{"id":27826,"date":"2011-12-24T06:00:39","date_gmt":"2011-12-24T05:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/?p=27826"},"modified":"2011-12-24T06:00:39","modified_gmt":"2011-12-24T05:00:39","slug":"meglio-digital-only-che-digital-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pasteris.it\/blog\/2011\/12\/24\/meglio-digital-only-che-digital-first\/","title":{"rendered":"Meglio digital only che digital first"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Steve Buttry<\/a><\/p>\n

John Paton, CEO of Digital First Media (and Journal Register Co. and MediaNews Group) explained the Digital First business approach better than I would (which is good, since he\u2019s the CEO) in his June address to the International Newsroom Summit in Zurich: How the Crowd Saved Our Company<\/a>. His recent post on news media as medium and messenger<\/a> elaborates, including the slide below. His September post announcing the formation of Digital First<\/a> discussed some of the results of the approach so far (and we\u2019re just getting started).<\/p>\n

Peter Kirwan\u2019s analysis of the Digital First approach<\/a> also provides a good explanation. Ken Doctor\u2019s post The newsonomics of ComboCo<\/a> gave some insight on our plans (though much of it was speculative, so you might not see everything he mentioned).<\/p>\n

Digital First entails experimentation with new business approaches as well as new journalism tools. Subscriptions or meters (the preferred terminology of paywall advocates) hardly count as experimentation, because they have been tried so often and so many ways, with different results. Jeff Jarvis<\/a> has an intriguing idea, though, with his suggestion of a reverse pay meter<\/a>. Jeff rightly says his proposal can\u2019t work, because it relies on persuading people to pay. But I think some of the principles might work to encourage engagement in a model where the rewards come from sponsors, rather than from persuading users to subscribe.<\/p>\n

The reverse pay meter reminds me a bit of the membership approach encouraged by Steve Outing<\/a>. I\u2019d like to explore a mashup of Steve\u2019s membership idea with some of Jeff\u2019s ideas for rewarding member participation.<\/p>\n

You can expect Digital First to make some money on Facebook<\/a> (and other social media) as Alan Mutter<\/a> suggested that publishers should do.<\/p>\n

Dan Conover has some really insightful ideas for how a Semantic Content Management System<\/a> and structuring content as data<\/a> could create value in the information journalists gather.<\/p>\n

Of course, I\u2019ve written a fair amount on possible ways for a Digital First business to succeed, too:<\/p>\n