Guiding media innovators toward solutions, around the world
Free-spending startups can die in one of two ways: either cancer or heart attack In a recent newsletter, I talked about how misinterpreting audience metrics can mislead digital news publishers into developing ineffective business models. Another common mistake made by digital media entrepreneurs can have catastrophic consequences: it’s to lose track of cash flow and […]
Read More »
The help is welcome, but the donor can pull the plug at any time A common stuggle for digital news startups is that they depend on grants to fund operations or to fund special projects chosen by the donor organization. So they suffer the uncertainty of whether they can pay their staff and continue providing […]
Read More »
Measuring the wrong thing or using the wrong scale is a formula for failure Numbers don’t lie, but people do. And worst of all, people lie to themselves about what numbers mean. The Big Lie in media metrics for years was the Biggest Number. Media publishers got away with touting their total monthly page views […]
Read More »
Their cellphone apps ping, buzz, or flash dozens of notifications every hour Note to readers: Two years ago I asked my second-year students in Media Economics at the University of Navarra to do an analysis of their media expenditures and usage. This post is based on that survey. First, I asked them to estimate their […]
Read More »Publisher’s note: Four years ago, I was asked to identify some trends shaping digital journalism. The two trends I singled out have only accelerated, and the 10 resulting paradigms haven’t changed either. The media I mentioned as case studies are still going strong. Trend No. 1. Publishers are pivoting toward users and away from advertisers […]
Read More »
You have to learn new technologies to reach your audiences where they gather A friend of mine, Loren Feldman, made a career change a few years ago from magazine editor to digital media entrepreneur. He has been developing an ambitious enterprise that combines a daily email newsletter and a weekly podcast about small business owners […]
Read More »
This format taps into the power of the human voice: the ‘Gutenberg Parenthesis’ Why write about “reasons for optimism” when so much is going wrong in our politics, economy, and environment? Optimism gives us confidence we can make things better. As I like to say, it’s another day of opportunity. Editor’s note: this article was […]
Read More »