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Note: due to technical problems, the first five minutes of the presentation are missing.

New Vision for Florida’s Advertising : Robb Olsen

- brands reaching more people than ever before
- newspapers have strong relationship with advertisers
- outstanding local market intelligence
- affluent users
- multimedia distribution

81% of adults in Florida looked at newspaper in 7 days

6.6 mil top 7 visit websites in last month

The merger and experiments create a cooperative approach by newspapers to advertising – makes it easier for larger corporate clients to work with all of Florida’s newspapers.

- started with Publix experiment … lessons learned and new ideas applied to new working – arrangement with Macy’s

merger partners:

FNAN – Florida Newspaper Advertising Network -
28 m. dollars in business last year

FPS – Florida Press Service
51 m in business last year

N2PS – Newspaper placement service

major initiatives for 2007
- do a better job of bringing newspaper websites better
- diversify revenue streams
- build an effective but cost-effective business
- defend threatened aspects of revenue (notices)
- help model transformation

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Media Consumption Habits are Still Changing
Finberg- Poynter

impact of technology on consumers media habits
imapact of these habits on the future of journalism
look at future challenges

think about the big picture! don’t worry about specific numbers

1. Do you have a sense of urgency? Does your staff have it?
- no need to panic, but you need to think about how you’re going to find answers

a. consumption media habits are down – not just newspapers but also tv

b. from 20 m to 50 m in people who go online to get their news

c. biggest sense of urgency is the habits of the young

d. cannibalization of media is still happening,

2. Can we predict what’s next?
a. no, but we can ask ‘what if’ ?
example: mobile communications – asking ‘what if mobile happens’ 10 years ago?

b. the big question is when do you make the leap to the new model?
example: iPod – catalyst that changes not only old businesses, but also new businesses

c. so the is being able to respond to challenges quick enough – but also in an aggressive way
- being adaptive

3. Why this matters
a. because we can’t operate in a vacuum

b. how groups use information matters
- Pew Research

Effects of web 2.0
- social networks are a key technology

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Brendan Farrington of the The Associated Press and syndicated columnist E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post have a candid discussion of Florida politics.

E. J. Dionne speaks about secrecy, the goals of journalism, and how new forms of media like blogs can co-exist with traditional media. Dionne suggests that traditional media and new media “can complement each other, and in fact have already begun to do so.” The popularity of blogs stems from the way they answer a need felt by the public for partisan opinions and “genuine argument.” What is needed is the right balance between the objective search for the facts and passionate public argument.

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“When we defend the public’s right to know, I think we need to remind people in the country, because of their mistrust of us, that we understand that there are some secrets that need to be kept. … but the only way to keep secrets is to keep them to a minimum. The only way to keep necessary secrets is to say that there are an awful lot of things that should never be kept secret, and national security should never be invoked as an excuse, just to keep something from coming out just because it is politically inconvenient.”

Dionne references a speech from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan on government secrecy. “Moynihan’s solution was straightforward – keep fewer secrets and safeguard the ones that matter.”

“Shield laws are designed to protect a whistle-blower from harm that might come from doing the right thing. Unfortunately in the Plame case, you had that situation turned almost entirely on its head. What we had were people higher up in government using their capacity to leak information in order to punish a critic outside of government. And the result of that is a great confusion about what the whole point of shield laws really is.”

“The challenge … is can we re-conceive shield laws more as laws against secrecy and as laws to protect whistle blowers?”

There are problems in new technologies, but there are also opportunities. Dionne suggests that traditional media and new media “can complement each other, and in fact have already begun to do so.”

“In my view the new media forms are answering a great need that traditional journalism was not answering.” Blogs don’t exist primarily to inform, they exist to engage citizens in politics.

We’re now in the middle of a new reaction against the journalistic order. To understand how we got here we look at the last time this happened.

By being non-partisan and objective, newspapers did not offend most of their audience. But a decline in the press’ “partisan passions” also had negative effects, by removing the “mobilizing” quality of earlier partisan journalism. “Pure non-partisanship — bending over too far to seem to be fair — can mislead readers.”

Neither journalism nor politics promote enough “genuine argument” — arguments where you can be persuaded by the opposing position. (Arguments are not won by shouting down the opposing viewpoint.)

What is needed is the right balance between the objective search for the facts and the truth and passionate opinion and argument.

More by E.J. Dionne:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/22/LI2005042201099.html

http://www.brookings.edu/scholars/edionne.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jesus/interviews/dionne.html

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Panelists: Barbara Petersen, President, First Amendment Foundation; Tallahassee attorney Florence Snyder Rivas; and Bob Dees, Milam Howard Nicandri Dees & Gillam.

