Our primary business is providing news organizations with business and editorial strategies for profitable adaptation to New Media.

Our clients have included Advanced Publications, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Dagbladet of Oslo, Founder Group of Hong Kong, the of Dublin, the Mail & Guardian of Johannesburg, the Media Development Loan Fund, MediaNews Group, the (U.S.) National Cancer Institute, The New York Times, Playboy, PR Newswire, PressPoint, Pulitzer Publishing, Staples, and Topix.

We also organize and teach conference programs and seminars about how New Media affect news media and public relations and about ways to report news or tell public relations stories effectively in the 21st Century. These recently have ranged from co-chairing and co-moderating Ifra's international Beyond the Printed Word newspaper New Media conference in Vienna to a storytelling workshop for the Johnson & Johnson's public relations Beauty Care Story Laboratory in San Francisco.

Since 2007, company founder Vin Crosbie teaches graduate school courses in New Media Business at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communication (you can follow him on Twitter).

"Vin Crosbie is widely regarded as one of the most outspoken and expert critics of how the newspaper industry worldwide and particularly in the United States has responded to the digital media revolution. But no one disputes that his is a critique borne of dedication to the newspaper tradition." - Ifra

Techno-Utopianism and Authoritarianism

Ever since I began working with emerging devices and New Media, I’ve been amazed by the number of media executives, consultants, and academics who fall into the trap of techno-utopianism, the belief that the latest technology will eliminate societal, political, or economic inequalities. In particular, it’s become somewhat of a new religion for many people who are involved with consumer technology but who have lost or never had a traditional religion; it’s something for them to believe. People who’ve drunk the Kool-Aid of techno-utopianism tend to induce that what they ascribe as the brilliance of the technology with which they’ve become infatuated will itself lead their business plans to succeed.

The same is true with techno-utopians who believe new devices, new technologies, or New Media will end dictatorships. Over the long term, these devices, technologies, and media can help end authoritarian governments. For instance, how mimeographed or photocopied distributed by underground groups helped undermine the Soviet government or how seeing Western programs televised across the Iron Curtain lead East Germans to want the same lifestyle. However, new devices, new technologies, and New Media in the short-term aren’t panaceas. For instances, Iranians just having access to blogs or Twitter won’t end authoritarian repression in Iran.

That’s why I’m a fan of Evgeny Morozov’s work. A contributing editor of Foreign Policy Magazine and a Yahoo! fellow at Georgetown University, Morozov writes in the United Arab Emirates’ newspaper The Nation:

Techno-utopianism is usually rooted in rigid and obsolete views about the relationship between authoritarianism and information. Most techno-utopians interpret the fact that authoritarian governments resort to censorship as a sign of their weakness. Hence, whenever authoritarian governments cede control over information, they are believed to become weaker. Thus, every time Chinese bloggers use proxy servers to access banned content, they are slowly eroding the Great Firewall of China. And where the firewalls fall, dictators soon follow.

This view is fatally flawed, as it understates the sophistication and flexibility of modern authoritarian states and overstates the democratic aspirations of their citizens. Western leaders have an unhealthy tendency to imagine politics in authoritarian states as being more hyperactive and participatory than the politics in their own countries. They implicitly view all Chinese, Russians and Iranians as hard-core news junkies and seasoned political dissidents. Authoritarian states are thus seen to be one step away from full-blown revolution – and waiting for the West to nudge them, whether via the Voice of America, BBC World, or judicious retweets.

But this is an anachronistic view of the world. Modern authoritarian states have eagerly (but selectively) embraced globalisation to provide their citizens with at least a modicum of self-actualisation without ever abandoning their authoritarianism. Their young people travel the world, learn English, use Skype and poke each other on Facebook – all while competing for comfortable jobs with state-owned companies. We are entering the age of “accommodating authoritarianism” – and the internet has played a crucial (though hardly the only) role in providing many of the accommodations.

…In one respect, then, authoritarian states and modern democracies are very much alike: both have embraced hedonism as their main and only political ideology.

For more information, you might want to see Morozov’s TED conference speech, his blog at the Foreign Policy magazine Web site, or his own Web site. He’s also writing a book the Internet and democracy, to be published later this year by Public Affairs / Allen Lane.

Change: The Irreversible Tide

The following is a copy of an essay I wrote that appears in Charting the Course for Newspapers, a strategy report issued last month by the World Association of Newspapers/Ifra’s Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project. In addition to reporting the results of an aggregate survey about how of 653 newspapers worldwide are coping with the ‘Future & Change’, ‘WAN/Ifra asked “ten of the world’s top newspaper consultants to weigh in on the soundest strategies for the future.” Mine was the lead essay. It is condensed from a book-length, more explanatory work, which I plan to begin publishing here chapter-by-chapter later this month.

This WAN/Ifra’s report is available only to members of its Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project. However, because my essay was solicited as an unpaid contribution to that report, not a work-for-hire, and I didn’t assign or transfer WAN/Ifra rights to my essay, I feel within my rights to republish it here. Please do join WAN/Ifra’s Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project if you’d like to read the report, including its ‘Future & Change’ survey and the other nine consultants’ essays. — Vin Crosbie

Most of the world’s newspaper executives now acknowledge that the industry is in grave condition in large, post-industrial countries such as the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. What baffles them is why the industry is collapsing in some of the world’s most prosperous countries.

The answer is that the newspaper industry worldwide has been catastrophically oblivious to the greatest change in the history of media. That’s a provocative statement, so please let me detail the scope of the problem, its effects beyond those you read in the trade press, and what newspapers must do to survive in this century.

What is the greatest change in media history? Ask newspaper executives and they will almost universally and incorrectly tell you that it is consumers shifting media consumption habits from analog to digital. They will tell you it means that newspapers must follow this shift and publish editions online as well as in print. Moreover, they’ll show you how the traditional package of newspaper content can be enhanced online by adding hyperlinks, audio, video, animation, and other multimedia. This is the newspaper business strategy that its proponents call convergence or multimedia and its critics call shovelware. It is the New Media strategy that virtually every newspaper worldwide has pursued since the Internet was opened for public usage 17 years ago.

