Warren Buffett on newspaper industry

 One of my favorite financial guru, Warren Buffet had a number of interesting things to say at the annual Bershire hathaway shareholder's meeting today, especially on newspapers! 

 Since Buffet has long held himself out as a newspaper man, ( as a child, his first job was delivering newspaper) his  remarks come more intuitively... 

-For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price. They have the possibility of going to just unending losses

-As long as newspapers were essential to readers, they were essential to advertiser....But news is now available in many other venues.

-Washington Post has a solid cable business, a good reason to hold on to it, but its newspaper business is in trouble. (Berkshire has a substantial investment in Washington Post Co)

BBC's election train

Soutik Biswas, Indian Online editor for BBC news and his colleagues are covering this year's indian election in a train. They will sleep, eat, and work on the train to give us updates on Indian general election 09. and During the stop, they will meet politicians and businessmen and give people a feel of what they are thinking on the street india.

The team BBC is off to 8000km journey across eight cities for eighteen days, only to cover 2009 Indian General Elections. It's good attempt by BBC News !!

On the other hand, The "election train" also shows how India has opened up, allowing the foreign media to cover the elections in a special train.

government intervention always makes things worse...

In Korea, from this year, when you want to post content or comment things online, you must use your real name(verified one) on the internet !!!!!!!! blahhhh
The ruling party (GNP) recently passed a bill , called ' real name verification ' on Websites.

On top of the 'real name' rule, the ruling party also passed 'the bulked up copyright law', the government has the power to shutdown an online message board for a maximum six months after the site is warned for a third time to delete pirated content and prevent its movement.

According to the bulked-up copyright law, the government has the power to shutdown an online message board for a maximum six months after the site is warned for a third time to delete pirated content and prevent its movement.

In addition to the “three-strikes” rule, Internet users who repeatedly upload copyrighted content without permission could lose their Internet accounts.

7% decline in newspaper sales

 The collapse of newspaper business....

 Everybody is aware of that. But, I am pretty amazed at the speed and the magnitude of collapse. 

 Day after day, the new and fresh data tells you that it is worse than you've ever imagined. 

Here is another one. 

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), at 395 newspapers, daily circulation fell 7% for the six months that ended March 31, compared with the same March period in 2008.

China's official English paper

This week, China's 'Global Times', which covers mainly international affairs, also known to be nationalistic view, launched a new -English language edition and web-site.

The paper says, "the English edition of the Global Times will cover the world from a Chinese perspective, and reflects the standpoints and opinions of Chinese people on significant international issues"

It also notes on its website, "the Global Times has more than 500 overseas correspondents and contributing writers around the world and in addition the English edition has a team of 100 journalist based in China. "

Very impressive. 500 overseas correspondents...!!!

well, it just can't happen to any paper..,The Global Times is published by China's communist party to promote the leadership's particular views on issues such as Tibet, Democracy.

Anyhow, another good stop-by for me.

Another newspaper bailout?

Newspapers are endangered species.

As French President Nicholas Sarkozy has stepped in by giving one-year subscription to 18 year-olds, S. Korean government is also considering State-funded Newspaper subscription.

Just like everywhere else, there are mounting concerns over the lack of respect among Korean teenagers for the newspaper. So, the dozens of lawmakers has proposed a bill that enables monetary assistance to middle and high schools for the newspaper subscriptions.

Minerva finally sentenced

The verdict is finally in.
Minerva, a South Korean blogger who criticized the government's sloppy economic policies and later got indicted in January, has been sentenced 18 months in jail yesterday.

The charges on him : The postings were not only inaccurate, but it had affected the foreign exchange market and undermined the nation's credibility. Meaning, spreading false rumors on the internet!!

To take this further, Korean's ruling party is trying to pass a 'cyber insult law' in which government officials could seek criminal punishment for things like libel and other insults regardless of how the supposed victim feels.

Korea is one of the most wired countries and known for advanced technology. And then very analog things are happening. No fun in joking about government anymore..

Get over yourselves

Google Eric Schmidt spoke at a convention of Newspaper Association of America in San Diego yesterday(April 07). He wasn't booed as some feared he might be.

