Quote to Note: The Future and Niche Magazines about Issues
January 13, 2016
I find “real” publishers a source of entertainment. In this particular incident, I want to highlight two themes:
- A Silicon Valley success believes that a dead tree publication can be given the digital rework and succeed
- Pumping $20 million into a dead tree outfit says something about money management and common sense in the digital world
Navigate to “Owner of New Republic Puts IT Back on Market.” If you have to pay to view the story, hunt down the January 12, New York Times (dead tree edition) and look for page B 5.
The main idea is that a Facebook whiz bought a magazine, reorganized, pumped in dough, and apparently failed.
The notion of “saving” an outfit is one that gives new life to stakeholders, employees, and others involved in the operation. Think Yahoo and the Xoogler. How is that working out?
The reality is that success in a digital endeavor may be a matter of luck, timing, and the missteps of some other competitors. Google emerged from a pretty disappointing Web search idea when it was inspired by the Overture/GoTo pay to play model.
Tucked into this mini business case about a financial black hole was this quote to note:
“The New Republic has been a money-losing proposition for 100 years,” said Jacob Weisberg, who once worked for the magazine, and is now the chairman of the Slate Group. “The idea that anyone is going to turn it into a business now, when it has never been harder, is implausible.” In his letter, Mr. Hughes said that his aim “is to place The New Republic in the hands of the most promising and dedicated potential steward.” That might take many forms, he said. “Perhaps it should be run as part of a larger digital media company, as a center-left institute of ideas, or by another passionate individual willing to invest in its future,” he wrote. “There are many possibilities.”
Perhaps Jeff Bezos or Sheldon Adelson quality as potential buyers?
Are there management lessons to be learned from this experiment in Digital Age management? Yep.
One might be having cash to invest in a money losing magazine may not generate a fungible return. One upside is that business schools can create an interesting case for future MBAs to consider.
Stephen E Arnold, January 13, 2016
Authors Guild Loses Fair Use Argument, Petitions Supreme Court for Copyright Fee Payment from Google
January 12, 2016
The article on Fortune titled Authors Guild Asks Supreme Court to Hear Google Books Copyright Case continues the 10 year battle over Google’s massive book scanning project. Only recently in October of 2015 the Google project received a ruling in their favor due to the “transformative” nature of the scanning from a unanimous appeals court. Now the Authors Guild, with increasing desperation to claim ownership over their work, takes the fight to the Supreme Court for consideration. The article explains,
“The Authors Guild may be hoping the high profile nature of the case, which at one time transfixed the tech and publishing communities, will tempt the Supreme Court to weigh in on the scope of fair use… “This case represents an unprecedented judicial expansion of the fair-use doctrine that threatens copyright protection in the digital age. The decision below authorizing mass copying, distribution, and display of unaltered content conflicts with this Court’s decisions and the Copyright Act itself.”
In the petition to the Supreme Court, the Authors Guild is now requesting payment of copyright fees rather than a stoppage of the scanning of 20 million books. Perhaps they should have asked for that first, since Google has all but already won this one.
Chelsea Kerwin, January 12, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Ad Blocking: A Real Publisher in Action
January 11, 2016
I read “You Say Advertising, I Say Block That Malware.” The write up reveals quite a bit about how one major publisher wields technology mastery. According to the write up, “Forbes asked readers to turn off ad blocker.”
Okay, we need money. I get that.
The write up then reveals:
On arrival, like a growing number of websites, Forbes asked readers to turn off ad blockers in order to view the article. After doing so, visitors were immediately served with pop-under malware, primed to infect their computers, and likely silently steal passwords, personal data and banking information. Or, as is popular worldwide with these malware “exploit kits,” lock up their hard drives in exchange for Bitcoin ransom. One researcher commented on Twitter that the situation was “ironic”…
I interpreted the situation differently. The publisher lacks the technical expertise to deal with its own online system. Let’s see. In Manhattan, one could stand on the corner and ask those passing on the sidewalk, “Can you help me deal with malware?”
