My newsstand guy is quitting, victim of digital media

PAMPLONA, Spain — For the past five years I have been buying my newspapers on the weekend at a neighborhood newsstand. The owner and I, Jesus Erro, got to be casual friends, and we talked about the politics and culture of our respective countries. He is a big reader.     This weekend, I found […]

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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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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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Top reason globally for paying for news? Mobile access

Richard Fletcher of the Reuters Institute has produced an in-depth analysis of the top reasons people around the world gave for paying for news online. The Digital News Report 2017 included interviews of more than 70,000 adults in 36 countries. Fletcher observed that the most common reasons people gave for paying were they wanted access on […]

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