With growing animosity between the internet giant and the newspaper industry, Google kept saying "We are not your enemy but a partner".

Here are some of the things Schmidt had to say :

"We think we can build a business with you. That is the only solution we can see."

"The reality is that in this new model, the vast majority of people will only deal with the free model. So you'll be forced, whether we like it or not"

"These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you piss off enough of them, you will not have any more."

"I think the sites are slow. They're actually slower than reading the paper, and that's something that can be worked on a technical basis. This is something where better development tools, better hosting tools, and so forth from the industry as a whole will make big difference."

Chalk board blogger in Africa

This week, I discovered this amazing blogger!!! 

His name is Alfred Sirleaf. He is not just any blogger, but an analog blogger who writes major news stories of the day on the chalkboard at the entrance of his village in Liberia where you can  get no electricity. He calls this 'Daily talk'. 

 There are no big words, but very simple language and

  symbols/drawings to make it easier for people who can't read. 

 He had no education, nor media training for news. and why he  got into this? 

He realized the war continues because people don't  have access to any information relevant to their government's  decision making process.  “Daily Talk’s objective is that everybody should absorb the news’’ he says. 

Every morning, he buys 3~4 newspapers and rewrites them and composes the day's headline. Because of his provocative style of reporting the truth, the daily talk was destroyed twice since its inception in 2005. 

Occasional gifts or pre-paid phone cards keep his newsroom alive. 

Here is the details. 

April Fools!!

It's April Fool's day. I won't pass up.

But, since I am terrible at pulling off pranks, I will bring my favorite joke from today.

Guardian Goes Twitter-Only: The Guardian says it will become the first paper in the world to publish only via Twitter, a move that it says will consolidate its "position at the cutting edge of new media technology." All of the paper's archives will be rewritten as Tweets. As a teaser, the Guardian provides some examples, including one from 1961: "Listening 2 new band 'The Beatles.'"

Ethnic media also struggle

Day after day, more news about layoffs of reporters and closings of bureaus...

Ethnic media is not immune from the downward slide of the mainstream media. Asian Week, San Francisco's English-language weekly for Asian Americans, and San Francisco Bay View, which has served the black community there for three decades, both have dumped their print editions.

Here is another confirmation of losing ethnic publication.

Investigative journalism done better without newspapers

Techdirt has an interesting and somewhat twisted post about investigative journalism. It notes that even with the collaps of newspapers, investigative reporting will be done better, faster and cheaper. (Which I don't agree! )

and it also claims that we should get rid of two myths.

Myth 1: Newspapers put tons of money and resources into investigative journalism.
Myth 2: Only newspapers can do investigative journalism.

Okay, I convince myself that it's always good to see the situation from the various angles.

Time spent at newspaper sites

Below is the list for the top 30 newspapers ranked by uniques in February provided by Nielsen Online (owned by E&P's parent company).

Newspaper Web site -- Feb. '09 (hour:minute:second)


NYTimes.com -- 0:35:42
USATODAY.com -- 0:14:53
Washingtonpost.com -- 0:16:53
LA Times -- 0:08:55
Wall Street Journal Online -- 0:09:51
Boston.com -- 0:19:29
New York Post -- 0:09:15
Daily News Online Edition -- 0:05:52
Chicago Tribune -- 0:08:25
Star Tribune -- 0:30:36
International Herald Tribune -- 0:05:36
The Sacramento Bee -- 0:10:46
The Washington Times -- 0:04:23

voice of Africa

 In one place, obituaries are being written for news media yet in another place, it has been celebrated for the birth of journalism. 

Recently, I have been following 'Voice of Africa', a website that has more than 90 African journalists reporting from 30 African countries. Mobile phone use has been explosive in Africa and many organizations are trying to harness this cell phone booms to stimulate journalism in Africa. 

(taken by mobile phone by Voice of Africa reporter. 'the current situation in Kenya' )

What they are doing is to find talented young African men and women and to equip them with high tech mobile phones allowing them to make video reports and texts. It is very touching to see Africans reporting their own issues through mobile phones, even though the reports are primitive. 