Of course, one has to know what to ask. That is often difficult when one is so very confident that one knows what one needs to know about online systems.
My hunch is that after 15 minutes and some quick conversations, the requisite expertise would be located and en route to deal with a real publisher’s problem: Doing one thing, creating a problem, and becoming news reported in a Web log.
Ah, real publishers. A joy. Where is the motorcycle riding wizard when one needs him?
Stephen E Arnold, January 9, 2016
Overhyped Science Stuff
December 30, 2015
After Christmas, comes New Year’s Eve and news outlets take the time to reflect on the changes in the past year. Usually they focus on celebrities who died, headlining news stories, technology advancements, and new scientific discoveries. One of the geeky news outlets on the Internet is Gizmodo and they took their shot at highlighting things that happened in 2015, but rather than focusing on new advances they check off “The Most Overhyped Scientific Discoveries In 2015.”
There was extreme hype about an alien megastructure in outer space that Neil deGrasse Tyson had to address and tell folks they were overreacting. Bacon and other processed meats were labeled as carcinogens and caused cancer! The media, of course, took the bacon link and ran with it causing extreme panic, but in the long run everything causes cancer from cellphones to sugar.
Global warming is a hot topic that always draws arguments and it appears to be getting worse the more humans release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Humans are always ready for a quick solution and a little ice age would rescue Earth. It would be brought on by diminishing solar activity, but it turns out carbon dioxide pollution does more damage than solar viability can fix. Another story involved the nearly indestructible tardigrades and the possibility of horizontal gene transfer, but a dispute between two rival labs about research on tardigrades ruined further research to understanding the unique creature.
The biggest overblown scientific discovery, in our opinion, is NASA’s warp drive. Humans are desperate for breakthroughs in space travel, so we can blast off to Titan’s beaches for a day and then come home within our normal Earth time. NASA experimented with an EM Drive:
“Apparently, the engineers working on the EM Drive decided to address some of the skeptic’s concerns head-on this year, by re-running their experiments in a closed vacuum to ensure the thrust they were measuring wasn’t caused by environmental noise. And it so happens, new EM Drive tests in noise-free conditions failed to falsify the original results. That is, the researchers had apparently produced a minuscule amount of thrust without any propellant.
Once again, media reports made it sound like NASA was on the brink of unveiling an intergalactic transport system.”
NASA might be working on warp drive prototype, but the science is based on short-term experiments, none of it has been peer reviewed, and NASA has not claimed that the engine even works.
The media takes the idea snippets and transforms them into overblown news pieces that are based more on junk science than real scientific investigation.
Whitney Grace, December 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Quote to Note: Axil Springer
December 25, 2015
I read “A Giant in Print Reboots.” (If the link does not resolve, snag a copy of the dead tree edition of the New York Times for December 21, 2015. Navigate to page B 1.) Like other “print publishers embrace the digital revolution” articles, the “giant” Axil Springer is really going to go a new direction. I noted this morning that about 25 years ago, the consumerist Internet began.
Axil Springer owns a chunk of the Web search engine which keeps a senior Alphabet Google executive awake at night. You know this search system, don’t you, gentle reader? You use Qwant.com everyday, don’t you?
Tucked in the article is a quote to note. I circled:
I would not exclude that in 10 years’ time our company could be 100 percent digital in terms of revenue and 80 or even 90 percent international.–Mathias Döpfner, Axel Springer CEO
Pushing out the transformation to 2026 lines up with the time horizons on which some print publishers operate. My view is that a decade is a long time in today’s somewhat volatile business environment.
Stephen E Arnold, December 25, 2015
Real Journalists Do Not Know Who Owns Their Newspaper
December 17, 2015
I find “real” journalists and traditional publishers an endless source of amusement. I read “Reporters in Las Vegas Try to Crack Case of Whom Really Owns Their Newspaper.” You may be able to read this article online but you may have to pay or perform some act of obeisance to the the Gray Lady. This write up, which appeared on December 15, 2015, in my dead tree copy on page B-3, without much self awareness of the irony of the situation, appeared in the New York Times. Yep, that’s the newspaper that Jeff Bezos wants to leapfrog with his almost new Washington Post.
