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Posted 8:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
We'll Be Back on Tuesday
E-Media Tidbits' writers will take a break on Monday, in recognition of the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S. We'll resume a normal publishing schedule on Tuesday, May 28.
Posted 5:26 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Copper Is the Best
Juan C. Camus on website awards
The educational website from Corporación Chilena del Cobre (a state-owned copper company) was selected as the winner of the second annual contest for best websites in Chile. The competition was the Festival Web Chile 2002, and it was intended to empower people and ad agencies working on the Internet, said Paula Morales, a spokesperson for the organization. The winner will be participating in the Webby Awards 2003, too.
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Posted 3:41 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Defining Our Terms
Rich Gordon on a framework for digital storytelling
My friend Nora Paul at the University of Minnesota's Institute for New Media Studies and Christina Fiebich, a Ph.D. candidate at the school, have produced "5 Elements of Digital Storytelling," an effort to provide a common vocabulary and structure for understanding new media content. It's an ambitious effort that really can't be adequately summarized in a weblog. But it's well worth reading, if only because we desperately need a common vocabulary for talking about digital storytelling. As the authors put it: "Ask three different people what 'interactivity' is and you will get three different definitions. So, too, with the terms multimedia, hypertext, and non-linear." A tip of the hat to the American Press Institute, whose NewsFuture e-newsletter alerted me to this online article — and includes critical commentary about it from Leah Gentry (consultant and former online editor at ChicagoTribune.com and LATimes.com) and Michael Joyce (an English professor at Vassar).
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Posted 2:12 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Who Will Cover 'Hyperlocal' Online?
Rich Gordon on newspapers' local news problem
My item suggesting that metro papers use the Web to solve their local news problem drew an animated e-mail response from Dave Bullard, one of the owners of dot Publishing, Inc., which runs two independent local news websites: www.fultondailynews.com and www.oswegodailynews.com in upstate New York. He argues that the major metro papers won't ever go "hyperlocal" effectively because they (1) don't really understand small local communities; (2) are uncomfortable publishing community-provided content; (3) have too expensive a cost structure; (4) charge too much for ads to attract "Main Street retailers"; and (5) won't make the effort to create microlocal websites when it's so much easier to cover news on a regional basis.Given the lack of success most major metros have had in covering local news at the community level, I think Bullard makes some good points. He also says his company's news sites are not yet profitable, though he expects they will be by the end of the year. I'm wondering if a partnership model might work — locally owned and operated community news sites, sharing some content and revenue with the regional paper and benefiting from in-paper promotion.
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Posted 11:05 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Beware of the Wacky Self-Diagnosis
Steve Klein on health information on the Internet
Here's one of those good news/bad news things about the Internet: there's a lot of good health information out there, but be careful what you do with it. A study released by the Pew Internet & American Life project found that just a quarter of Americans who research health information online check the source and timeliness of the information. Having worked for drkoop.com and participated in the Health Internet Ethics project, I know that most of the better-known branded sites provide detailed source and timeliness information. However, half of the Pew study group rarely or never followed recommended procedures to check information quality.According to the study, 73 million Americans have gone online for health information. Among those surveyed, 17% used online health information to diagnose or treat a medical condition without a doctor. "A lot of people are going back to their doctors when they have questions or are checking with other authoritative sources," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project. "There's no evidence people are doing completely wacky self-diagnoses." The study was conducted primarily through telephone interviews with 500 individuals who commonly seek health information online.
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Posted 10:59 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Click Here to Make the Law
Andrew Stroehlein on e-democracy in the UK
For the first time ever, the UK Parliament is taking online consultation on a piece of legislation. The Joint Committee on the Draft Communications Bill is collecting public comments on the Draft Communications Bill via e-mail, and an online forum will publish the comments from June 10. E-democracy efforts have been expanding in the UK, and members of the public can now read the bill online, watch the Committee hearings in a webcast, and comment on the draft. As Julian Glover noted in yesterday's Media Guardian, pre-legislative scrutiny itself is rather novel for Parliament, so this online forum is quite a leap.It all seems quite positive, though certainly this pilot program will have some hiccups. One potential problem seems likely to arise in the moderating of the e-mailed comments. All comments will be screened and summarized before being presented to the Committee, and that gives the moderator quite a bit of power as gatekeeper.