However, despite all those years of pursuing this strategy, despite 1.6 billion people worldwide becoming Internet users, and despite the great increases in online consumers who use a daily newspaper’s Web site at least once per month (‘unique monthly users’), hardly any newspaper company in post-industrial countries makes more than 20 percent of its overall revenues from that strategy. Those online revenues don’t nearly compensate for the losses of circulation and advertising revenues from print as consumers migrate from analog to digital. Indeed, the larger the post-industrial country, the smaller the percentage of newspaper revenues from convergence and the worse the industry’s health in that country.

Unfortunately, the greatest change in the history of media isn’t consumers changing consumption from analog to digital. That is merely a characteristic or trait of a much larger change underway – a change that the newspaper industry has failed to notice even though it has been obvious for at least ten years. The industry has failed to see the forest for the trees.

The greatest change is that within the past human generation people’s access to information has shifted from relative scarcity to surfeit. Billions of consumers, whose access a generation ago to daily changing information were but one or two or three locally-distributed printed newspapers, three or four television channels, and perhaps one or two dozen radio stations, can now access virtually all of the world’s information instantly at home, office, or wherever they go. The societal and historical ramifications of this change will be far more profound than Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type, Tesla’s and Marconi’s invention of broadcasting, or any other historic development in media.

This epochal tidal change occurred during several waves over a 35-40-year period:

The 1970s brought cable television (followed later by satellite TV). People’s access to television increased to dozens and then hundreds of channels, with obvious competitive effects on newspapers. In the larger post-industrial countries, most new channels weren’t general interest or foreign-language but topical channels in the vernacular language.
The 1980s brought advances in offset lithography that made publication of topical magazines economical. Kiosks that previously sold 20 to 30 magazine titles now sell hundreds.
The 1990s brought Internet access to the public. People gained access to more than 240 million Web sites, including blogs and Social Media as Moore’s Law made the technologies so inexpensive and easy-to-use that anyone can publish online. The vast majority of those millions of Web sites are about specific topics.
The decade we are now ending brought broadband access to consumers in post-industrial countries. The hallmark of it is instant, ‘always-on’ Internet access. Although people think the previous wave was the most powerful, this wave was the deepest; it markedly changed how and from whom consumers access news and information.
And as all the world’s manufacturers of mobile phone handset now begin to sell ‘all-screen’ mobile phones along the Apple iPhone or Google Android model – handsets that have full Internet access, more than 4.3 billion people, two-thirds of the world’s population, within the next five years will have instant access to all the world’s information instantly wherever they be.

What has been the immediate effect of consumers gaining access to this cornucopia of news and information? Each gravitates to whichever of its fruits best matches his uniquely individual mix of interests. Newspaper editors might like to think that a single edition can satisfy everyone’s interests, but in reality there are very few common interests that all people of all ages share (the weather? a war?). Some groups or demographics might share an interest (such fans of Real Madrid, Prada aficionados, etc.) Yet each person has very many specific interests (perhaps salsa dancing and Roberto Benigni films and Thai cooking, etc.). And each and every one of us is a unique mix of those few common, some group, and many specific interests – it’s what makes us individuals.

A generation ago, when consumers had relatively scarce access to daily changing information, they had no choice but to consume the finite number of stories the newspaper editor chose for them each day. Each consumer might have read the handful of stories that happened to match some of his mix of interests. Yet now that consumers have instant online access to every common, group, or topical information Web sites, publications, broadcasts, blogs, and social media in the world, each consumer is now hunting and gathering from among all of those for whichever stories and other information best match his own unique mix of interests.

Consumers’ gravitation towards their own mixes of interests is why they use search engines rather than be satisfied just reading one newspaper’s Web site daily. It’s the cause of the so-called fragmentation of Mass Media audiences. Consumers seek to make their own Individuated selections from all stories, rather than digest any one publication’s package of stories. Consumers are migrating from analog to digital media simply because there are more choices of specific content (whether about news or products or services) online than in analog print or broadcast formats.

And consumers see their newfound wealth of news and information as one gargantuan package, not as a collection of hundreds of millions of organizations each trying to serve them its own package of stories. Peter Horrocks, the director of BBC World Services, recently noted, “Most of the major news organisations had the assumption that their news product provided the complete set of news requirements for their users. But in an internet world, users see the total information set available on the web as their ‘news universe’. I might like BBC for video news, the Telegraph or Daily Mail for sports results and The New York Times for international news.”

Indeed, the traditional printed newspaper’s package of international, national, regional and local news unpackages once online. Readers of a printed newspaper in a small city aren’t likely to use that local newspaper’s Web site for international and national news when they now have instant access to the international and national newspapers’ Web sites (the more populous the country, the more pronounced this effect). Therefore, it isn’t surprising that Nielsen, ComScore, and other agencies have for ten years reported that the average user of almost any U.S. daily newspaper’s Web site visits it no more than 2 to 6 times per month; reads only 5 to 20 stories from it during that period, and spend a monthly aggregate of less than 20 minutes doing so. Why should consumers spend all their time on any one publication’s site when they can now access their choices of stories from all sites?

The best analogy is this: The average supermarket contains more than 30,000 different items. Imagine if when you walked into it a clerk handed you and every other customer identical bags containing exactly the same mix of 20 to 50 items that the supermarket’s manager thinks will satisfy the needs of everyone. Would that solution satisfy you or would you instead prefer to wander the supermarket’s aisles and shop for your own choice of items? Each day’s edition of a traditional daily newspaper, whether in print or put online, is the equivalent of that bag, a mix of approximately 20 to 50 stories that the editor thinks will satisfy the needs of everyone who reads it. The problem is that each reader is no longer satisfied getting the same mix as everyone else; she would rather make her own choices and now can. No traditional newspaper edition, whether in print or shoveled online, can successfully compete against the consumers’ newfound cornucopia of news and information.

Much as the newspaper industry isn’t immune to gravitation, it also isn’t immune to effects of the principle of supply & demand. As consumers’ access to information is shifting from scarcity to surplus, most of the industry’s traditional business models, which are deeply rooted in scarcity, are being overturned. The effects of this are probably more widespread than most newspaper executives yet realize, affecting not just the business office but the newsroom and advertising office too.

