Archive for December 2009
Weekly Diaspora: Unemployment Feeding Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
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By Nezua, Media Consortium Blogger
The nation’s 10% unemployment rate is feeding anti-immigrant sentiment, as Marcelo Ballvé reports for New America Media. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) critiqued President Barack Obama’s recent jobs summit as “fatally flawed” because President Obama did not discuss wresting millions of jobs away from undocumented families. Smith’s argument is flawed.
A “known Capitol Hill immigration hardliner,” Smith asks us to assume that for every job the U.S. could theoretically “take back” from an undocumented worker, an eager U.S. citizen would flock to fill it. But, as Ballvé reports, “several studies suggest that among Americans and legal residents, it’s mainly those lacking a high school diploma who are competing directly with undocumented immigrants for jobs (and by most estimates, that’s less than one out of every 10 U.S. workers).” (more…)
Getting More From Advertising
As it turns out, online advertising has not been enough to cover the cost structure of traditional news gathering, amounting to just one tenth of newspapers’ overall ad revenue, and not growing fast enough to replace losses in print advertising.
In the long run, ads alone may be insufficient to sustain online journalism. The average CPM price (cost per thousands) dropped in half from 2007 to 2008 to just 26 cents for newspapers’ online ads, an average that includes both high-priced display ads as well as low-end text ads. Although many publishers (including Media Consortium members) earned six to eight times that amount on average, the trend is still declining. While niche-targeted ads can command a higher price, the real problem is that 30 to 50% of ad impressions often go unsold on websites. Publishers simply have too much advertising real estate on their sites to fill at reasonable prices. To make matters worse, local advertising is not necessarily going online. In early 2009, Business Week reported a big slowdown in local online advertising that they do not expect to rebound when the economy recovers. (more…)
Micropayment and Micro-fundraising from Users
Since the 1990s, people such as Nicholas Negroponte of MIT’s Media Lab and Jakob Nielsen, a leading web usability consultant have predicted the rise of micropayments (small online transactions by users). Micropayments for news content have also had skeptics, including the Project for Excellence in Journalism and Clay Shirky, who said, “Micropayments work only where the provider can avoid competitive business models.”
Some detractors have argued that users do not like micropayments because they are too inconvenient and a big psychological gap exists between free and “almost free.”Over the past year, online and iPhone applications have begun to increase users’ familiarity with micropayments. Also, the gaming world has had success with in-game micropayments, which may indicate the potential of motivations other than convenience—namely, reputation. Potentially, if micropayments were linked to other motivations such as reputation, they might become more valuable for users and publishers alike. For example, a “thumbs up” vote for a story tied to a small user cost could increase the quality of ratings. (more…)
The Mulch: 10 Million Strong, and Growing
By Alison Hamm, Media Consortium Blogger
It’s one of the largest petitions in history—and the biggest climate-related petition ever delivered. Organized by the TckTckTck campaign, 10 million people called for leaders to sign a fair, ambitious, and legally binding climate treaty at the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (Cop15).
After the opening press conference on Monday, young people from around the globe handed the petition to Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations agency organizing Cop15, and Connie Hedegaard, Danish Climate Minister and President of Cop15. More than 220 leading civil society organizations from environmental, development, labor, and health fields came together for the campaign. (more…)
Weekly Pulse: Profits, Premiums and Potassium
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
Ashley Ellis weighed just 87 pounds when she reported to the Northwest State Correctional Facility in Vermont to serve a 30-day sentence for “careless and negligent operation of a motor vehicle.” Two days later, she was dead.
As Terry J. Allen reports for In These Times, Ashley suffered from severe anorexia and bulimia. She died because the understaffed, profit-driven prison health service contractor, Prison Health Services (PHS), failed to give her potassium supplements that kept her heart beating normally. Investigators later learned that staffers nicknamed Ashley “Potassium Girl” because she begged so frantically for her medicine. (more…)
Emerging Revenue Models
Regardless of making running a lean-and-mean organization, media outlets still need to find new ways to generate revenue. Philanthropy has been the most prevalent model for many independent media organizations, although this source of revenue alone is often insufficient. Other possible models include creating additional channels of distribution, combining free and premium content, tapping user subsidies, utilizing news as a “loss leader” to generate funds and sharing revenue with content producers. Increasingly, for-profit and non-profit publishers alike will grow strongest with a greater mix of these revenue streams. (more…)
Weekly Audit: Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger
President Barack Obama invited leading economic thinkers to a job creation summit on Thursday to help combat the worst unemployment crisis in decades. The stakes couldn’t be higher: If Obama can’t build momentum for robust legislation that will create jobs, the unemployment rate could remain in double-digits all the way through 2011.
In Salon, Andrew Leonard highlights some positive comments Obama made at the jobs summit. In an exchange with The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner, Obama said that the long-term budget deficit is an issue, but that the best way to reduce that deficit is to spur economic growth. When the economy is growing, the same tax rates reap greater returns for the government. (more…)
Emerging Operation Models and Cost Structures
While many prophets of the new era preach about the great potential of online technology for creating media more efficiently, original investigative reporting still takes time, resources and a little shoe leather to do well. “What’s worth saving, as a critical function, is investigative journalism. We need someone, many someones, to do long, deep, boring research, for stories that may not even pan out,” Clay Shirky wrote in a blog post.
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The Mulch: What’s at Stake in Copenhagen?
By Alison Hamm, Media Consortium Blogger
Over 15,000 people from 192 countries began to work towards an international climate deal today in Copenhagen. These discussions are part of the largest and most important United Nations climate change summit in history. After two years of contentious negotiations, heads of states are convening through Dec. 18 to curb greenhouse gases, encourage the development of clean energy, and transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to help developing nations curb climate change.
It’s going to be a lively 11 days. Jacob Wheeler has already posted video (below) of a demonstration to save the climate for In These Times‘ blog, The ITT List. For live coverage of the Cop15 summit, make sure to check out video streams hosted by The UpTake and OneWorld. (more…)
Weekly Mulch: Will Copenhagen be Enough?
By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger
Ed. Note: In honor of the Cop15 summit, we will be running the Mulch three times a week from Dec 7-18. Stay tuned!
The world series of climate change is just around the corner. Next week, global leaders will convene in Copenhagen to discuss how the world will address climate change. The United States and China, who together exhaust 40% of the world’s emissions, have already committed to reducing their carbon output. But will it be enough? In an interview with Paul Jay of The Real News, British environmental writer George Monbiot, argues that the cuts major leaders are proposing don’t match up with what the science demands. (Video below) (more…)