When newspapers fold

Another interesting article from Financial Times. It's a two week-old story, but worths reading. It describes the current situation accurately and keeps to the point.


When newspapers fold


By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson
Published: March 16 2009 20:13 Last updated: March 16 2009 20:13



The death of a modern newspaper is a real-time, multimedia event. When journalists on the Rocky Mountain News were summoned to their Denver newsroom on February 26 to be told they were working on their final edition, they relayed the announcement through live blogs, online videos, slide shows of tearful colleagues and a minute-by-minute stream of updates on Twitter. “It’s odd to cover your own funeral,” read one tweet.


Bad news about America’s newspapers is tumbling out too fast for their presses to keep up. The closure of “the Rocky” after 150 years capped a week in which the Journal Register Company and the 180-year-old Philadelphia Inquirer joined the owners of the Chicago Tribune and Minneapolis Star Tribune in bankruptcy proceedings.


Hearst is threatening to close the San Francisco Chronicle – and on Monday said it would make the Seattle Post-Intelligencer an online-only publication. Gannett, owner of USA Today, has followed The New York Times in slashing its dividend to preserve cash. Titles from the venerable Cincinnati Post to the six-year-old New York Sun have folded.


Obituaries for the news business are being written in newsrooms around the world as advertising revenues that long subsidised the cost of newsgathering shrink, just as digital media usurp print’s role as intermediary between advertisers and customers. The crisis is affecting not just newsprint: most news magazines, broadcast news outlets and newswires are also suffering.



Nowhere, however, has the impact been greater than in the US newspaper industry, where civic identity and an often monopolistic grip over local classified advertising had sustained an array of titles with journalistic resources envied by many national newspapers in other countries. Dwindling circulation and advertising are nothing new – but until recently the hope was that newspapers might be saved by private ownership or cost-saving roll-ups of titles under fewer, stronger corporate umbrellas.


The bankruptcies and closures prompted by a near one-third decline in advertising revenues since their 2005 peak have shattered those theories, leaving owners looking for new ideas. But what prospect is there of a solution when Barclays Capital predicts a further 21 per cent fall in newspaper advertising revenues this year alone?



A debate playing out in the pages of the properties it most concerns has focused on two new hopes: that charitable endowments may replace commercial business models and that readers who have grown accustomed to finding news for free online can be made to pay.



“Enlightened philanthropists must act now or watch a vital component of American democracy fade into irrelevance,” David Swensen and Michael Schmidt from Yale University’s endowment argued in The New York Times this year. The more than $200m (£143m, €155m) annual cost of its newsroom could be covered, they estimated, by a $5bn endowment that would guarantee its independence. Extrapolating from Yale’s calculations, the Nieman Journalism Lab estimated that it might cost $114bn to subsidise every US paper.


Charitable models exist already: ProPublica, producing “investigative journalism in the public interest”, is supported by the Sandler Foundation and other trusts. MinnPost.com was set up in Minneapolis-St Paul with funding from local families and foundations.



Outside the US, the state is at times stepping in. France is injecting €600m ($776m, £554m) over three years by doubling government advertising in newspapers and offering tax breaks for publishers’ digital investments. UK local publishers are lobbying for looser competition rules to allow consolidation.


The idea of charitable or state assistance makes many uneasy. Subsidies could create unfair competition for commercial rivals. In any event, many endowments are already suffering market-driven declines. “The idea of charitable endowments is a bit of a red herring,” says Alan Mutter, a veteran newspaper editor who writes the influential Reflections of a Newsosaur blog.
Two prominent US newspapers are supposedly sheltered by not-for-profit parents, he says, but The Christian Science Monitor has abandoned its print edition and the Poynter Institute is selling the Congressional Quarterly to support its St Petersburg Times flagship: “There’s nothing about that form of ownership that insulates you.”


Instead, the notion of charging for news online is gathering momentum after a cover story by a self-confessed “old print junkie” in Time magazine. Walter Isaacson returned to the title where he was once managing editor to argue that news should no longer be free online.