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Posted 12:20 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Internet Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Steve Klein on the future of the Internet
When Robert Kahn, co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols (the foundation language of the Internet), talks, it's PC to listen. And just what does one of the founders of the Internet think about how it is being used and where it is going? "It's the tip of the iceberg now," says Kahn. The creative potential for the Internet is limitless, he says in an article in the Washington Post, because "the Internet is an architectural philosophy rather than a technology." But Kahn sees failures, too, one of the biggest being the untapped potential for education. "We've made almost no progress with regard to the Internet and education," he says.
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Posted 7:44 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'The Word' on Online Subscriptions
Steve Outing on report from online content summit
MarketingSherpa earlier this week ran a sold-out one-day conference in New York that I wish I'd attended: the Selling Subscriptions to Internet Content Summit. Sherpa editor Anne Holland sent out a summary of the event to her e-mail subscribers today, and it's one of the most worthwhile articles I've read this year. (It's not posted on the Web yet. If you want a copy, I suggest e-mailing Holland. Warning: she's taking a few days off. Or ping me and I'll forward you a copy.)A short weblog item can't do justice, but a few tips gleaned from Summit speakers: (1) Concentrate on renewal of existing subscribers; under 50% and you're dead. (2) Auto-renewals of e-subscriptions are great, and consumer complaints from those who do are next to nothing. (3) Free trial offers work great, but take a credit card number and require them to cancel if they don't want to be automatically charged when trial ends. (4) Content that sells best: that's unique to online medium, and that has a strong voice and personality. (5) Those with greatest paid subscriber numbers hire old-time direct marketing experts. (6) You need a sharp delineation between what's paid and what's free. And (7) online advertisers are actually delighted to pay a premium of $100-$200 CPM to reach readers who care enough to pay for a site's content.
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Posted 3:05 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Webloggers in the Audience
Steve Outing on instant conference coverage
Dave Winer makes an intriguing statement in his weblog today. The well-known software developer and weblog promoter points out that increasingly, wireless (802.11b or "wi-fi") networks are being provided at conferences (especially in the technology and Internet industries). This means that growing numbers in the typical conference audience are sitting in their seats connected to the Web, their e-mail, and instant messaging. When you add the popularity of weblogs to the mix, you get audience members (not just media people) publishing immediately to their weblogs, and vastly speeding up the process of getting information and news from conferences and events out to the rest of the world. This of course makes it easier for journalists to report from their seats, but it also gives voice to non-press members of the audience to put their spin on what they're seeing and hearing. It's another powerful example of technology changing the media landscape.
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Posted 12:22 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'i-mode' Europe: 34,000 Subcribers in Two Months
Katja Riefler on mobile content
KPN and its German subsidiary, E-Plus, just announced the first subscriber numbers for the i-mode services in Germany and the Netherlands. According to its German press release, 34,000 people have bought handsets and have signed up since the start in March (Germany) and April (Netherlands). Users in Germany can chose between 90 content offers right now. The number is growing and should reach 150 by the end of the year. By far the most popular service so far seems to be the location-assistance tools (directions, maps, hotels, etc.) from Falk.de, although its director of marketing and sales, Mark Hiller, doesn't give any more details. Some of the content services are free, for others users pay up to 2 Euro per month each. In Germany, E-Plus keeps 14% for the billing.
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Posted 11:23 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Strange Auction Bedfellows
Peter M. Zollman on eBay and Yahoo!
eBay is the category-killer when it comes to online auctions/merchandise in the U.S., but its results elsewhere have been mixed. Yahoo! still runs auctions in the U.S., but is far more successful in Japan, where it so dominates the online auction market that eBay pulled out a few months ago. So the news today that Yahoo! is dropping its auction services in Europe, and has entered into an alliance to promote eBay's European auctions, is another sign of consolidation and strange bedfellows.eBay — which has set an ambitious revenue goal of $3 billion in 2005, and expects a lot of its growth to come from international markets — says its international operations have been profitable for the last six months, and now contribute about 21% of total sales. In the U.S., eBay is showing significant growth and expanding steadily in both autos and real estate — two of the other traditional classified revenue categories. Newspapers should watch eBay with increasing concern.
