A few months ago I talked about how users hate change, but let’s not forget that a lot of communicators hate change, too. I’ve been in several situations where I had to train reporters, editors and writers in the newsroom or writers in a PR and marketing group how to [...]

If I was going to write book of web principles certainly one of my top ten principles would be Users Hate Change If you’ve been on Facebook the day a change is made you’ve certainly seen it in your news feed.  Today, for example, Facebook changed up the contents of [...]

I built a new web site over the weekend and launched it this morning– CampaignTwit. The site aggregates tweets from Arkansas politicians into a feed and page based on race.  Every race gets a page with all the most recent tweets from each candidate displayed on the page. The site [...]

I spend a lot of time picking on newspapers and websites, but let’s spend some time poking at the TV guys. The BBC gives a nice look at how to report the news on TV. If only our local stations could reach somewhere near this level.

After revealing they only have 35 online only subscribers and their traffic has dropped by half, a Newsday exec sent out a memo explaining their paywall strategy in two basic points. “Therefore, Newsday’s web strategy has two parts: 1) to provide Newsday’s print subscribers with a rich web experience that [...]

If you want to be really wonky about newspaper paywall’s audience and revenue numbers, Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab has released a paywall simulation that let’s you play with revenue,  audience and subscription numbers. It’s a lot of fun if you know what the numbers mean. Along the same line of [...]

Steve Yelvington with Morris Newspapers has done the math on a soft paywall as proposed by the New York Times (we discussed this last week).  Steves figures that a newspaper should be prepared to give 35 to 55 percent of their advertising inventory by implementing a soft paywall because power [...]

This morning I received a “breaking news email” from the New York Times that the New York Times had decided to start charging for access in 2011. I really don’t understand why they would send a breaking news email over this news. First, everyone else had been reporting the Times [...]

The free flow of information “is as vital to the healthy functioning of communities as clean air, safe streets, good schools and public health.” That’s what the Knight Commission on Information Needs of a Democracy concluded in their report on Sustaining Democracy in a Digital Age.  The 145 page report [...]

What metrics do you use to measure the success of a newspaper web site switching to a paid content model? Specifically, I’m thinking about how will Stephens Media know if their switch to a paid content model for the Pine Bluff Commercial? Here’s the metrics I think a site switching [...]