Anyone who has done business in a souk, bazaar, or flea market knows that the economics and dynamics of commerce changes when the supply of something changes from scarcity to surplus. During the centuries when consumers’ access to news was relatively scarce, publishers controlled pricing, packaging, scheduling, and the aspects of news commerce. Much of that control is now reversing as consumers gain surplus access.

Foremost is how much consumers are now willing to pay for news. Although they might have paid 50 pennies per edition back when their only source of daily changing news in text format was a printed edition, now that their access to such texts is magnitudes greater online, the amount that they’re willing to pay to any one newspaper is proportionately less. And because the newspaper package unpackages online, consumers are only interested in paying for the paper’s core competency (local for local newspapers, national for national newspapers, etc.) and even then use those only infrequently. The combined result is that what consumers are to pay is near zero. This is the reason why free printed papers are increasing in circulation, paid newspapers decreasing, and almost all non-financial daily newspapers have been unable to get more than one or two percent of their Web site’s unique users to pay anything. (Good luck to those newspapers now planning to charge for online!)

Furthermore, consumers also are no longer willing to wait until press time for news; they want it now. They are no longer willing to accept only text and still photos from newspapers; they want audio, video, animation, social media, and geolocation. They want to be able to access their choice of the news from any device or vehicle they choose, not just those that the publisher selects. Consumers are forcing editors to redefine what local and community mean, using the consumer’s own parochial definitions and commutes rather than the editors’ familiar postal codes or municipalities. And much as the consumers are no longer willing to accept news stories that don’t fit their own individual mixes of interests, they are no longer willing to accept advertisements that don’t either.

As all of these profound changes have occurred, what have been the newspaper industry’s reactions? Willing disregard, active inertia, and lack of fraternal cooperation. Although the profound changes in media could be foreseen ten and were obvious five years ago, the newspaper industry has mainly attempted to transplant (‘repurpose’) its print business models and practices into online rather than radically adapting itself to these irreversible changes. The only concerted effort the industry has made – the U.S. newspaper industry’s attempt ten years ago to create its own search engine for news before Google existed and a common classified platform before CraigsList did – was prescient, but collapsed because its newspaper companies, too used to competing rather than cooperating, squabbled.

Vilifying or blocking search engines today won’t reverse the world’s calendar. Any advanced civilization will eventually create a technological flood of news and information for its consumers, as is apparent now in the post-industrial countries. Daily newspaper circulations in those countries began to fall off a cliff in 2004 when the majority of consumers there got broadband access. Broadband access, including 3G and 4G on mobile devices, will become pervasive in the rest of the world’s countries this coming decade, with the same effects.

The industry’s only practical solution is to embark on the equivalent of its own Manhattan Project to adapt itself, its business models, and its practices to the fundamental changes that have occurred this century. There is a massive business opportunity in eliminating consumers having to hunt and gather for the individuated news needs. Doing so is the best way to increase the value of a newspaper in this era. People prefer to have what they want delivered regularly to them rather than to hunt and gather for it.

This opportunity doesn’t conflict with the civic duties of journalism. Newspaper editors have been selecting stories according to two criteria: Stories about which the editor thinks all readers must be informed and also stories with the greatest common interest. Editors should continue providing stories of the first criterion, but their newspapers now need to begin letting each reader request their individual choices for the second – delivered online, on mobile, in e-reading devices, or in print if the newspaper has a digital press.

Moreover, each newspaper needs to offer to its readers not only its own stories and those from the news services and syndicates to which its newsroom subscribes, but also the consumers’ choices of all stories from all other newspapers. That will take unprecedented cooperation among newspaper companies, associations, and vendors, but failure to do so may cause the industry itself to fail. This endeavor will also require utilizing stories from magazines, newsletters, blogs, social media, and Web sites.

That seems like a daunting endeavor. Fortunately, each of the technologies necessary already exists and is in daily use by other specialized media industries. News and advertising marked up in Dublin Core eXtensible Markup Language (XML) can readily work with content management systems to provide individuated editions. Collaborative filtering software, AJAX, and other technology can help consumers choose and get what they want, when, and from where. Google and other newspaper industry competitors know consumers now demand individuated news, which is why newspaper competitors are creating services such as iGoogle, MyYahoo!, Pageflakes, and Netvibes.

The newspapers in North America, France, and the U.K. should have foreseen the fundamental changes ten years ago and began adapting then, but didn’t, failed to act, and are now on the verge of collapse. The industry in the rest of the world needs to act immediately, while there is still time.

Imagine if the calligrapher monks whose book business model Gutenberg’s invention overturned had disregarded the change and – rather than adapting to progress and exploiting the new technologies – continued apace and sought in vain a business model that could let them continue handwriting books. If the newspaper industry continues to pursue the old ways in print and to seek an online business model that will let it pursue the old ways there too, the industry will have about as much luck as those monks.

New Media Business Syllabus

On Tuesday, I began teaching another semester of New Media Business at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. I’ve taught the course each semester for the past three years, but update its syllabus every semester. For what it’s worth, here is this semester’s course syllabus. (I’ve struckout some of its phone numbers and e-mail addresses below to keep them from being computer-harvested. There is a more detailed ‘master’ copy of my syllabus, which contains the course readings and homework assignments, but I don’t publicly publish that one. My school competes with other media schools.) — Vin Crosbie

S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications

New Media Business

ICC625-M001 (48096) & ICC300-M002 (48142), Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11:00 am. to 12:20 p.m.

ICC625-M002 (48154) & ICC300-M003 (48144), Tuesdays & Thursdays, 3:30 to 4:50 p.m.

Course Goals

You have been taught the past; you will now begin to learn the future.

So far at Newhouse, you’ve received some of the world’s best instruction in 20^th Century media, and become prepared for the initial years of your career. Yet this is the 21^st Century and you need to be prepared for the century during which most your career will occur. Unless you have been living a cave[1] during the past decade, you might have noticed that all of the 20^th Century’s media industries in the post-industrial countries are now in turmoil.

