How publishers can overcome loss of Facebook traffic

Now that Facebook has made clear that it will not be promoting journalism to its users, all of the publishers who were getting much of their traffic there should look elsewhere. (Frederic Filloux of Monday Note has one of the best analyses of the company’s announcement.) What now? Well, there are several tactics and strategies […]

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2018: Credibility will be the new currency for journalism

An organization I work with that promotes development of independent media in Latin America, SembraMedia.org, recently asked me to make some predictions for 2018.

I really had just one: Credibility will be the new currency of journalism in 2018 and the years to come.  
But to explain, here are that prediction’s corollaries:

 1. Independent media–those based […]

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Think small: the new metrics of engagement for news

Forget about the big numbers of total page views per month or unique users per month. Fans are engaged and willing to give their time and money. Those numbers are misleading and meaningless. They had meaning only in the days when the media business depended on mass media, massive audiences, and products aimed at the […]

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The audiences are in charge: are publishers listening?

Recently I was invited to give a lecture at the University of Malaga–“The audiences are in charge: Are publishers listening?” The audience had students in their doctoral, master’s and bachelor’s programs, as well as a number of faculty. Below is a summary of the presentation. 1. The marriage of convenience between advertising and journalism is […]

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Chasing clicks isn’t bringing in readers or money

Some observations by media economics expert Robert Picard’s observations about the challenges of media today, from an interview done by the University of Navarra Faculty of Communication: Media companies need to develop revenue from many more sources than they did in the past. Media companies are diluting the quality of their product by chasing reader […]

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Picard to publishers: get cozy with readers, users

Robert Picard speaking to class at University of Navarra. Robert G. Picard is one of the founding fathers of the academic discipline known as media economics. The field has attracted more attention lately as news outlets, ravaged by digital competitors, have gutted their reporting staffs and slashed public-service coverage. Policy makers, media executives, investors, and […]

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Publishers look beyond Facebook, Google for revenues

A deal with the devil. A new study by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) confirms what I have suspected for a long time: when publishers rely on Facebook for distribution, they are making a deal with the devil. “Reality Check: Making Money with Facebook” was based on a survey of an “expert […]

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