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James O’Shea’s Memo And Email After Being Fired From The L.A. Times 2008-01-23 14:25:45 After being fired from his post as the editor of the L.A. Times (the 2nd editor to be fired in the past 15 months), James O’Shea wrote a memo and an email that was distributed internally among the paper. It’s a blistering attack on the industry and summarizes poignantly the fatally flawed thinking that is decimating the industry. But it also articulates some thoughtful, well-reasoned, and efficacious strategies for saving daily newspapers. The memo and email comes from a guy that was a huge Tribune supporter just a short while ago and, for that reason, was sent to clean up the mess in L.A. (By the way, as a side note and another small example of why big media is falling behind, I looked for the original memo/email on 3 major daily web sites that were covering this story but didn’t include a link to or a full copy of the memo/email itself. I finally found it on the Internation Herald Tribune site. Why wouldn’t newspapers take advantage of the unlimited space avai ...

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Buy ‘Em 2008-01-23 13:03:31 The New York Times and a group of venture/private equity firms, including Polaris Venture Partners, True Ventures, and Radar have invested $29.5 million in Automattic, the commercial arm of the popular blog platform WordPress. The New York Times’ stake is reportedly the smallest in this new round, and the other 3 firms invested $1.1 million 2 years ago. The deal makes good sense for multiple reasons, and it’s another example of why the New York Times, The Washington Post (see related stories here and here), the Wall Street Journal, and Scripps will certainly be among the small, small number of daily newspaper publishers that survive the annihilation taking place in their industry. Tags: Automattic, WordPress, Blog Platforms, Publishing Companies Diversifying, New York Times, NYT Invests in Automattic, Blogs Becoming Traditional Media, Washington Post, Scripps, the Wall Street Journal, Some Dailies Will Survive Share This ...

Bigfoot Caught Roaming Around Mars! 2008-01-23 10:01:15 Ever since watching Leonard Nimoy’s ‘In Search Of‘ as a kid, I’ve casually followed but been thoroughly entertained by stories related to the topics he explored on the show; Bigfoot, aliens, UFOs, Easter Island, the Loch Ness monster, etc. So I cracked up this morning when I saw the story and photos purporting to show that bigfoot is roaming around mars. Combining two of these types of stories (aliens & bigfoot) into one - how can it get any better than that? It’s like a drunk-driving Mel Gibson crashing his car into a drunk-driving Lindsay Lohan. Priceless! Tags: Leonard Nimoy, In Search Of, Great TV Shows From the 70’s, Bigfoot, Bigfoot on Mars, Easter Island, UFOs, Freaky Aliens, Lindsay Lohan, Mel Gibson, Celebrities That Drink & Drive, Everyone Loves the National Enquirer Share This ...

Orange County Register Eliminates Its Business Section 2008-01-22 17:49:26 In another sign of the implosion of the daily newspaper industry, the Orange County Register announced that it was folding its business section into the main section of the daily paper. This basically means that the business-related content will be so weak and anemic that it cannot support its own section. In other words, the daily is eliminating its business news coverage altogether. “Shifting our business coverage into News is driven by a need to be more efficient in the type of news we publish in our newspaper versus online,” said Terry Horne, Register president and publisher. It’s obvious but worth emphasizing that ‘more efficient’ means reducing costs by, in this case, removing a meaningful chunk of local content and making the paper less worthwhile to read than it likely already is. Cutting out stock tables makes all the sense in the world - when was the last time anyone looked up a stock price in the paper? But eliminating the entire business sectio ...

The Best Recruitment Ad Campaign of 2008 2008-01-21 11:55:01 Google Blogoscoped has a great post today about Google’s most recent recruitment advertising campaign currently being run in Seattle. Google wrapped a bus with one of their infamous internal brainstorming whiteboards (real or fake) and included on it a URL that links to a Google recruiting page for their Seattle office. Brilliant. Tags: Google, Google Recruiting, Jobs at Google, Effective Recruitment Advertising, Innovative Recruitment Advertising, Awesome Recruiting Campaigns, How To Attract People To Your Company, Winning the War for Talent, Great Ad Campaigns, Creative Marketing, Help-Wanted Advertising, Unusual Recruiting Techniques, Unusual Recruiting, Effective Recruiting Techniques, Employment Branding, Effective Employment Branding, Good Employment Branding, Great Employment Branding, How to Perpetuate An Employment Brand Share This ...