Do you know why? How those industries will change? Which will survive and why? Do you know which Mass Media practices that you’ve learned at Syracuse (or other universities if you’ve transferred in) are already obsolete, outdated, or even counterproductive? Or why so many media executives expertly schooled in 20^th Century practices have been flummoxed by the changes now underway? Why, faced with these changes, the traditional strategies they’ve used have been unable to adapt their companies and industries with demonstrable success?

The Newhouse School’s New Media Business course has two goals:

Instruct you how New Media differs from traditional. Before you can understand why traditional media companies and their strategies have had difficulty adapting to New Media and how you can prosper by successfully adapting, you need to understand exactly how and why New Media aren’t Mass Media or about putting traditional media content on mobile phones or online.
Provide you with a survey and assessment of the technologies and business practices of New Media.

Likewise, two caveats:

First, though there will be time during this 14-week course to instruct you how New Media differs from traditional, there won’t be adequate time to provide you with great depth to the survey and assessment of New Media technologies and business practices. That’s because New Media is supplanting Mass Media and the study of its wide spectrum of practices and technologies has become almost as widespread as those of Mass Media, which no single course can totally cover.

Second, this semester’s New Media Business students come from six different media industries’ departments at the Newhouse School and one from general business management at the Whitman School, so this course won’t focus on any single media industry. It will be taught from a general media perspective.

Also, this isn’t a technology course: you won’t have to know or be taught any programming or graphics markup languages. Nor will this course require any specific business disciplines (accounting, business plan formulation, etc.) Journalism won’t be taught in this course, only the nature of content that succeeds online and creates consumer trust.

Dates and Location

Twenty-five classes will be held, between January 19 and May 4, 2010. None will be taught during Spring Break week. All will be held in Room 252 (the Larry Kramer War Room), located in Newhouse III at the southwest corner of the second floor (GPS coordinates upon request.)

Schedule of Course Topics

January 19 – Introduction, Syllabus, Class Policies: The instructor and students introduce themselves and their expectations for this course. Its syllabus and class policies are detailed.

January 21 – What’s Going On: We’ll assess the industries and set some benchmarks, so that by the end of the course we can see what you’ve learned and if your thinking has changed. What do you think the current state of the media industries is and why? What do you think the future will be? Some recent expert surveys state that you are uninformed in general, and not just about the media industries. Do you think that you’re well informed? How? By whom? And where in the world is Carmen Sandiego online?

January 26 – Embracing Change: How long do you plan to live? Why might that effect how you deal with change. We’ll talk about the ‘elasticity’ of time, how traditional industries react to change (topics such as Schrumpeter and the theory of ‘Creative Destruction,’ ‘Shovelware,’ ‘Active Inertia,’ the ‘Muddle Through’ strategy, purchasing the ‘Next Big Thing.’ organizational myopia, fear of any risks, the herd instinct and the ‘lemmings effect’, and why the need to ‘Think Outside the Box’ indicates a problem with the ‘Box.’), about Moore’s Law, ‘Self-cannibalization,’ and making errors fast and early.

January 28 – The Greatest Change in Media during the Past 400 Years? Do you know what it is? We’ll then discuss how Supply & Demand affects the value, price, control, scheduling, format, packaging, and nature of content, definitions of ‘community’ and ‘locality,’ choices of media vehicles, and about ‘Gravitation of consumers;’ ‘Audience Fragmentation,’ and Individuation versus Mass.

February 2 – the Media (and Internet) Timeline: A brief history of the Internet, its parts, who invented it, and how old they were. What are Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, and Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web, and why each is significant?

February 4 – What is Digital? Why true definitions of terms matter in a world of ‘cyberhype.’ What are the differences between analog and digital? What capabilities make digital media different from traditional forms of media?

February 9 – What Really is Interactive? The four common characteristics of successful New Media businesses.

February 11 – How the Internet Works: How to build a nuclear-bombproof network? Network theory and Kevin Bacon. Packet-Switching and TCP/IP. FTP. Mailto. Usenet. HTTP. HTML. Mosaic. Cascading Style Sheets. Other vegetable soups. Data mashups.

February 16 – What is/are New Media? Is or are there such a thing? Why only three media exist.

February 18 –Legal Differences from Traditional Media: How some laws governing publishing, broadcasting, marketing, and advertising in New Media differ from those governing traditional media: COPA or not, SPAM, spyware. cybersquatting, copyrights and royalties, digital rights management, personal and foreign jurisdictions, ‘Safe Harbors’, etc.

February 23 –Economic Differences from Traditional Media: How some New Media economics differs from those of traditional media. The conflations of daily and monthly users. Behavioral versus Demographic. Why it takes 50 to 100 online users to make up for the revenue lost losing one traditional media user. The economics of surplus versus scarcity for advertising inventories.

February 25 – Why the Web Doesn’t Deliver & Web Analytics: The world’s most accountable media platform and its gaps. Web servers and server logs. Clickstreams and metrics. Basic Web analytics.

March 4 – Digital Delivery: E-mail Publishing/Marketing. Anti-Spam. E-Mail Metrics and Revenues. Really Simple Syndication. XML Syndication of text, audio, and video.

March 9 – I Never MetaData I Didn’t Like: How and why metadata controls content distribution in the 21^st Century. What are XML, Exif, NewsML, AdML etc.?

March 11 – Search Engine Optimization & Marketing (Part I): The role of search engines online. How does search engine optimization work?

March 23 – Search Engine & Marketing (Part I): Why more than half of all online advertising today is search engine marketing? Why and how does it work?

March 25 – Streaming Media: Webcasting, podcasting, vodcasting, streaming media, codecs, diminuation, P2P, and BitTorrent.

March 30 – The Future of TV and Cinema: YouTube versus Hulus. Why Blue-Ray’s victory over HD DVD was moot. Bulldozing Blockbuster. Now showing in a home or on a handheld devices near you.

April 1 – The Blogosphere: How to publish, broadcast, market, advertise on, or deal with blogs. Their effects on journalism and public relations.

April 6 – Social Media & Virtual Worlds: Bulletin boards, chat rooms, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, and virtual worlds. Anonymity, pseudonymity, and cacaophony.

