AAN Association of Alternative Newsmedia

Media Oxpecker: Splitting the Pie With Digital Dimes

march 7, 2013 09:00 pm

Every week we round up media news you may have missed while you were busy doing it right.

But you can't get paid if you're not even getting a byline. VIDA's annual byline gender count shows that while a few publications "have held steady or made calculable strides towards shaping a more egalitarian literary landscape via gender," others, like Harper's, The Nation, The New Republic, and The Paris Review continue to show "gross (& indecent) neglect of female writers' work."

New data shows a major slowdown in online display advertising and a surge in secondary buys through ad networks and exchanges in a report that MediaPost says "is likely the most accurate accounting ever of the U.S. media-buying marketplace."

Could this be because web banner ads are on the way out? Digiday takes a look at the threats facing the "banner industrtial complex."

And The Atlantic's Derek Thompson says the real reason mobile ads are suffering is that users have a digital-attention deficit.

"If anybody out there thinks a paywall is going to solve our industry's problems in itself, they're in for a very rude surprise." The Wall Street Journal's Raju Narisetti talks with the Nieman Journalism Lab about paywalls and reinventing ads.

"When it comes to persuading your readers to pay you money, it actually helps to be small," says Felix Salmon, pointing to the examples of Andrew Sullivan, Amanda Palmer and Tomorrow Magazine:
There's an exception for finance, of course, and also for the NYT, which is unique in many ways. But the lesson of Palmer's [TED] talk is that while 25,000 supporters aren't nearly enough to support a band on a record label, they're more than enough to support a band on Kickstarter -- or, for that matter, to keep an iPad magazine going strong. What's more, while consumers can be very loyal to brands and to publications, in many ways it's easier to become loyal to an individual, especially when she has an idiosyncratic and unique voice.

Alan Mutter on why smartphone apps by retailers such as Macy's, CVS, and Best Buy should make publishers worry:
These efforts should give publishers the shivers, because this new channel represents a major threat to the retail lineage that constitutes half of what's left of the advertising sold by newspapers.

How the IRS's "antiquated and counterproductive" rules are hurting nonprofit news orgs.

And finally, in this week's edition of "the more things change," former Tucson Weekly editor Jimmy Boegle is showing that even at his new home in the Southern California desert, the daily Desert Sun is proudly carrying on the timeless tradition of claiming credit for a story that was reported first by the alt — namely, Boegle's Coachella Valley Independent. Congrats, Jimmy. That's a sure sign your new publication is doing something right.