CareerBuilder Launches Personified; Print Classifieds Are Not Dead (Just Those in the Dailies) 2008-01-17 10:53:43 John Sumser has written an interesting post about Personified, apparently a new recruitment ad agency started by CareerBuilder. I had not heard of it and am thankful to have heard about it through John’s blog (another good reason everyone should be reading blogs about their industry). The following are my comments to John that I posted on his blog (I have no idea if posting comments and then also posting the comments on your own blog is frowned upon or not but…) John - I agree with you that the potential conflict for an agency that owns some of the media channels it sells ads on is a serious one. But I also think that if the relationship is made clear and is totally transparent, then it shouldn’t be an issue and clients or prospects can decide for themselves how much of a problem it poses. The only issue that I have with your post is the statement that ‘classified advertising is all but dead in print form.’ While it is true that daily newspapers are deteriorating bad ...

Apple TV Was Jobs’ Big Splash Yesterday at MacWorld 2008-01-16 10:10:02 Despite what some critics are sure to be saying today about the lack of a big announcement from Steve Jobs at MacWorld, there was some big news. First, the improvements to the iPhone are unbelievable. I’ve already tested the Google Maps stuff and the ability to modify the phone’s homepage icons, etc. With these small but meaningful improvements, a phenomenal product has become even that much better. The release of 3rd party modifications later this year will unleash a whole new wave of innovation. But the big news yesterday, even considering the new ultra-thin laptop, was the Apple TV. With newly announced movie rentals from iTunes and tweaks to Apple TV that make it possible to connect a TV directly to the web without a computer, there is no doubt that Apple TV will be THE device that finally brings the web into the living room and onto the TV. (I think it already was to some extent, but the need for a computer somewhere in the equation did make it slightly cumbersome). S ... Apple

Startling HR Stat Of The Week 2008-01-15 11:34:23 Novations, a business performance consulting company, just released a study on what companies are doing to capture the knowledge that will be lost as baby boomers retire in increasing numbers in the years ahead. Shockingly, the study found that 73% have no knowledge transfer process in place, and an additional 23% have only an informal knowledge transfer process in place. So only 4% of the companies surveyed had a formal knowledge transfer process in place. Of the 73% of companies without a process currently in place, 44% have no plans for doing anything to capture the knowledge that will be lost as boomers retire. This is either a sign that companies are woefully underprepared for the tectonic shifts that will be occurring in the U.S. workforce in the coming years or a sad indictment of the lack of knowledge that boomers possess. Tags: Retiring Baby Boomers, Knowledge Transfer, Boomers, Baby Boomers, How Will Companies Stay Competitive Share This ...

Even Simpsons Characters Are Taunting Daily Newspapers 2008-01-14 13:56:44 Lest one thinks my prediction about a major metro market in the U.S. losing its daily newspaper sometime in 2008 is overly pessimistic or an unfair slam against the daily newspaper industry, I would suggest reading the scenario painted by Newsosaur Alan Mutter in his most recent post ‘Back to the Chopping Block.’ After reading Mutter’s solid analysis of what it will take for most dailies to keep themselves afloat in the next year or two, I have come to the conclusion that my dire prediction was not grim enough. While the picture is bleak enough on the deteriorating fundamentals themselves, including an ever-weakening value proposition combined with continuous price increases, adding into the mix a recession and a drop in the help-wanted index, the sub-prime meltdown, and an explosion in online traffic growth fueled by the writer’s strike, virtually assures that the complete obliteration of most dailies is going to occur sooner than most are anticipating. Even ch ...

Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) 2008-01-11 12:42:08 Tags: Incredible Human Achievement, Mountain Climbing, Sir Edmund Hillary, The Hillary Step, Mt. Everest, Mount Everest, Tenzing Norgay, Nepal Share This ...