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Posted 11:10 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
It's Only a Game
Andrew Stroehlein on the World Cup
While many Americans are still trying to figure out why you can't just pick up the ball with your hands, World Cup fever has hit the rest of the planet like a sharp header to the back of the net. The BBC Online is boosting its World Cup 2002 coverage with two cute features. The first is "World Cup Warrior," a rather bizarre little game blending soccer and killer robots. Personally, I don't think it's quite as good as the BBC's Winter Olympics Flash game, "Ace Powder's Mountain Mayhem," which we drew to your attention in this weblog in February, but maybe that's just my opinion. Try it for yourself. The other new World Cup feature is "Mini Monty," a "desktop commentator" who will "update you throughout the day or night with the latest from the World Cup." So something like that insanely annoying Microsoft dancing paper clip, only this one talks about football/soccer. Oh, goodie.
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Posted 6:18 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Your Idea Stinks!
Peter M. Zollman on the 10 worst Internet ideas
It wouldn't be hard to compile a list of the "worst Internet ideas" — if you had unlimited space. But L.A. Lorek of the San Antonio Express-News has compiled a list of the "10 worst Internet ideas," a much tougher assignment. How, after all, to limit it to just 10? Happily, none of the sites is a news or even a news-related site.There certainly are some interesting ones to think about: Webvan, Pets.com, Boo.com, Kozmo, and Flooze. The one that I found most intriguing I hadn't heard of previously — Digiscents, which actually got $20 million in funding (or so the story says) to attach "I-Smell" units to computers, so you could sniff as you surfed. Sounds like a pretty stinky idea, frankly; no surprise it went under.
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Posted 1:40 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Where Are the Pictures?
Steve Outing on Web photography
Chris Malcolm of FoxSports.com writes in with a question: "Video on the Web being what it is, why don't more places use readily available photos? Newspapers have photo archives up the wazoo, but so few post any kind of packages (with exceptions like WashingtonPost.com). Talk about a page-view generator." FoxSports is walking the walk with this. Malcolm points to a top sports photos page, which Malcolm says is popular with the sports sites' "rabid" audience. It's a smart move for a television website to emphasize still pictures. Video someday will be great on the Internet, but it's not today.
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Posted 1:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Messenger as a Tip Tool
Juan C. Camus on interactive radio
An interesting use of instant messenger software has been demonstrated by an early morning radio talk show in Chile, allowing listeners to use the Internet to send tips about the issues that journalists are debating on the air. The program is "Mañana sera otro día" ("Tomorrow is another day"), which has defined a user account on MSN Messenger and receives and replies to tips and messages with listeners. Matías del Río, one of the three journalists on the program and who is in charge of the Internet-connected laptop that receives the messages, says that every time a controversial issue is on the table, many users pop up with their opinions via Messenger. The same happens when Rafael Cavada, the second journalist of the team, picks a new rock song for breaks from chatting.Every time that people are invited during the broadcast to be in contact this way, two or three new users look for a place on the Messenger contact list. The problem is that it supports only 150 people, so those who don't participate are taken away.
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Posted 1:02 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Curt Schilling, Computer Geek
Steve Klein on online sports
Yes, it's true that Curt Schilling, a star pitcher on the World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks, already has eight victories and more than 100 strikeouts barely two months into the Major League Baseball season. But Schilling also has 475 hitters and 20,000 pitches on about 85 CDs that he uses on his Dell laptop, one of two computers he actively uses (he also owns a Mac G3 laptop), according to an article by David Whitford in the May issue of Business 2.0. Schilling, who is 35, has owned an Apple computer since his junior year of high school. "So I guess I've been a computer geek my whole life," he admits. Schilling says he checks his e-mail "10 times a day" and enjoys playing computer games, especially the fantasy/adventure EverQuest. "My main (character) is a (level-)49 Monk named Scythehands Voxslayer," Schilling says."I can pull up any pitch I've thrown, any count, any at-bat, any situation I want over the last nine years," says Schilling, who along with teammate Randy Johnson finished 1-2 in the Cy Young Award balloting last season (Johnson won). "Yes, we've come a long way from the old pen-and-paper charts that guys once kept to track which pitches worked and didn't work against different teams' lineups."
