 from its Friday initial public offering price.

I don’t want to call myself Nostradamus, but the events of the past few weeks, along with this commentary from L. Gordon Crovitz in today’s Wall Street Journal reminded me of an item I posted just over two years ago.

My theory at the time was that Facebook someday would have to sell out its users’ (more than 900 million worldwide) personal data in order to become profitable. While this anticipated move is both logical and predictable, the user backlash will be strong, ugly and likely elicit government action that will slow

Crovitz’s opening joke says it all:

Q: Why did Facebook go public?

A: They couldn’t figure out the privacy settings either.

CNN recently aired/posted a story on “why people are leaving Facebook,” which cited five reasons why a growing number of people are deactivating their accounts:

  1. Maintaining a professional image
  2. Focusing on “real” communication
  3. Shedding an emotional burden
  4. Avoiding a time-waster
  5. Maintaining personal privacy

 

Little wonder a recent Associated Press-CNBC poll indicates Facebook may be a passing fad.

My own prediction is that Facebook will become similar to a television network, attracting a smaller number of heavy users (probably women ages 24-45), and that many other demographic groups will abandon the network in favor of the next big thing.

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August 27, 2010 · 3:03 PM

USA Today Overhaul Could Prove Successful if They Can Learn from UK’s Daily Telegraph

USA Today today announced a massive overhaul of the 28-year-old national newspaper’s operations, including a 9 percent reduction in the workforce,beginning this fall.

While fewer news gatherers isn’t necessarily a good thing, I do see hope in the way McPaper is restructuring its operations, as a similar 2007 restructuring helped catapult the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph into one of Great Britain’s most successful news organizations.

According to the story by AP reporter Michael Liedtke:

USA Today…will no longer have separate managing editors overseeing its News, Sports, Money and Life sections.The newsroom instead will be broken up into a cluster of “content rings” each headed up by editors who will be appointed later this year.

“We’ll focus less on print … and more on producing content for all platforms (Web, mobile, iPad and other digital formats),” according to a slide show presented Thursday to USA Today’s staff. The AP obtained copy of the presentation.

This is a good move for USA Today and one that should reap benefits for its parent company, Gannett Co., and for readers (many of whom have transitioned to reading news online anyway).

A 2008 study, “A New Model for News,” conducted by the Associated Press and the Context-Based Research Group, found (big surprise), that younger consumers increasingly accessed news and content via the web and mobile devices, and in multimedia formats.

As a result of this study, the AP conducted a thorough review of its own organization and implemented changes in not only the way it reported stories, but also in the speed with which information hits the wires and the web.

Additionally, the study touted the success of the Daily Telegraph, who began using a newsroom structure similar to that of a television station, enabling its team to quickly publish breaking news online, while at the same time allowing for more in-depth coverage of “big” stories both online and on its printed broadsheet, which has essentially become a “greatest hits” collection of stories from the previous day’s news cycle. The AP study reports:

“In a year’s time, the Telegraph has become the third most-visited national newspaper Web site in Britain – 17 million unique users visited Telegraph.co.uk in March 2008, compared to 7.2 million in March 2007.”

The study also found that the Telegraph has been able to extend a reader’s time on the Web site, allowing for “more targeted and contextual advertising and consequently generate more revenue.”
I do not anticipate USA Today ever reclaiming its status as the nation’s top-circulating newspaper (a title it recently lost to the Wall Street Journal), but if they manage their reorganization successfully, I do expect to see an increase in advertising revenues and that the paper will remain a force in American news for a long time to come.

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December 10, 2008 · 11:50 AM

Read Yesterday’s News Tomorrow

An interesting front page piece in the Kansas City Star on the dismal state of the newspaper industry, with all sorts of “sky is falling” copy despite the fact that the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (editor’s note: more “pew” than “excellence”) reports that newspaper pretax profits last year averaged a robust 18.5 percent.

While many decry the death of the daily newspaper, a study published earlier this year by the Associated Press portends a shift in the way that news is vetted, reported and edited that could lead to a new era of prosperity for the newspaper industry.

The Associated Press report, “A New Model for News: Studying the Deep Structure of Young-Adult News Consumption,” examined the habits of consumers ages 18-34 in three American cities, the UK and India.

The study found that many young people (and presumably some of us older folks as well), are not entirely blown away by the way that news organizations have pretty much adapted their old style of reporting to new media.

However, some news organizations ARE evolving with positive results.

The UK’s Daily Telegraph, has completely overhauled the way it runs its news operation, with amazing results. “In a year’s time, the Telegraph has become the third most-visited Website in Britain—17 million unique users visited Telegraph.co.uk in March 2008, compared to 7.2 million in March 2007,” reports the AP study.

By adapting a broadcast-news style structure in the news room, the Telegraph has created “a simple-to-manage news strategy: headline first (via any available communication method—SMS, e-mail, phone call), followed by a 150-word brief, and within an hour, a 450-word multimedia story. Following that, assigned editors decide whether to commission analyses, opinion peices, additional multimedia, etc.”

Their Website enables visitors multiple entry points for a given story, as well as multiple avenues to interact with news content and each other, or to explore topics of related interest.

The print edition has essentially become a “greatest hits” version of what appears online.

Which brings me back around to the incredible shrinking Kansas City Star, which could do itself and this community a HUGE favor by focusing 100-percent on local news, sports and entertainment.

Although the average edition of The Star wraps a lot fewer fish than it used to, it’s still way too big. I would wager that most of us turn to other news sources for national and international news. Same with Hollywood gossip and features.

But The Star is uniquely qualified to cover in-depth stories related to crime and neighborhood issues, our crumbling streets and sewer systems, the circus otherwise known as City Hall and a thousand other things that affect area citizens.

And using The Telegraph’s news-gathering model, they could perform this function efficiently and in a manner that would engage enough online (and in-print) readers to drive revenues for years to come.

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