Until now, only specialised news organisations such as the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and trade publications have succeeded in generating meaningful online subscription revenues. With online advertising growth stalling, Mr Isaacson wrote, general news outlets needed to create “an iTunes-easy method of micropayment”, offering their product for a nickel an article or a dime a day in the same way as Apple’s music store sells tracks and albums. Past attempts to charge for individual stories have gone nowhere, but his call came as many owners were concluding that their decision to chase online advertising rather than subscription revenues was not paying off.


Cablevision, the owner of Newsday, and Hearst, publisher of the Houston Chronicle, have both said they will start charging readers of their websites. Arthur Sulzberger, chairman of The New York Times, hinted last week that it would revive attempts to charge for content, 18 months after ending such an initiative. “We have renewed our analysis of how paid content can augment our core advertising business,” he told a university audience.


With the typical item on the Google News home page linking to hundreds of similar – free – stories about the same subject, charging for most news will be difficult “unless the product dramatically changes”, says Anthea Stratigos of Outsell, a publishing research firm. To succeed, papers will therefore have to provide content that readers find more valuable than the mass of commoditised information.


“We must put staff resources behind building those channels of interest that have the greatest potential: those built around pro sports teams, moms and high school sports, to name a few,” Steven Swartz, president of Hearst Newspapers, told staff. Bluffton Today, launched by Morris Communications after it shut the Carolina Morning News, is seen as one way forward: it is hyper-local, with reader-written blogs on its website. But as one of a handful of online initiatives to have spawned a successful print iteration, it represents a model that could have new followers.


Collaboration between publishers on an iTunes for news may, however, be one of several remedies impossible under antitrust restrictions designed in an era where policymakers were more worried about over-mighty media owners colluding than the fragility of the fourth estate. Mergers of neighbouring newspapers, or between print and broadcast owners in the same market, have been blocked for decades.


Media owners express little hope that this will change under President Barack Obama, who campaigned on diversifying media ownership. “It is as if regulators went to sleep during the Eisenhower administration and woke up staring blankly at an iPhone,” John Chachas, co-head of the media practice at Lazard, which is advising on several newspaper restructurings, told the Dallas Morning News last month. Newspapers should be exempted from antitrust restrictions for long enough to establish “an industry-wide system to track and charge for the reuse of their content” by online aggregators, he argued.


Charging for news online could help publishers’ top lines but that would address only one of their problems. The spate of dire news shows the industry’s challenges fall into three broad categories: the mismatch between costs and revenues; inappropriate capital structures; and oversupply. Any hope of a durable news business rests on tackling all three.


“One inescapable conclusion of our study is that our cost base is significantly out of line with the revenue available in our business today,” Mr Swartz told his staff: “It is equally inescapable that during good times our industry developed business practices that were at best inefficient.”
...


Jonathan Knee, director of the media programme at Columbia Business School, likens newspapers’ “antiquated” cost structures to those in the airline industry. Labour unions, the inefficient use of printing plants and distribution networks and journalists’ frequent reluctance to ask whether what they want to cover serves the interests of readers have all kept costs high, he argues.


The industry is having to rethink its assumptions, outsourcing printing and distribution and carrying advertising on front pages that long resisted it. The cuts to costs have been sweeping. McClatchy, which owns the Miami Herald, has announced three restructuring plans since June, involving more than 4,000 job cuts in all. A concern voiced by union leaders and investors alike is that indiscriminate cuts will only make it harder to produce content valued by consumers, in print or online.


Several publishers are cutting national or foreign coverage to focus on local areas, relying on newswires for the rest. Five papers in New York and New Jersey plan to share articles and pictures. Again, competition law may complicate further collaboration.


But it is servicing debt that represents one of the largest costs for many publishers. A Moody’s analysis of six large operators in November found all but Gannett had debts above four times their earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. In Tribune’s case, the multiple was 12.3. “A number of these newspaper companies are still reasonably good businesses but the problem is they took on too much debt,” says Mr Mutter.