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Posted 10:52 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Trouble in Turkey
Andrew Stroehlein on Internet censorship
Last week, the Turkish parliament passed a new media law that would severely limit online publishing by forcing ISPs to have Web pages pre-approved by the government before going online. According to Jonathan Evans in Wired, the new law would also impose "astronomical fines on ISPs for violations as vague as 'airing pessimism.'" Reporters without Borders has strongly condemned the "repressive turn by Turkish regime." About the only hope seems to be a presidential veto, and Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer has this week strongly condemned the new law on his official website. (A very brief English summary of the president's critique was published by News International in Pakistan today.) The problem is, as News International explains, that parliament has overridden Sezer's veto many times before, so this absurdly draconian law looks set to stay. And the Turkish Internet will be effectively muted even more than it is already.
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Posted 10:18 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
For World Cup, Games Are News
Katja Riefler on interactive features
The World Cup soccer games starting May 31 bring up a lot of activity on German News sites. Bild.de, Kicker Online, Spiegel Online, Sport1.de, ZDF.de, and many others are trying to top each other with live coverage, SMS services, and — perhaps most important this year — games. Those entertaining features, some of them behind subscription walls, seem to be seen as the great "killer application" to attract users.Some of those games are quite serious and provide a lot of news and interactivity. I'm interested in whether they will be as successful as everybody foresees. That interactive applications in general could make news websites very attractive is no secret. You can find a good overview in the recent Spotlight Column from the Pew Center for Civic Journalism.
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Posted 12:49 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Librarian of Congress Vetoes Proposed Royalties Plan for Webcasts
Vin Crosbie on webcasting
Librarian of Congress James Billington yesterday vetoed a controversial plan by the U.S. Copyright Office that would require Web broadcasters to pay music companies and performers and composers a fixed amount per song per listener, rather than pay a simple percentage of broadcast revenues only to music composers as traditional radio stations do. Because the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) considers webcasts to be digital "perfect" copies and thus might threaten sales of compact discs, it requires that music companies and performers be compensated with royalties, even though they don't receive any from traditional broadcasts. The DCMA also mandates webcasting royalties be paid retroactively as far back as 1998. The recording industry initially demanded a royalty rate of 15%, but webcasters were willing to pay a rate closer to 3%, the percentage that traditional broadcasters pay.Arbitrating between the music companies and webcasters, a Copyright Office panel on February 20th eliminated percentages and instead proposed that commercial webcasters pay $0.0014 per song per listener, a rate that Webcasters called outrageous. (A webcast of 15 songs per hour to an average audience of only 1,000 listeners would owe $21 hourly, but that would amount to $459,900 retroactive to 1998.) As final arbitrator of copyrights under the DCMA, Billington had 60 days to veto the plan or else it would take effect. Yesterday, he rejected it without comment and now has 30 days to impose his own solution.
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Posted 6:57 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Broadband in the City
Steve Klein on broadband access
According to a report in Newsbytes about a study by Nielsen/NetRatings, 60% of the 20 largest U.S. cities show more than 50% growth in home broadband subscriptions over the last year. Approximately 25.2 million home users surfed the Internet via broadband connections, a 58% rise from last April. The biggest gains took place in the nation's high-population cities: New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Philadelphia. But cities like Hartford, Connecticut, recorded growth of almost 200%, and Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Orlando, Florida, all had broadband subscription increases of at least 150% over the year ending April 30.