April 8 – Going Mobile: Publishing or broadcasting to mobile phones, Playstations, iPhones, and Androids. WiFi, WiMax, give me the Gs (such as 3G). Broadcasting to mobile phones.

April 13 – The Future of Paper: Electronic Paper, PDFs, and digital editions. Remote presses. The legacy and ‘Revenge of paper.’

April 15 – Paid Content: Types of content for which people will pay, why, when, and how. Completing Brand’s Dictum. Micropayments. Individuation. Digital Rights Management.

April 20 – Twenty-First Century Workflows for a World of Ambient Information: Best practices of coordination, integration, and production. Course conclusions and evaluations.

Instructor

New Media Business is taught each semester at Newhouse by Vin Crosbie, an adjunct professor of Visual & Interactive Communications and the school’s senior consultant on executive education in New Media. Crosbie isn’t by profession an academic, but spent 1977-2007 as a news media executive and then New Media consultant.

Folio, the trade journal of the American magazine industry, called him, ‘The Practical Futurist.’ Editor and Publisher, the trade journal of the U.S. newspaper industry, devoted the Overview chapter of its executive research report, Digital Delivery of News: A How-To Manual for Publishers, to his work. His speech at the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual conference was one of 24 orations (including those of Barak Obama, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Hilary Clinton) published in Representative American Speeches: 2004‑2005. When last year the U.S. Congress’s research office briefed senators and congressmen prior to hearings held about the troubles of the newspaper industry, Crosbie was the first person and only academic it quoted. And when the World Association of Newspapers asked “ten of the world’s top newspaper consultants” to “suggest the soundest strategies for the future,” it chose Crosbie’s as the lead essayist among the ten in its resulting report, Charting the Course for Newspapers, published this January.

The fifth generation of his family in the news business, Crosbie is a former reporter, editor, and daily newspaper publisher, and has been an executive of News Corporation, Reuters, and United Press International. He began working with New Media during the 1980s, and doing so full-time in 1993. Oxford University’s Internet History Project credits him as one of the inventors of free e-mail services (the precursors to Gmail, Hotmail, and YahooMail) Since 1996, he has been managing partner at the consulting firm of Digital Deliverance LLC in Greenwich, Connecticut, providing strategies, tactics, technologies, and business models to media companies adapting to New Media. His clientele has included The Atlantic Monthly, British Broadcasting Corporation, Founder Group of Beijing, Gannett Company, The Independent of London, The Irish Times of Dublin, the Jerusalem Post, Johnson & Johnson, the Mail & Guardian of Johannesburg, McGraw-Hill, MediaNews Group, El Mundo of Madrid, the U.S. National Cancer Institute, The New York Times, Neue Zürcher Zeitung of Zurich, Playboy, PR Newswire, Scientific American, The Scotsman of Edinburgh, Monster.com, La Vanguardia of Barcelona, and the Village Voice.

Crosbie has chaired and moderated the World Association of Newspapers annual Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna (2006); keynoted the EPublishing Innovations Forum in London (2008) and Seybold Publishing Strategies conference in San Francisco (2000); and been a features speaker at the annual conferences of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Newsletter and Electronic Publishing Association, the Society for Scholarly Publishing, Book Expo America, and at Folio’s magazine industry executive retreats. He has taught seminars about media executive leadership and also digital entrepreneurship for the Knight Digital Media Center in Los Angeles; about online broadcasting for the Media Development Loan Fund’s conference in Montenegro; and about digital media management for Rhodes University in South Africa. http://www.google.com/search?q=”vin+crosbie”

Office Hours

Professor Crosbie’s office hours are 1:30 to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays. However, when not teaching the morning and afternoon session of this course, he generally is in his Newhouse office weekdays except Mondays. Call, text, or e-mail him if you’d like to meet with him. He also can arrange morning or evening meetings.

His office is Room 240 (from the bottom of the ‘grand staircase’ in Newhouse III, take an immediate right into a dim hallway. Room 240 is the second door on your left).

His office phone is (315) 443‑XXXX. However, when he is not in his office, he can’t see the ‘voicemail waiting’ light, so the most reliable way to reach him is to call or text his mobile phone (203) XXX-XXXX. His e‑mail address is xxxxxxxx@syr.edu.

Use of Blackboard

Assignments, grades, and course notices in this course will be given via Syracuse University’s online Blackboard system. Please check Blackboard in the mornings before this class, just in case a class is cancelled due to snow or illness.

Online Readings

The instructor will assign readings available online. For the following reasons, no textbooks are required for this course:

No comprehensive textbook has been written yet about the New Media business for media practitioners.
Although there are some good New Media books about specific media industries or disciplines (such as the book Journalism Next for journalists), because this course’s students are from various disciplines (such as Advertising, Film, Magazine, Media Management, Newspaper, Public Relations, Radio, Television, etc.), it is impractical for the instructor to assign some textbooks to some students and other textbooks to others.
New Media can markedly change during a semester, something that generally doesn’t happen with traditional media topics taught at Newhouse. However, printed textbooks generally take 12 to 18 months to produce, so significant portion of printed books about New Media can be outdated by the time those books are published.
We will study the latest developments, which are, of course, available first online.
A course about New Media is best taught using New Media.
Plus, the instructor believes that almost all university textbooks are overpriced in print and should instead be published as less expensive e-books.