Others estimate that industry profitability is even higher. Mr Knee says newspapers enjoy margins well above those of film studios or music labels – providing a cushion against falling revenues. But to reduce debt multiples to a more sustainable 2-3 times ebitda, tough restructuring will be required. “In some cases bankruptcy may be a good option,” Ms Stratigos says, because it allows publishers to deal with union contracts, pension liabilities and other operational costs.


For some publishers, closing more titles will be the only viable option. The disappearance of some competitors from an oversupplied and shrinking market may help the industry, however. Dean Singleton, owner of Denver’s other paper, said when the Rocky closed: “This dramatically improves the finances of the Denver Post.”


The prospect of fewer, more narrowly focused titles facing less competition, employing fewer journalists and charging readers who once enjoyed their content for free is an unpalatable one for many. It may also be a troubled industry’s best hope.

Should subscription fee go up or down?

 Yesterday, I read the news that Hearst Corp was increasing subscription prices and considering reducing the number of days it delivers newspaper to homes each week. 

 According to my coworker back home, the opposite thing is happening in Korea. The JoonAng daily, the second largest newspaper, is trying to cut its subscription price from 12,000won ($12) to 7,000 won($7).  I think it is possible because JoonAng is (secretly) owned by Samsung. For a long time, Samsung has attempted to get No.1 status by pouring money into marketing. 

In Korea, due to the cutthroat competition, I've seen somewhat aggressive and unfair marketing practices in the newspaper business. The distributors are giving a fancy bicycle equipped with up-to-date devices once you promise to subscribe to the paper for about a year. 

I don't remember who started first, but it was picked up by other distributors very quickly. The gifts are various from rice cooker to telephone handset. Given the monthly subscription fee($12), the value of gift is way too expensive. Of course they are subject to punishment, but the amount of fine is negligible. 

And now the war is entering a new phase. I have no idea how this is going to roll out, but seems like it will be very ugly. 

 

E-reader devices may bring money to Newspaper

 Times Online posted interesting story, called 'Kindle : online papers could put money back in the new business'.   And at the end of the story, Mutter, the author of the Newsosaur blog puts it, 

"if they don't want to pay, screw them! we don't need them."

The New York Times on Kindle

The Kindle 2 has shipped. As soon as I turned on my kindle, I downloaded The NY times. They are offering 14 day trial now. So,

I like it because

-The download is fast, and seamless. (Kindle has a built-in wireless enables orders and downloads through Amazon.)

-Very comfortable for eyes

-Presentation is elegant

-It reads outloud (text to speech feature) while I am driving

-The Design is so cool

-Easy to hold, lighter than book

-It allows me to take notes on Kindle and clip them

I don't like it because

-The whole page doesn't fit into the screen. It is designed for books.

-It's not color

-Still the Time's subscription fee ($13.99) is high

-Kindle can read. but sounds synthetic.

Journalism 101

I just got back from a business trip to San Francisco, this one was for the interview with Chip Heath, the author of NY Times bestseller 'Made to Stick'. He is also a professor of organizational behavior in Stanford University’s GSB(Graduate School of Business).



What an interesting man! Honestly, among those famous authors that i have met, quite many of them were like, "If Only the author was as interesting as his book...." But Prof. Heath's communication style was beyond my expectation. While weaving many interesting stories into the conversation, he managed to keep things to the point and stripped down to the core.

His book, 'Made to Stick' is a useful primer for how to “pitch” an idea so that it sticks in the minds of its hearers. He has spent the past decade seeking answers to why some ideas survice and others die. So, the book serves almost like as a guide book for a marketer, journalist, politician, teacher, businessman.....

I will try to post the whole interview after it comes out.

Meanwhile, I would like to share some excerpts from the book that is related to journalism

---------------------------------------

Journalism 101

As students sat in front of their manual typewriters, Ephron's teacher announced the first assignment. They would write the lead of a newspaper story. The teacher reeled off the facts: "Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills high school, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard hutchins, California Governor 'Pat' Brown."

