How a Thanksgiving recipe that tastes better than being thin relates to newspapers
22 November 2010 · By Blaine Sundrud
Thanksgiving is upon us, which for the United States means a massive feast designed to put a crimp in your belt size. Thanksgiving is my holiday.
Folks who have been to my house know that cooking the big holiday meal is something I live for. “Blaine's Famous Mashed Potatoes,” have been at the heart of our Thanksgivings. While the recipe leaves the folks at WeightWatchers reeling at the salad bars, my older daughter has declared that it “tastes better than being thin.”
Now, if you were hoping for a cooking column, you will have to wait to the end to actually get my elusive recipe. As I was getting ready to begin my culinary adventure, I was reminded that some things are better than being thin. As an industry, we have been on a drive to “get thin.” We've cut costs and reduced staffs everywhere we could. The need was clear but in some cases, we may have taken the need to reduce to unhealthy levels.
Here are three special ingredients I believe we should be adding to the newspaper success recipe to keep readers from pushing away from the table.
...[more]Newspapers can learn lessons in relevance from drive-ins and MadMen
11 October 2010 · By Steve Nilan
There's a drive-in movie theatre near where I live in northern California. It's the classic outdoor theatre where we took our now college-age kids when they were too young and fidgety for the cineplex.
I'm not a nostalgic person, but the drive-in evokes memories of an era that was simple and quaint. It was a cheap family night out. Kids were free. You sat in the comfort of your own car and could bring your own snacks. In the “modern” version you could even listen to the movie over your own radio.
It's all a nice memory, but we haven't been back to the drive-in for nearly two decades.
A sign caught my eye when I drove by the old Sacramento 6 Drive-In recently. On the back of one of their huge outdoor screens, they had hung a banner that simply said: “Still Open.” The message was sad and seemed more than a little desperate. It was the polar opposite of “Grand Opening!” and a lot closer to announcing “Contrary to popular belief, we are not quite out of business!”
Drive-ins long ago lost their relevance and are the media equivalent of a rock-and-roll nostalgia act. If you're like me, when you see that someone like Chubby Checker is coming to your town, your first thought is, “Wow, is he still alive?” (For the record, the answer is “yes” and Chubby is twisting all over North America right now.)
...[more]Transforming and thriving: why our most loyal customers want us to change
29 August 2010 · By Don Oldham
“What is going to happen to newspapers?” A group of friends asked this question as we attended a Shakespeare festival together. My friends would mostly qualify as senior citizens from a generation of newspaper readers. They included the chairman of the Board of Education, a retired municipal bonds expert and university professor, a stockbroker, a homemaker who now reads newspapers regularly since her children have left the nest, and others — all of whom have been newspaper readers for most of their lives. They asked me the question because I'm a former newspaper publisher and the CEO of a newspaper software company.
The question came up because they recognized that their own newspaper reading habits have changed. With one exception, they have moved online to get some of their news. They were also fully aware that newspapers are in trouble. The connection between their changing patterns and the state of the industry was not lost on anyone.
...[more]Why ESPN is the worldwide leader in delivering to its audience
15 August 2010 · By Michael Messerly
Recently I had the opportunity to attend the 2010 ESPYs (in Los Angeles) as presented by the Disney-owned sports institution ESPN. Like most everything it does, ESPN spares little to no expense in putting on the biggest show possible with events tied to its name.
Better than anyone else, ESPN has a greater understanding not just of its audience, but its audience expectations. ESPN takes its brand and its reputation deadly seriously.
While it is easy to get up for the big events such as the ESPYs or the ESPN created X Games, however, ESPN is at the top of its game and has steadily turned back all competitors because it plays everything up big, just like its audience has come to expect.
But this goes beyond ESPN’s intimate knowledge of its audience; ESPN remains consistent in its success because of the passion and energy its employees bring to the network. The ESPN talent doesn’t just talk shop like everyone else, it is like sitting in on peace negotiations. These people are intense! The little hoop shoot machine in the EPSN Zone outside of the Nokia Theater was getting worked like it was being attacked by teen boys shot up high as a kite on Mountain Dew … it was actually suit wearing ESPN execs.
...[more]Up in the air with only an iPad: what happens when a Road Warrior leaves his laptop behind?
23 July 2010 · By Steve Nilan
Let me establish my road cred. There isn't any official “Road Warrior” certification, but if there were I believe I would qualify. I've flown more than a million miles over the years and belong to every hotel, airline and rental car reward program known to man. My million miles pale in comparison to the 10 million that George Clooney's character claimed in Up in the Air.