I read the facts, just the facts:
It was not clear precisely who is behind the company [a newspaper called The Review Journal], which was very recently incorporated.
And there are the senior managers of this esteemed outfit:
The paper will continue to be managed by Gatehouse Media, a subsidiary of New Media Investment Group. All but the company’s most senior executives and those most directly involved with the paper are unaware of the new owner’s identity.
If I understand this, someone paid $140 million for a newspaper with real journalists, and the journalists cannot find out who owns the newspaper.
Let’s look on the bright side. Public relations professionals can submit information to this type of real newspaper and expect to get their story nudged forward. It seems like taking the easy path is what some real journalists do.
And the New York Times? I don’t think their “real” journalists could find the answer either. What does this suggest about the ability of “real” journalists to obtain information?
Boy, I don’t know. Perhaps we could ask Rupert Murdoch or some of his professionals who found creative ways to gather information.
I wonder if any writers for comedians are monitoring this story. Where are Jack Benny’s writers when one needs them.
Stephen E Arnold, December 17, 2015
Management Observations about Yahoo from a Real Newspaper
December 16, 2015
I am fascinated when publishers offer management advice and opinions. The newspaper publishing sector has done a bang up job with digital in the last 30 years.
I read the UK newspaper written by “real” journalists online and spotted this article: “Don’t Blame Marissa Mayer: nobody Was Going to Save Yahoo.”
That’s a great headline from a newspaper. I think it also emphasizes the value a Xoogler has despite the somewhat tarnished performance of the company the Xoogler is “turning around.”
I highlighted a couple of passages as particularly interesting observations.
For example, I highlighted in Yahoo purple:
All of it [Yahoo’s management actions], sadly, has been pretty irrelevant.
I like the “all”. There is nothing quite like a categorical affirmative to add heft to an argument.
I noted:
It would be easy to blame Mayer for this [revenue malaise]; in several ways she has done herself few favors – hiring and firing a chief operating officer who earned $58m in 15 months, cancelling working from home while bringing her newborn son and a full-time nanny to the office, and overseeing an exodus of top executives.
Well, I am not sure that the assertion “it’s not clear that anybody could have saved Yahoo.”
Again a categorical, embracing lots of folks” does not provide much insight into the Yahoo we know and love.
Too bad for those who rely on generalizations to navigate the tough business climate for information, whether in print or online.
I wonder how newspapers are doing. I assume super peachy. These outfits, including the Telegraph, are paragons of management excellence, organic revenue growth, hefty profits, and keen thinking.
Thank goodness for “real” journalists. These outfits and their professionals will make bang up consultants.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2015
UK Publisher Repositioning
December 15, 2015
I read “How Dennis Publishing Created a New Tech Media Brand.” I was looking forward to a how to, the nuts and bolts of converting a print and online operation into a zippy digital brand.
The write up explains what most folks involved in “real” journalism know: Publishing outfits are good at outputting content and maybe not so good at the organization of the overall operation.
I learned from the write up:
Dennis Publishing wants to be the top destination for technology-related content in the U.K. in the next two years, spurred by the quick success of its new digital brand, Alphr.
I remembered seeing Alphr on iTunes. A podcast about technology ran for a while and then disappeared in October 2015 with nary a peep. I noted the odd ball spelling, which I assume allows the company’s content to be located with a Google or Yandex search.
The write up said:
That decision seems to be paying off. Alphr attracted just under 600,000 unique visitors in the U.K. in November and 1.5 million globally, according to Google Analytics….Dennis claims that the latest data shows that it outstripped Wired U.K., Quartz and Tech Insider in November in terms of shares in U.K. visits across these categories.
So what was the “how”? The write up pointed out that the company:
- Centralized certain operations
- Implemented testing procedures for products
- Kept the same headcount
- Embraced the Ziff “network” ad sale model from the late 1980s.
In short, in 2015, Dennis took steps that other publishers have been forced to adopt for a number of years.