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Posted 3:18 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
No Deep Thinking in Deep Linking Ban
Paul Grabowicz on online media
If you've been following the controversy over attempts by Belo Corp. to block "deep linking" to Dallas Morning News Web pages, you should check out the site that prompted the whole flap by linking to individual Morning News stories. BarkingDogs.org, run by a local activist trying to rid his neighborhood of bars, is having a field day with Belo's ham-handed "cease and desist" threat. And other alternative websites in the Dallas area like DallasArena.com and Dallas.org have rallied to the cause. I suspect the only thing Belo has accomplished in all this is generating sympathy — and more traffic — for these sites. There's a good lesson here for media companies on how not to confront the Web.
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Posted 2:23 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Maverick Piece of Multimedia
Jade Walker on good use of multimedia
Last week, I urged online newspapers and magazines to boost their multimedia offerings. Instead of just coding copy in HTML and FTPing the page onto the Web, I suggested that news outlets make the most of audio, video, and graphics to enlighten readers in ways words never could. Now, D Magazine has published an excellent example of multimedia. Reporter Tim Rogers butted heads with billionaire Mark Cuban after the Dallas Mavericks' owner announced his engagement to his steady girlfriend, Tiffany Stewart, on The Mark Cuban Show.
In response, Rogers decided to do an article on Stewart, which led to a scuffle of threatening proportions. During a taped telephone call, Cuban pressured the magazine to drop the story because of "personal and security reasons" (apparently forgetting his televised reading of the bans), and then threatened the reporter with bodily harm. D Magazine not only published a transcript of that call, it posted the uncensored audio version in Real Audio, Windows Media, and Quick Time. Reading the argument is interesting, hearing it is priceless.
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Posted 1:33 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The High Price of Charging for Your Archives
Norbert Specker on paid article databases
Brand in the news industry is reputation, and reputation is the result being referred to more often than other sources over many years. In the new online wave toward "paid-for archives" it is therefore worth asking: what is the price of putting stories behind walls? The most obvious is that editors of other sites stop linking to those stories because a day or a week later they turn into something else — a rather unattractive archive sales booth. On a brand-development level, this most likely results in (a) fewer pointers to that particular site, which in turn leads to (b) lower ranking within search results (e.g., Google) and (c) an overall lessened visibility under any given topic, and ultimately to (d) a devaluation of the brand/reputation. Within a 3- or 6-year perspective, the price of paid-for archives for newspapers could be scary. To see link/reputation/brand spread at work, check Blogdex.
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Posted 1:23 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Determine Your Computer Literacy
Jade Walker on computer-assisted reporting
Are you newbie online or a journalist who understands the power of the Internet? Test your Web savvy with this fun and useful treasure hunt test. Once you've determined the breadth of your computer assisted reporting knowledge, make the Power Reporting site one of your top bookmarks. It is, by far, one of the best collections of search engines and reference links I've found on the Internet.
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Posted 10:02 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Who Needs Paid Marketing?
Steve Outing on word-of-Net
M.J. Rose in her Wired News column today reports on an artist who posted eight comic strips to his website featuring cubicle workers talking about Operation Enduring Freedom (the post-September 11 U.S. military operation). He e-mailed the URL to 10 friends, who then told their friends, who then told their friends, and on and on. Seven months on, the site has seen 8 million visitors. Which just goes to show that word-of-Net, free marketing still works — when you've got outstanding or highly controversial content. You can't count on this free marketing working, but occasionally you'll hit the jackpot.
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Posted 7:10 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Solving the Local News Problem
Rich Gordon on the potential role of online
The nation's biggest regional newspapers are all trying to figure out how/whether they can cover regional, national, and international news while also giving readers "micronews" of their neighborhoods. It's interesting that two of the big newspaper companies are taking different approaches. Knight Ridder, at the Philadelphia Inquirer, wants more suburban coverage. Tribune Co., at the Los Angeles Times, is pulling back from its regional editions — at a cost in circulation.The solution should be obvious: deliver suburban news via the Web, e-mail, and/or digital download a la NewsStand or ActivePaper. This strategy may not be economically viable yet, but it's a lot closer to viable than creating multiple zoned print editions that need to be printed, sorted, and delivered to thousands of doorsteps. The Chicago Tribune, several years ago, tried this approach with its first Digital Cities product — but it was an idea ahead of its time. One paper that's taking another stab at this idea is the Tampa Tribune/TBO.com, which zones its news in many more "editions" than it publishes in print. But as far as I can tell, the community content is Web-only, with no "push" version — which definitely limits the audience.