The Results Are In And…….I Was Just Honored To Have Been Nominated 2008-01-11 12:07:24 Earlier this week, Jason Davis announced the winners for the best recruiting blogs of 2007 on Recruitingblogs.com. While I was decimated by the news that I had finished 2nd in my category (best sourcing blog) behind CyberSleuthing, I was amazed that I finished 4th out of 52 recruiting blogs nominated in the category for best overall recruiting blog on the web. It was a fun deal to be part of, and Jason and ZoomInfo should be applauded for organizing and sponsoring it. On a somewhat related note, I saw that Matt Martone, a Media Sales Strategy guy for Yahoo and author of an excellent blog Job|Search Marketing, posted his RSS subscriber stats. I was encouraged that he too has found it challenging to increase his RSS subscribers. This is the chart of my RSS subscribers: While I am pleased with the growth in 2007, my goal is to raise the number substantially in 2007. So if you read this blog on any kind of a regular basis, please subscribe to the RSS feed in your RSS readers. If you read ...

2008 Daily Newspaper Death Toll: 2 2008-01-08 10:20:25 In what I predict will be among the most significant media trends in 2008 (see 2008 predictions here), the struggles of the daily newspaper industry in the U.S. are going to deepen considerably and dailies will, in increasing numbers, abandon their printed format and opt for an online-only delivery service, migrate from a daily paper to a weekly paper, or shut down entirely. While this will be seen most predominantly in smaller communities and those metro markets with more than one daily newspaper, things will get increasingly dire as the year progresses, culminating ultimately in a large metro market losing its sole daily paper altogether. This week, the Ocean County Observer, a 150 year-old daily serving Toms River, New Jersey and the surrounding area, announced that it would be switching from a daily to a weekly publication. It’s the second such announcement already this year (I’m counting the Cincinnati Post announcement as a 2008 event). The New Jersey newspaper, owned ...

Monster Acquires Vertical Site Developer Affinity Labs 2008-01-04 12:29:00 Monster paid $61 million in cash for San Francisco-based Affinity Labs, a company that develops vertical-specific online communities such as policelink.com and nursinglink.com. Affinity Labs was founded by Christopher Michel, who had also founded military.com which Monster acquired in 2004. The acquisition would appear to deliver a decent return for Mayfield and Trinity Ventures who had invested less $10 million in the company in December of 2006. Military.com was acquired for $39 million after having raised $31 million in venture financing. The industry specific online communities or portals developed by Affinity Labs contain user-generated content, videos, forums, training materials, career information, job listings, and social networking features. I have no idea how popular the sites are, for either users or advertisers, but the idea itself is a solid one and the business model of efficiently developing these portals based on a standard template seems to make a lot of sense. The rea ...

Cincinnati Post Shuts Down Its Presses; Prediction #1 Almost Comes True Before Year Even Starts 2008-01-03 15:02:19 On New Year’s eve, I wrote a post of my predictions for the year. The last prediction was that by the end of 2008, at least one major metro market in the U.S. would lose its daily newspaper altogether. I should have elaborated slightly to better define the parameters I envisioned, but I elected to keep it somewhat vague to improve my chances of being accurate. Had I included those parameters, I would have stated that the metro market needed to be in the top 100, that the market was served primarily by a single daily newspaper, and that the paper would stop printing but could continue to exist in an online-only format. Before the day was even over, my prediction almost came true when the Cincinnati Post announced that it was printing its last edition and moving to an online only format - kypost.com. While this is a fairly significant event in the ongoing demise of the daily newspaper industry, it does not qualify as fulfilling my prediction. The Cincinnati Post, a 126 year-old pap ...

Predictions For 2008 2007-12-31 10:37:51 10. The writers’ strike ends in favor of the writers once the studios recognize that people are watching Funny or Die (Will Ferrell’s partnership with Sequoia Capital), YouTube, and almost anything on the web rather Biggest Loser 13, The Bachelor in Helsinki, or The Next Great American Band 3. 9. Apple’s stock hits $265 per share and, despite the initial lackluster response (which I don’t understand and completely disagree with), Apple TV joins the list of Apple’s blockbuster products. 8. MinnPost is deemed a success and serves as a very solid model for other communities, other journalists who have been laid off by daily newspapers, and the future of local journalism in general. 7. The Employment Guide and Monster continue to run job scam ads throughout the entire year because they desperately need the revenue to prop up their deteriorating businesses. 6. John McCain is elected President in November. (I am making this prediction despite the fact that I am ...