On that note, I'm sad to see that trolls are creeping into the formerly civil discussion that used to go on in the Sac Press comment threads. Specifically, they should ban the idiot who posts under "bbbmer".
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
everyone loves a panel discussion
Interesting. There's a panel discussion tonight that is open to the public that's about paying for online content. OMF is on the panel, along with a few other illustrious Sacramentans, such as the publisher of Sacramento, and the editor of the business journal. Here are details from Sacramento Press.
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9 comments:
note that bbmer's icon is a pissing dog. fitting.
-omf
sacpress gave way to the trolls a long time ago. same with SN&R. maybe it's a Sac thing?
bbbbmer spends their entire rest of the day on the sacbee site doing the same.
what a double b-bummer
I attended to the panel discussion, and here are my impressions.
1) Indie media, such as MM, are going to stick with their existing model and try to scrape by, as they always have.
2) New media entrepreneur, Geoff S. from the Sacramento Press, admitted that a good chuck of their profits come from consulting, not the Press. He vowed to keep experimenting. I didn't take any notes, but S. said something to the effect that they soon after they launched they realized that they needed to hire staff writers. One wonders if they are looking to ditch the "community journalism" angle of their site.
3) KVIE wants to bring "Check, Please" to Sacramento.
4) The Sacramento Magazine is totally doomed, and they have absolutely no clue. There was something about video that made no sense to me. I considered suggesting they cut a deal with dentist offices before it was too late.
5) The Sacramento Bee is totally doomed, and they know it all to well. Their online managing editor (Tom Negrete, I think) was hilariously fatalistic. Maybe the Bee should start charging for grand tours of their building. The panel was held on the 3rd floor of the Bee hive. That place is pretty awesome.
6) Finally, the Sacramento Business Journal has monetizable content that they can keep locked away from Google, so they are safer than most. The bums lose again, Mr. Lebowski, you might say. Whatcha gonna do?
thanks Jeff! I'm happy for the report. I wondered how SacPress was getting by.
In regards to comments, it's too bad more sites don't follow the example of Ask Metafilter, which has a FT moderator and a very strict code of do's and don'ts in order to keep things civil. Although somebody might be more willing to pay $5 to join that site versus paying to comment on the Bee's site.
SacPress has an online display ad biz called SLOAN that makes ALL of their money. But they're likely in the red, like Sactown, etc. There's some kind of long-term financing/plan with a fail safe date for sink/swim, i'd imagine.
I wanted to go to this panel but, as per last month's Atlantic cover story, it seems that online paywalls will mimic print biz models: some will be free, some will be subscriptions, some will be mix. This is what most Google engineers and industry types think. I agree.
Re: Jeff/Tom N.: the sticky part will be how old media transitions to new platforms. So far, not so good.
The good thing is magazines like Midmo and SN&R will be able to duke it out with a print-only platform for a long while. Some argue that is career suicide for a journalist; I'm willing to stick it out.
My only concern is that in five years, will we look at a stack of SN&Rs or Midmos and just say "ug," why waste all that paper? Print may become, as the French say, declasse, but in an environmental sense ...
N
SacPress makes a big chunk of their profits from SLOAN, but they also make a sizable chunk from their consulting biz - like managing other businesses' Facebook pages. The sacPress guys seem really smart- I'm not sure I agree with Samek that print is doomed (kindle type things are going to have to get a lot better) but he does make a pretty good argument about where print is headed.
I wondered where SacTown and SNR were on the panel... I was told that they were asked so I'm assuming they declined?..
-omf
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