To be clear, I'm no George Clooney — check my blogger's mug shot for proof — but an upgrade to first class remains one of life's great joys. Last year I earned quasi-Clooney status while flying 100,000 miles for DTI. My trusty sidekicks were my 3-year old HP laptop and 3G iPhone. They are well-behaved travel companions. That's true other than my constant worrying about battery life plus the agonizing Windows start-up and shutdown times. The 6.5-pound laptop was also a bit heavy — even though I once traveled the world with a 16-pound Macintosh Portable complete with carrying case and 60-minute battery life! I had no compelling reason to change.
Then along came the iPad.
...[more]How to enrage 10 million subscribers in 150 words or less
11 July 2010 · By Blaine Sundrud
Let me begin by stating the obvious: my name is Blaine Sundrud (notice the byline above). Also, to demonstrate that I am not afraid to tell you who I am, allow me to say that I work for Digital Technology International. My phone number is +1 801 853-5000. I am a consultant for the news industry. For fun, I do woodturning. I play World of Warcraft.
I am one of over 11 million people worldwide who subscribe to be part of the World of Warcraft's virtual community. For those of you who do not know Warcraft, it is an online world where subscribers create fantasy characters and interact through these avatars with other people in real time throughout the world. For the time that I am playing in that world, I am not Blaine Sundrud, newspaper consultant; I am Golis, a Dwarven Warrior with a penchant for large axes.
Even when I am not actively playing, Blizzard, the company which owns Warcraft, provides an excellent community portal that I (and millions of others) can go to discuss events in the world (both the real one as well as the fantasy one). The amount of community involvement at the Warcraft Forums would have many audience managers at newsgroups around the world salivating.
...[more]Bylines and bottom lines: what newsrooms can learn from Yahoo
25 June 2010 · By Michael Messerly
Although I don’t get invited to as many journalism class discussions as I used to, I don’t take any offense. Usually, I was the one guilty of offending.
Often I would challenge these budding journalists to think of their work in a much different way than they were taught in college. I would simply ask each of them to take stock in the beat or work they were doing for a newspaper. The question they needed or need to ask themselves is, “Is what I’m doing adding or detracting from the bottom line of my newspaper?” If the answer is negative, I would tell the students to demand a new beat from their editor because they would be involved in the next reduction in force.
Needless to say, the journalism school professor or dean never had an appreciation for such advice ... but what they can’t deny is that I’m correct.
Yahoo, to its credit, not only believes in this philosophy, it puts it into action. As highlighted in Advertising Age online by Yahoo’s Jimmy Pitaro, the company’s top chief in its media division, “Yahoo measures each (Yahoo) writer’s page view performance on a quarter-to-quarter basis.”
...[more]Content, the killer iPad app
31 May 2010 · By Richard Hall
I was at the recent INMA Tablet Summit in Oxford. It was a sell-out, an illustration of the buzz that the latest “must-have” device from Apple, the iPad, is generating in the news business.
First, step back a while. It is not the telephone that makes the iPhone so popular, it is the content — the abundance of low cost (or free) apps. The touch screen user interface is pretty sexy too, as is the consistency in the user experience. The same success is likely to occur with the iPad if these lessons are learned.
The iPad may end up being the device that does not have the best connectivity, nor be the lightest, or have the most battery power — but it will be the content and its design that is likely to set it apart.
At the conference, Juan Antonio Giner, founder and president of Innovation Media Consulting, described the iPad as a true integrator of all forms of media, and that this gave news organisations the ability to combine the audio of radio and the video of TV with the storytelling, comment and analysis of the newspaper. However many features it had, it would not be a tablet PC that would save the newspaper; it would be excellent journalism, he said.
...[more]Why we fight: Karl Schnibbe and newspapers
14 May 2010 · By Blaine Sundrud
Karl Schnibbe, age 86, passed away this week.
He is the reason I believe in publishing today.
Schnibbe was 17 years old in Nazi Germany when he and his two friends, Helmuth Heubner and Rudolf Wobbe, decided that the German people must be told about the terrible things the Nazis were doing to their Fatherland. The three companions listened to clandestine BBC radio broadcasts and were horrified to learn what their government was doing without telling the German citizens. Fear was everywhere and people disappeared and were never heard from again.
Heubner convinced Schnibbe and Wobbe to follow him on an audacious plan where they would transcribe the British broadcasts and put them into leaflets telling the people what was happening. They snuck into their church building and used the copy machines to publish thousands of copies and distributed them at night in Hamburg. They put their lives on the line for one goal: to publish the truth.
...[more]Live from New York: events as the new marketing platform
10 May 2010 · By Steve Nilan
Forget tablets. “Live” is the hot new platform!
The value of live events as a powerful marketing platform was an unexpected theme throughout the INMA World Congress in New York.
We heard success stories from Sweden to India with events ranging from a Bruce Springsteen concert, underground city tours to a major cricket tournament. The big takeaway was that newspaper-driven live events expand brand awareness, deepen reader loyalty and drive new revenue.
I love my new iPad, but it has a ways to go to match those metrics. Here are three "Live from New York" examples:
...[more]