The budding journalists sat at their typewriters and pecked away at the first lead of their careers. According to Ephron, she and most of the other students produced leads that reordered facts and condensed them into a single sentence : "Governor Pat Brown, Margaret Mead, and Robert Maynard Hutchins will adress the Beverly hills high shcool faculty Thursday in ... Blah, Blah, Blah.."

The teacher collected the leads and paused for a moment. Finally he said, "The lead to the story is 'There will be no school next Tuesday."

Ephron recalls "It wasn't about who, when, where....it is all about the figuring out the point" >

San Francisco may be the largest city to lose main paper

As Prof. Westphal mentioned, Hearst is planning to sell its San Francisco Chronicle newspaper unless it can cut more jobs. ( San Francisco Chronicle may shut down )

It seems like San Francisco may become the largest city to lose its main daily newspaper. 

So far, New York times and Gannett are cutting cost and selling assets due to the sharp decline in print advertising sales. Philadelphia Newspapers, publisher of the Inquirer filed for bankruptcy protection. 

And more excerpts from Bloomberg. 

-----

Miami Herald-publisher McClatchy Co., Media General Inc. and New York Times suspended their dividend to cope and Gannett cut about 4,000 jobs last year. New York Times is looking for buyers of its minority stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

Tribune Co.’s bankruptcy filing in December was followed last month by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Tribune has been cutting jobs and costs at its eight dailies, which include the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

Seattle and Tucson, Arizona, where Gannett is trying to sell its Citizen newspaper, both have two competing for-charge dailies. Clarity Media Group distributes its free Examiner daily in San Francisco. 

Hearst said Jan. 9 it would close or turn its Seattle Post- Intelligencer into a Web-only operation if it couldn’t find a buyer by March. The newspaper lost $14 million last year.

I've just bought the Kindle 2

 It was an impulse buy. I couldn't resist temptation and placed an order for the new version of Kindle. It will be delivered to my apartment on Feb. 28th. 

So, I convince myself that I will read books REGULARLY and catch up on newspapers and blogs. According to the reviews, it is so convenient to pull down the entire paper so that one can read it offline. 

 I am not sure it will justify 360 dollar price tag, let alone the subscription fee. The New York Times charges $13.99 a month for its Kindle edition, The times and Wall Street Journal charges $9.99. 

If you want to read a good review, Here you are. 

I hope I don't regret it!!!!

journalists are seeking PR jobs

 

A couple of days ago, I got an e-mail from my friend who has worked with Dow Jones for 7 years.  She said that she was leaving her position as a business reporter to become a corporate communication manager at an investment bank. 

Of course, there are many fair reasons for her decision. Better pay, steadier hour, more opportunity in career path... But this struck me hard because I thought she's the last person who would leave journalism for money. 

"It wasn't just money. Nobody goes into journalism for money. but at least you expect it to be fun. It's not fun anymore... I feel like I am turning into just one of the hard working salary men. and I am sick of hearing about tightening budget."

That's what she told me. 

And today I stumbled on the similar story about a prime time journalist turning into strip club manager.  He says, "it got to be more ridiculous to hang on at a newspaper and less ridiculous to take this leap."

well, well, well.

You never know where life will take you. But for now, I feel lucky that the fun is still there for me. 

 

iPod moment?

 Recently so much has been written about micropayment-model for newspaper. I guess the origin came from the success of itunes but the recent launch of Kindle 2 definitely reignited discussion. 

 In this week's The Economist magazine put out a story, titled  'Electronic books are popular. Will newspaper follow?' 

 It argues unlike books, newspaper readers expect its online editions to be free.  They are so accustomed to bouncing around the world of free content. 

Even if people are willing to pay a few cents for news, it is doubtful that journalism can live without ads. After all newspapers are in the business of delivering eyeballs to the advertisers. 

lesson from the kindle

 

 

 Amazon launched the Kindle 2, the second generation of its e-book reader. The new model has a new text-to-speech feature that reads book aloud !!! Cool. Here is the details 

 This is consistent to the new digital changes to news media. As iPod and Kindle have paved the way for a business model based on 'micro payments', in which readers pay a few cents for downloads, news media can also charge for each story.  

  

After all, now we know that the newspaper doesn't have to do with ink/paper and subscription. 