The one thing the new plan did not do was communicate that the podcast, one of those hippy dippy social media things, was not relevant to the firm.
Communication about podcasts, it seems, is not germane to the new digital brand.
Stephen E Arnold, December 15, 2015
CAVE to TDM: New Jargon for Publishers
December 7, 2015
I read “Text and Data Mining: Challenges and Solutions from the Publishers’ Perspective.” The write up summarizes a conference attracting publishers. The perspective of publishers, based on my experience, is survival. I know. I know. Some publishers are in high cotton. The Washington Post is vying to become the US newspaper of record. There are other examples as well, but surging revenues, generous organic growth, and health profits are not attributes of most publishing outfits engaged in doing things with dead trees.
The conference focused on text mining; that is, according to the blog focused on the program:
Text mining refers to “the process or practice of examining large collections of written resources in order to generate new information”. I am not an expert in text mining, but I understand that it is about applying specialized software/algorithms/techniques on existing textual information so that it can be read and analyzed by machines in order for them to extract more meaningful information for us, humans. Of course, text mining is no news to the research community, as it seems that it all started back in the ’80s with a methodology titled CAVE (Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations) but its background goes beyond the scope of this article. What I can tell you is that it is a complex process, involving techniques from areas such as information retrieval, natural language processing, information extraction and data mining – into a single workflow!
I am not sure if this definition hits the core of the concern. From my point of view, publishers have to respond to numerical recipes which operate on content. Included in my view is the landscape of videos whose dialog and imagery is converted to either human understandable text, best guesses at what an image represents, and assorted metadata.
What does one do with these outputs of text mining? Numbers are good. But the more important use is that with smart software certain processes can be automated and made intelligent. The use of algorithms to generate news stories is, believe it or not, part of the Associated Press’ bag of cost cutting tricks.
For publishers, like those named in the write up, the future looks challenging. Authors pump out content with or without the ministrations of a “real” publishing company. Then tireless software agents labor away. When something useful (defined by the self adjusting algorithms) become evident, an output is generated.
The question, therefore, is not what tools have been and are available. Text mining is decades old. The question is, “How will publishers make informed decisions about increasingly smart systems which supplant older, slower, more expensive ways to find useful nuggets and assemble them into actionable reports, visualizations, or on demand dashboard displays.
Net net: Conferences are useful. Buzzwords maybe. The publishers have some thrill ahead. I wish I had the publishers’ grasp of trends and text mining technologies.
Stephen E Arnold, December 7, 2015
Hack a Scholarly Journal
December 7, 2015
Scholarly journals and other academic research are usually locked down under a copyright firewall that requires an expensive subscription to access. Most of the people who want this content are researchers, writers, scientists, students, and other academics. Most people who steal content usually steal movies, software, books, and material related to pop culture or expensive to buy elsewhere. Scholarly journals fall into the latter category, but Science Mag shares a new trend for hackers, “Feature: How To Hijack A Journal.”
Journal hacking is not new, but it gaining traction due to the multimillion-dollar academic publishing industry. Many academic writers pay to publish their papers in a journal and the fees range in hundreds of dollars. What happens is something called Web site spoofing, where hackers buy a closely related domain or even hack the actual journal’s domain a create a convincing Web site. The article describes several examples where well-known journals were hijacked, including one he did himself.
How can you check to see if an online journal is the real deal?
“First, check the domain registration data online by performing a WHOIS query. (It’s not an acronym, but rather a computer protocol to look up “who is” behind a particular domain.) If the registration date is recent but the journal has been around for years, that’s the first clue. Also suspicious is if the domain’s country of registration is different from the journal’s publisher, or if the publisher’s name and contact information are kept anonymous by private domain registrars.”
Sadly, academic journals will be at risk for some time, because many of the publishers never adapted to online publishing, sometimes someone forgets to pay a domain name bill, and they rely on digital object identifiers to map Web addresses to papers.
Scholarly journals are important for academic research, but their publishing models are outdated anyway. Maybe if they were able to keep up the hacking would not happen as often.
Whitney Grace, December 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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