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Speaker: Elaine Clisham, American Press Institute

As a ‘futurist in residence’ Michael Rogers looks at existing technologies and trends and talks about what the environment is likely to be in 3 to 5 years: both in hardware and software, and also in terms of what the audience will be like. He discusses the importance of Millenials, now America’s largest generation, what type of devices they (and we) will be using to get a wide variety of media products, and how changes in networks will affect our ability to get the news. Finally, he discusses some key challenges journalists face in the coming years.

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As ‘futurist in residence’ Rogers looks at existing technologies and trends and talks about what the environment is likely to be in 3 to 5 years: both in hardware and software, and also in terms of what the audience will be like.

audience:
- key audience is the ‘millennials’ … first generation to grow up with the internet.
- not really an “enormous cliff” of difference between millennials and boomer generation in terms of reading newspapers on a regular basis
- what’s different is that millennials are “omnivorus” consumers of information – they get their news from many different sources, and they get their news whenever it is convenient.
- paper continues to be an important platform, it eventually becomes less important well into the future
- very good at creating meaningful relationships and joining communities online
- distinguishing piece of future journalism is audience participation
- problem with audience participation : how do you add editorial value?

devices:
- mobile devices are very important to millennials
- by 2010 there will be multiple competing ways to connect to the internet
- important to connect paper to the internet – can use mobile barcodes for this
- Times experiment with QR code : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code
- use of SMS messaging (existing) and forthcoming MMS to send information via phone

network:
- role of ‘community editor’ will become as important as ‘photo editor’ or other types of editors
- ‘really good’ wireless access technology will create a big shift
- by the end of 2007 all laptops will be sold with wi-fi access
- new wi-fi standards will be 3G – WiMAX

- another very important challenge for moving on to the internet is the need for new forms of storytelling. There is tension between narrative and interactivity that is unique to online storytelling, and people need to learn how to tell those stories.

- the biggest problem to overcome is the challenge of defining what a ‘publication’ really is on the Internet, how to work against the problem of dis-aggregation.

More about and by Michael Rogers:

http://www.michaelrogers.com/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7213382/

http://www.iwantmedia.com/people/people62.html

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Speakers: Karen Tower, Florida Press Foundation and Ron Dupont, Executive Editor, High Springs Herald

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Speakers: Jennifer Carroll, Gannett and Terry Eberle, Executive Editor, Florida Today

Neil Budde discusses the question, “what will be the economics when the user has control? When the news is no longer charged by the bundle?” He talks about the challenges involved and some possible solutions.

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challenges news organizations face:

the issue is “what will be the economics when the user has control? When the news is no longer charged by the bundle?”

Publishers have traditionally spread the costs for news across the entire bundle.

No longer have the luxury of having editorial board that covers the entire state – just not economical to do this, based on costs.

Internet now allows user to assemble their own bundle.

points for optimism:

1. news on the internet can reach a much larger audience. Replacing smaller audiences with larger audiences – the challenge is to get them to consume more of the bundle online.

question to ask: how much of your usage is high-usage visitors?

this increases both the value of the news and the value of advertising.

2. newspapers and yahoo bring complimentary strengths to alliance – newspapers bring local, Yahoo brings technology and national reach.

new upgrades to alliance software just being rolled out – increases in search, giving newspapers an edge in their local area. Expanding news search to other places – my Yahoo, front page, Messenger

also adding to topic pages – so local sports will show up in Yahoo sports page, etc.

trying to understand context of searches, so search results will show local results.

3. Yahoo mobile
- bring along consortium members ans we build pieces

4. ad serving (using new Yahoo ad serving platform)
- local sales serving into community via Yahoo.
- improvements in targeting – find the right user for the right information.
ex. airline flight information from flight data and putting it into ad serving.

5. add improved, customized Yahoo search – improved for local news and information
- leverage Yahoo properties, like Flickr (ex. for user photos of parade)

new resources:
- people of the web – under-reported stories on the web (original reporting)
- underground – discussion of

other optimism:
1. overcoming mainstream effect (long tail effect) – can reach various niches with targeted content
2. first wave was about breaking up the bundle, second wave is about re-assembled into bundles by the user ex. Yahoo music
- personalized news is not as big a worry as people thought

information / news products are in control of their own destiny

can service weekly newspapers as well as dailies – eventually

journalists.org : online news organization