Youtube VS. Hulu

A little confession. 

In 2007, I was addicted to watching the Youtube video of James Marsden's singing 'always on my mind' in Ally Mcbeal. It was so dreamy that I felt like he was singing for me. 

But, one day, Youtube pulled down that video clip after Fox tried to sue Youtube for infringement. I panicked and got so mad at Fox. I understand that it's Fox's proper move to protect their intellect property. I just think that before making any moves, Fox should have gotten their own video website where people can easily search video clips and watch all the shows.

Fortunately, my frustration didn't last long. Last year, I stumbled on 'Hulu' website which was the joint venture among Fox, NBC, MGM, Warner Bros, Sony Pictures and other 100 partners. It allowed me to watch all the episodes of my favorite shows including 'The office', '30 Rock'... (Some past episodes are not easy to look up though) Since then, I've been partially migrating from Youtube to Hulu. I don't mind watching some ads as long as I can get back to James Marsden's song. 

I guess I am not the only one. According to Financial times and Economist, Hulu is catching up with Youtube so fast. Here is the story on the Hulu's new business model. 

It is true that Youtube has been hard at work rolling out advertising solutions to monetize its popularity because user generated content doesn't attract that many large scale brand advertisers, whereas Hulu already has more than 100 big brand advertisers including McDonald's, Best Buy, BOA...

To look for the silver lining here, it seems like that professional content still has a lot more value than 'user generated content'. 

The stories you may like

Today I logged in to Amazon to buy some books, and I got my personal recommendations from Amazon. It says "Hello Jin. We have Books Recommeded for you - Darkness visible : A memoir of madness, Unholy ghost : Writers on depression. "

OMG. I've bought only two books from Amazon, and they happen to be related to drinking problem and depression. ( my best friend is a psychiatrist and she wrote a book on depression. If your best friend published a book, it's an obligation to read that book, huh? and the other was recommended by her.)

Anyhow, based on my purchase history, Amazon assumes that I have serious interest in all the dark side of human. I know that Amazon keeps all the customer's past buys stored in their database and present the books they may like. It doesn't even require high level intelligence on the algorithmic side.

I just got into thinking, What if my frequently visited news website shows me the particular stories based on my past reading habits. What if I am a person who enjoys reading gossips about celebrities while barely touches on politics or international news. Will I end up getting only celebrities' gossip? Will it feel like a vicious circle?

A little spooky idea.

Good news, Bad news

 

 

This morning, while reading online newspaper, I realized that I was feeling more drawn to bad news than to good news.  For example, on the front page, there were about 10 good news and 2 bad news. Despite the fact that I had choices, I couldn't help but pick up gruesome news about a serial killer over a story of a 80 year-old philanthropist. 

I know that Bad news sells best, because good news is no news and a thirst for sensational stuff such as violence, sex, corruption is innate to human nature. 

But I still feel weird about my wanting to peek into other people's tragedy, while I post all the happy moments of my life on Facebook.  ( oh...well, people don't usually take a picture in the middle of crying or fighting) 

Just some fleeting thoughts on bad news...

The fate of online Minerva

There is an interesting debate going on presently in my home country. Actually, by now, the debate has grown into international stage since it was picked up by many other foreign news media including BBC, WSJ, FT etc.

OK... Here's a story about a famous Korean blogger, known by his pen name ‘Minerva’.

When I visited Seoul last time in December for winter vacation, my father asked me whether I was aware of the identity of Minerva. ( well, he thinks her daughter knows every rumor related to news, only because she works for a newspaper. )

“No. I don’t even know what Minerva is”, I answered.
Disappointed dad explained what was happening in online community. (Believe me, he is not a very tech savvy guy. The fact that he knows something implies everyone else does.)

According to my father, a blogger named Minerva had posted around 200 comments last year and predicted the imminent collapse of Lehman Brothers, the sharp falls in Korea’s won currency, the national stock market. By that time, most of he had forecast proved to be right. Not only his accurate prediction, but his writings were sprinkled with jargon that suggested he was an economic expert. He drew a cult like following. ( his webpage had more than 40 million visitors a day.)