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Posted 7:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Dow Jones' Web: 'Substantially Profitable'
Peter M. Zollman on digital publishing
Media Web operations are in the black at New York Times Digital, the Orange County Register, Star Tribune (Minneapolis), and at lots of other places. Now comes Dow Jones — where Scott Schulman, president of the Consumer Electronic Publishing Unit, told Rafat Ali of Silicon Alley Reporter last week that the unit, which includes the Wall Street Journal Online, Barron's Online, CareerJournal, OpinionJournal, StartupJournal, and CollegeJournal, and consumer content licensing businesses, is "substantially profitable," depending on how you count.Says Schulman: "If you look across Dow Jones, we have substantial revenues from activities you would consider digital, but are included in other business units. ... If you took all of these together, they would add up to sizable revenues, and we would be substantially profitable right now, much more so than some of our peers. Instead, we have focused on a successful business model for our website, but the downside is that it makes the apples-to-apples comparison to some of these other competitors a lot more difficult."
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Posted 6:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Knight Ridder Kudos
Rich Gordon on content management systems
Knight Ridder Digital has taken a fair amount of criticism — in this weblog among other places — for the consequences of its new content management system (CMS) and standardized site design for its Real Cities network. But in the context of Steve Outing's item from Friday about long URLs, it's worth pointing out that Knight Ridder's system delivers simple, clean URLs. Here's an example. As long as I'm on the subject of CMSs, I think it's worth drawing a distinction between content-management tools and the business decisions made in the process of implementing them. For instance, in Knight Ridder's case, the decision to require an identical site template across all sites, and the decision not to provide URL redirects for pages from the old site structure. Content management systems, in and of themselves, don't require long URLs, or what has been called "cookie cutter design," or broken links after implementation. These consequences are the result of organizational decisions and priorities.(Disclosure: I used to work for Knight Ridder as the site leader in Miami — before the new CMS was put into place.)
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Posted 12:50 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
$2.50 Per Story: A Dumb Price
Steve Outing on NYT stories for sale on Yahoo!
As the result of a recent deal between Yahoo! and the New York Times, when you do a news search on Yahoo!, included in the results now are recently archived Times articles — which will cost you $2.50 to view (for articles more than seven days old). The word that pops to mind here is DUMB — as in this is a bone-headed strategy from two otherwise smart companies. I've long contended that $2-$3, the typical price that newspapers charge for a Web download of an archive story, is way too high for the Web consumer. Expecting Yahoo! users to pay $2.50 for a single story is just crazy. First, Yahoo! attracts a huge, broad consumer audience, not a business audience that might be willing to cough up that much money for a single article. Second, the offer to pay for each article includes only the headline and first sentence — not nearly enough to determine if you really want to pay that much.Charging for archived articles is fine. But the price should be consumer-friendly: 25 cents strikes me as appropriate for a Yahoo! audience. Give the user a better clue about the content prior to purchase. And offer alternative pricing, such as a set-rate day or weeklong pass for multiple downloads. News archive prices on the Web must come down. The latest Yahoo!-NYT pricing is silly and self-defeating.
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Posted 12:20 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
FT.com Makes the Case for Web-Print Integration
Steve Outing on business news publisher's latest moves
The website of the Financial Times debuted a major redesign on Sunday, which coincided with its decision to start charging for some premium content channels. FT.com editor Chrystia Freeland explains the redesign and subscription strategy. She also notes some interesting factoids: two-thirds of the FT's print readers also use the website; the other third — 1.3 million online-only users — are not yet print subscribers, but represent potential new customers either as paid online, print, or online/print subscribers. You can tell from Freeland's memo to readers that the FT "gets it" about the value of integrating print and online operations and strategy. Likewise, its executives "get it" about paid online content; they're going for the paid model, but retaining a free service that's more than just a tease for subscription content.
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