However, there are several books that some students might want to purchase for their own use, depending upon their majors. These suggested books provide addition information beyond what will be taught in this course and are probably on the shelves of many Newhouse alumni who are working in New Media:

Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte (Coronet Books, 1996), the founder of the MIT Media Lab, explains how and why digital technologies are revolutionizing our world
Webonomics: Nine Essential Principles for Growing Your Business on the World Wide Web by Evan Schwartz (Broadway Publishing, 1998), describes essential ways in which New Media differs from traditional media and that all broadcasters, publisher, or advertisers need to know.
Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian (Harvard Business School Press, 1999), details how the economy of information has radically changed since the Internet was opened to public and commercial use and what this means for publishers, broadcasters, and advertisers.
Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers, by Seth Godin (Simon & Schuster; 1999) is a landmark book about the future of advertising and how that practice will be radically different in this century compared to the last.
The Online Advertising Playbook by Plummer, Rappaport, Hall, and Baraocci (John Wiley & Sons, 2007) provides the latest strategies, tactics, research, and case studies about online advertising methodologies and best practices.
The New Rules of Marketing & PR, by David Meerman Scott (John Wiley & Sons, 2007) is obviously written from the perspective of public relations and marketing practitioners, but nonetheless provides an excellent perspective of how to understand and utilize Social Media (MySpace, Facebook, Second Life, etc.).
Internet Law: A Field Guide by Jonathan Hart (BNA Books, sixth edition 2008), written for the Stanford Professional Publishing Course by the legal advisor to the Online News Association, describes how, and details the case law about, where New Media differs legally from traditional media regarding freedom of speech, personal jurisdiction, libel and defamation, data collection and privacy, trademarks, taxation, advertising, and marketing.
Journalism Next, by Mark Briggs (2009), is a primer for anyone who wants to publish, broadcast, or communicate online. It shows the basic of how to use online technologies.

There is one book that the instructor is currently assessing as a possible required textbook for this course next semester:

The 21st Century Media [R]evolution by Jim McNamara (Peter Lang, New York 2010). McNamara, professor of public communications at the University of Technology, Sydney, synthesizes the competing theories of New Media and describes how and why New Media are supplanting traditional media.

Because these books aren’t required for the course the semester, the Syracuse University Bookstore probably doesn’t stock them. Nevertheless, all except for Journalism Next, are available from online booksellers for less than the university bookstore would charge. (Journalism 2.0 is available for $10 from http://www.squidoo.com/journalism20).

Grading

Final Project or Paper – Forty-five percent (45%) of each student’s overall grade will be based upon a final project or paper that illustrates that student’s overall understanding of the practices and conceptual framework of New Media and the practical application of such knowledge. By mid-semester, Professor Crosbie will ask each student to propose a paper or project.

Class Assignments– Forty percent (40%) of each student’s overall grade will be based upon assignments during class. All of these assignments can be done alone by students but some (as noted per assignment) can be done in groups.

Discussion or Written Argumentation – Fifteen percent (15%) of each student’s overall grade will be based upon the instructor’s assessment of the student participation in discussions during classes or written arguments in assignments or e-mails. The original purpose of this portion of grading is to encourage discussions during class. However, the instructor realizes that some students might be from national cultures where questioning the instructor during class is considered rude. Therefore, should a student wish to discussion course topics one-on-one with the instructor in person, by e-mail, or within written assignments, the instructor will grade such interactivity equivalent to discussion in class.

Grade Assessment – Because no multiple choice exams, tests, or quizzes are used in this course, grading will not be on a 0 to 100 point scale. The difference, for example, between a 91 and an 89 is too subjective. Instead, the instructor uses the following assessment to decide among A, B, C, D, and F grades.

Grade A (‘Extremely Competent’) – The Student Demonstrates:

A comprehensive and systemic understanding of issues (i.e., key concepts and issues are clearly understood and explained in sufficient detail.)
An in-depth understanding of relevant theories and principles (i.e., relevant theories are identified and critically discussed in sufficient detail and limitations of theories are recognized and explained.)
The ability to identify and retrieve a broad range of relevant research and other information salient to the issue being addressed.
The ability to critically analyze, synthesize, and evaluate relevant theories, concepts, and principles in addressing a given problem (i.e., solutions are based on evidence and driven by theory).
Been able to articulate highly developed and considered arguments which are logical, clear, and concise (i.e., care has been taken to ensure that discussion or written argumentation is both engaging, appropriate to the task, and well prepared).
Has demonstrated a professional or creative flair in the assigned task.

Grade B (‘Highly Competent’) – The Student Demonstrates:

A detailed understanding of the issues (i.e., some relevant issues could be explained in more detail).
A solid understanding of relevant theories and principles (i.e., although relevant theories are identified and described, the student could more critical.)
Been able to identify and retrieve salient research and information regarding the issues (i.e., however, the score of the student’s work could be extended).
Been able to identify and apply relevant theories, concepts, and principles in addressing a given problem (i.e., the student bases solutions evidence but theories and principles could be applied more rigourously).
Been able to articulate arguments logically, clearly, and concisely.
Has demonstrated some professional or creative flair in responding to the assigned task.

Grade C (‘Competent’) – The Student Demonstrates:

A general understanding of the issues (i.e., some issues could be addressed or explained in greater detail. A few concepts might not be adequately understood).
A fair understanding of the relevant theories and principles (i.e., relevant theories are identified but could be explained in more detail).
Been able to identify and retrieve some relevant research regarding issues (i.e, could have made more use of sources).
Been able to identify and apply some relevant theories and concepts (i.e., could be better applied).
Been able to present a logical argument although more care could have been taken.
Has met the requirements of the task assigned

Grade D (‘Not Yet Competent’) – The Student Demonstrates:

A basic understanding of some issues, but important issues are ignored or misunderstood.
A limited understanding of relevant theories and principles.
Been able to utilize only a limited amount of relevant research and information.
Been able to identify some relevant theories but hasn’t adequately applied them to the task.
Arguments that need to be much better developed.
Has attempted little more than the bare minimum response or assignment.

Grade F (‘Not Competent’) – The Student Demonstrates:

Little or no understanding of the issues.
Little or no understanding of key theories.
An inability to identify relevant research and information.
An inability to apply relevant theories and principles.
Inept or unclear arguments or presentations.
Has not met the bare minimum response or assignment.

Grade Gradations – Because a student’s work might demonstrate some capabilities among more than one grade level, the instructor may assess gradations accordingly. For examples, if the majority of a student’s assignment or project fits the criteria for a ‘A’ grade but the minority fits a ‘B’ grade, the instructor will grade that work ‘A-‘. Similarly, if the majority of a student’s assignment or project fits the criteria for a ‘B’ grade but the minority fits a ‘A’ grade, the instructor will grade that work ‘B+‘.