Even the Korean finance minister, Kang Man-su, admitted that Minerva was making a reasonable point and he said he wanted to meet Minerva in person.

That was the story I had heard from my dad.

Around two weeks later ( I mean after my arrival in LA), I got news that police arrested the Minerva!! And my first reaction was “Why?”, my second reaction was “who is it?”.


Minerva turned out to be an unemployed- 30 year old guy who graduated from junior college with a major in information and communication. He confessed that he was the ‘Minerva’, but he merely collected information from various newspapers and rewrote it.

As of today, prosecutors charged him with spreading false information that they alleged damaged the country’s foreign exchange market and undermined the nation’s credibility. (Minerva posted comments in December that government had banned major financial institution from buying US dollars.)

This blogger’s arrest ignited a debate about freedom of speech in cyber space and lots of talks are going on. Here are some articles offering the details.


I just wonder what would have happened, if Minerva had not attracted so much attention across the web… or if Minerva had been a real economist or journalist?

Mexican billionare lends NYT $250 million

 The humiliation of New York Times ? 

 NYT received 250 million dollars in financing from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim due to the plummeting advertising revenue and tighter credit markets.  More details here. 

 Of course, nothing is for free. Slim will get senior unsecured notes due in 2015 with detachable warrants. Currently he holds 6.9 percent of NYT class A shares and at the time of his initial investment, he cited the company's "attractive value". Apparently he still thinks it is. 

Looks like, we will soon be seeing NYT's sales frenzy. According to Bloomberg, NYT is seeking a buyer for its stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team and the cable network that carries its games. 

A series of gloomy news... Last week, the Minneapolis Star Tribune filed for bankruptcy, following Tribune. 

 

endless competition

 Back home in Korea, when I first used a Bloomberg terminal, instantly I fell in love with it. 

 It enabled me to collect or edit almost any data from security to commodity to currency in the world. The more I played with it, the more I got addicted to it. At that time, I thought to myself it's totally worth 1,200 dollars a month ( well it didn't come from my pocket but my company's though ) 

As professor Cowan mentioned briefly last time, the success of Bloomberg is a phenomenon. It was the first one to package a vast amount of raw financial material and data, analysis and make it available on a computer terminal. It isn't just a machine, but a huge network where buyers and sellers could meet. 

But recently, the new players are tapping into the market that Bloomberg is feeding on. They are companies like 'Quote.com', 'Stockpoint', 'Thomson Reuters' etc. These information companies are offering fragmentation of what Bloomberg provides for a fraction of the price and the services are getting more sophisticated. 

Here is my news of today from Financial Times. 

It is the story about the launch of a new service by Thompson Reuters. From now on, customers can access all best 'bid and offer' data to know whether they are getting the best deals. Maybe this can be an interesting game to watch. 

After a long talk, again, I felt all the more keenly the importance of constant changes. It needs no repetition here but  a newspaper or information companies, financial (whatever you call it) should be nimble and customer-focused not only to survive but to lead the industry. 

The irony of oursourcing

Today I stumbled on this article about USA today's decision to stop printing its international edition. Due to plunging advertising revenue, USA today is seeking licensees to take over its production abroad. However, USA Today would still write articles and supply photos for the edition. In other words, basically it will be outsourcing!



So I guess I will still be able to pick up USA today Asia at a hotel lobby while traveling.According to the paper, its international edition has a daily average circulation of 60,000+.



Recently I have witnessed that newspapers are not only outsourcing its production to local publishers but outsourcing its foreign correspondents to local freelancers. I remember reading an washington post article lamenting the 'Demise of the foreign corresspondent'.



This is incredibly important trends for me in that now I am a LA correspondent of Chosun Daily and my dream is to work in as many countries as possible. I fully understand the benefits of outsourcing as a business reporter who has written hundreds of stories about them, but it is true that when it comes to my self and job it becomes bitter...What can I do...hum.



If there is any consolation for me, it is not easy for korean papers to find someone abroad who wrties perfect korean and speak local language at the same time. :)