Disability-Related Accommodations

If you believe that you need accommodations for a disability, please contact the Office of Disability Services for an appointment to discuss your needs and the process for requesting accommodations. ODS is responsible for coordinating disability-related accommodations and will issue students with documented disabilities Accommodation Authorization Letters, as appropriate. Since accommodations may require early planning and generally are not provided retroactively, please contact ODS as soon as possible.

Syracuse University and the instructor are committed to your success and to supporting Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This means that in general no individual who is otherwise qualified shall be excluded from participation in, be denied benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity, solely by reason of having a disability

The ODS (http://disabilityservices.syr.edu), ], located in Room 309 of 804 University Avenue, can be reached by voice phone at (315) 443-XXXX, by telecommunications device for the deaf at (315) 443-XXXX, or by e-mail at xxxxxxxxx@syr.edu

Academic Integrity

Academic Honesty: Complete academic honesty is expected of all students. Any incidence of academic dishonesty, as defined by the Syracuse Academic Integrity Policy (see the Academic Integrity Policy and Procedures (PDF) will
result in both course sanctions and formal notification of the Newhouse School. In this course, students are allowed and strongly encouraged to study together but, except with prior approval of the instructor, all assignments and final papers/projects must represent the work of the individual student. http://academicintegrity.syr.edu/uploads/docs/SU%20AI%20Policies%20Procedures.pdf

[1] And, even then, some caves are now equipped with WiFi.

When Advertising and Editorial Conflict

When advertising and editorial content conflict

What makes the December 12, 2009, home page of American Journalism Review even more ironic is that the online advertising network serving up the ‘Journalism is Dead’ ad is Google.

What Are Major U.S. Newspaper’s Daily Online Circulations?

As their printed editions’ circulations decline, the publishers of newspapers like to conflate daily print and monthly online readerships. They add their newspaper’s daily circulation number to the numbers of people who visit their newspaper’s Web site at least once per month. This conflated total purportedly shows the total readership of their newspaper. Because the number of monthly online users has been ascending more quickly than the daily print circulation has been falling, the conflated total rises, allowing the publishers to claims that their newspaper’s total readerships are rising despite their circulation losses.

Unfortunately, they’re comparing apples and oranges. Apples and oranges are fruit, but apples certainly aren’t citrus. Likewise, daily and monthly figures are numbers, but aren’t the same — particularly not when talking about data for products that are produced and change daily. Adding monthly online user totals to a monthly magazine’s printed circulation makes sense, but adding monthly numbers to daily circulation does not. It creates a false number and spurs inaccurate claims about a daily product’s usage. After all, would it make sense to add to daily circulation numbers the number of people who visit the newspapers’ Web sites at least once per year? No, newspapers aren’t annual products.

However, daily online circulation can be calculated from data showing how often during a month the average online user of a newspaper’s Web site visits. Editor & Publisher magazine recently published the Nielsen Online auditing agency’s estimates about total number of monthly users and the average user’s visitation frequency for the top 25 U.S. daily newspapers’ Web sites during October of 2009. To find the average daily traffic (equal to circulation) those sites get, multiply each site’s number of monthly users times its average user’s number of visits per month and then divide by the number of days in that month (31 in October). For example, Nielsen says that approximately 17, 394,000 people used The New York Times‘ Web site in October and that this site’s average user visited the site 3.97 times during that month. From that, we can calculate that NYTimes.com received approximately 2,227,554 people per day during October (17,394,000 x 3.97 / 31 = 2,227,554).

Here are the calculations for the top 25 U.S. newspaper Web sites:

Newspaper	Monthly Users	Visits/Mo.		Daily Visits
The New York Times	17,394,000	3.97	…	2,227,554
USAToday	9,715,000	3.77	…	1,181,469
Washington Post	8,870,000	3.35	…	958,532
Wall Street Journal	8,004,000	2.81	…	725,524
Los Angeles Times	7,661,000	2.93	…	724,088
New York Daily News	6,733,000	2.35	…	510,405
Boston Globe	4,760,000	4.05	…	621,871
Chicago Tribune	4,631,000	4.11	…	613,981
San Francisco Chronicle	4,263,000	2.97	…	408,423
New York Post	4,222,000	3.32	…	452,163
Dallas Morning News	3,396,000	2.60	…	284,826
Politico	3,285,000	3.30	…	349,694
Tampa Tribune	3,272,000	1.75	…	184,710
Chicago Sun-Times	2,738,000	2.74	…	242,004
Newark Star-Ledger	2,478,000	3.44	…	274,978
Atlanta Constitution-Journal	2,457,000	5.70	…	451,771
Newsday	2,200,000	2.83	…	200,839
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel	2,136,000	2.97	…	204,643
Star Tribune	2,096,000	3.49	…	235,969
Denver Post	2,074,000	2.13	…	142,504
Philadelphia Inquirer	2,047,000	3.01	…	198,757
San Jose Mercury News	2,020,000	2.40	…	156,387
Houston Chronicle	1,909,000	3.97	…	244,475
Miami Herald	1,907,000	2.61	…	160,557
The Washington Times	1,846,000	2.43	…	144,703

From these calculations, we can see that the average daily online circulation for these sites is much lower than the sites’ monthly user totals.

How do these newspapers’ daily online circulation compare with their’ daily print circulation? Because some of these dailies don’t publish printed on Saturdays or Sundays (for example, USAToday), but their Web sites are accessible and updated on seven days each week, without specific day-by-day figures for each number during October, the best we can compare is average daily online and print circulations during the month. To calculate their average daily print circulations during the month, we need to find each newspaper’s Weekday, Saturday, and Sunday circulations. Those figures are available from from the Audit Bureaus of Circulations’ Web site. There were 22 weekdays, four Sundays, and five Saturdays during October. We can calculate each newspaper’s average daily circulation during the month according to the formula [ (Weekday circulation x 22) + (Sunday circulation x 4) + (Saturday circulation x 5)] / 31.

Newspaper	Weekday Circ.	Saturday Circ.	Sunday Circ.	…	Average Daily Print Circ.
NYTimes.com	927,851	941,219	1,400,302	…	1,071,614
USAToday.com	1,900,116	0	0	…	1,348,469
WashingtonPost.com	582,844	552,363	822,208	…	608,813
Wall Street Journal	2,024,269	1,906,548	0	…	1,744,086
Los Angeles Times	657,467	783,664	983,702	…	719,916
New York Daily News	544,167	428,862	603,671	…	533,247
Boston Globe	264,105	264,516	418,529	…	284,097
Chicago Tribune	465,892	378,025	803,220	…	495,246
San Francisco Chronicle	251,782	252,836	306,705	…	259,039
New York Post	508,042	368,361	343,361	…	464,264
Dallas Morning News	263,810	261,066	390,520	…	297,717
Politico	26,065	0	0	…	18,498
Tampa Tribune	152,568	160,277	252,953	…	166,764
Chicago Sun-Times	275,641	210,027	251,260	…	261,912
Newark Star-Ledger	246,006	210,677	371,060	…	256,444
Atlanta Constitution-Journal	211,420	228,835	405,549	…	239,278
Newsday	357,124	323,126	413,830	…	358,957
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel	190,841	193,632	334,240	…	209,794
Star Tribune	304,543	324,199	477,562	…	330,038
Denver Post	340,949	410,358	495,485	…	372,084
Philadelphia Inquirer	361,480	333,086	499,140	…	374,663
San Jose Mercury-News	225,175	176,605	248,386	…	220,336
Houston Chronicle	348,419	370,675	547,387	…	403,230
Miami Herald	162,260	139,476	238,613	…	168,437
The Washington Times	67,148	0	45,427	…	53,515

We can now compare average daily print circulation and average daily online circulation during October, and calculate what percentages of these newspapers’ daily readerships use print versus online:

Newspaper	Total Daily Readership	% Print	% Online
the New York Times	3,299,168	32%	68%
USAToday	2,529,939	53%	47%
WashingtonPost.com	1,567,346	39%	61%
The Wall Street Journal	2,469,610	71%	29%
Los Angeles Times	1,444,004	50%	50%
New York Daily News	1,043,652	51%	49%
Boston Globe	905,968	31%	69%
Chicago Tribune	1,109,227	45%	55%
San Francisco Chronicle	667,462	39%	61%
New York Post	916,426	51%	49%
Dallas Morning News	564,543	50%	50%
Politico	368,191	5%	95%
Tampa Tribune	351,474	47%	53%
Chicago Sun-Times	503,916	52%	48%
Newark Star-Ledger	531,422	48%	52%
Atlanta Constitution-Journal	691,049	35%	65%
Newsday	559,796	64%	36%
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel	414,437	51%	49%
Star Tribune	566,007	58%	42%
Denver Post	514,588	72%	28%
Philadelphia Inquirer	573,420	65%	35%
San Jose Mercury-News	376,723	58%	42%
Houston Chronicle	647,706	62%	38%
Miami Herald	328,994	51%	49%
The Washington Times	198,218	27%	73%

Several caveats about these calculations:

First and foremost, these calculations don’t factor the overlaps between print and online readerships. Many people use both the printed and the online editions of the same newspaper. Some surveys (notably by Belden) have estimated the overlap to be as large as one-third of the total readerships. Such an overlap would significantly reduce these newspapers’ total daily readerships and the percentages above.
A few of these newspapers’ Web sites contain other media outlets. For instance, TBO.com, the Web site of the Tampa Tribune, also contains the sites of WFLA-TV, a station which increases TBO.com’s daily and monthly user totals.
The Washington Times and Politico have heavily used Web sites whose national traffic far exceeds their printed editions’ relatively small circulations.
Online-only daily newspapers, such as HuffingtonPost.com, aren’t included in these comparisons simply because they don’t have printed editions
I’ve calculated only data from Nielsen Online’s list of the 25 top U.S. newspapers according to monthly unique user counts. There might be other U.S. newspapers whose average online user visits frequently enough to displace these 25 when ranked by daily online usage.

Nevertheless, here are these top 25 U.S. newspaper Web sites ranked by daily online circulation (i.e., traffic) during October:

Newspaper	Daily Online Circulation
The New York Times	2,227,554
USAToday	1,181,469
Washington Post	958,532
The Wall Street Journal	725,524
Los Angeles Times	724,088
Boston Globe	621,871
Chicago Tribune	613,981
New York Daily News	510,405
New York Post	452,164
Atlanta Constitution-Journal	451,771
San Francisco Chronicle	408,423
Politico	349,694
Dallas Morning News	284,826
Newark Star-Ledger	274,978
Houston Chronicle	244,475
Chicago Sun-Times	242,004
Star Tribune	235,969
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel	204,643
Newsday	200,839
Philadelphia Inquirer	198,757
Tampa Tribune	184,710
Miami Herald	160,557
San Jose Mercury-News	156,387
The Washington Times	144,703
Denver Post	142,504

And ranked by percentages of their daily readerships online:

Newspaper	Percentage Readership Online
Politico	95%
The Washington Times	73%
Boston Globe	69%
The New York Times	68%
Atlanta Constitution-Journal	65%
San Francisco Chronicle	61%
Washington Post	61%
Chicago Tribune	55%
Tampa Tribune	53%
Newark Star-Ledger	52%
Dallas Morning News	50%
Los Angeles Times	50%
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel	49%
New York Post	49%
New York Daily News	49%
Miami Herald	49%
Chicago Sun-Times	48%
USAToday	47%
Star Tribune	42%
San Jose Mercury-News	42%
Houston Chronicle	38%
Newsday	36%
Philadephia Inquirer	35%
Wall Street Journal	29%
Denver Post	28%

The differences in online percentage between ostensible similar print edition markets (for examples, Boston versus Philadelphia, or Atlanta versus Denver) are remarkable.

Moreover, it seems clear that the Boston Globe, The New York Times, Atlanta Constitution-Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Washington Post have become primarily online newspapers (greater than 60% online each) when measured according to average daily readership.

It seems odd that the San Jose Mercury-News, the newspaper in the heart of Silicon Valley, has such a low percentage (42%) of daily online readers.

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