How to Turn Off Lancaster New Era Obit Paywall
A tipster to my blog discovered an easy way to get around the Press+ paywall, which recently launched on the Lancaster Online obits page: Turn off JavaScript.
I tested this on several browsers yesterday, and sure enough. It works.
LancasterOnline has not yet responded to my inquiry, but this morning, David Brauer of MinnPost received a reply. Basically, LancasterOnline is not worried. Obit readers and the tech savvy do not meet in their Venn diagram of online readership, they say.
While this may be true, anyone who plans to use Press+ to make money should be aware of the easy methods for circumventing the tool that’s meant to bring in extra revenue and take into account what kind of hit their profit plans could take, should people get the hang of changing a setting or applying a script.
How to Pitch Tips From a Fast Company Staffer
Linda Tischler, who covers design stories for Fast Company magazine, posts 10 tips on how to sell your story idea.
The list is mostly pet peeves, which freelancers must pay attention to. But there are also two excellent guidelines on what to do:
Offer me something nobody’s had before. The quickest way to catch my eye is to give me a chance to be first to report something cool. Editors, a very competitive bunch, love that. Give me some catnip to dangle before them.
…
Do pitch me something that advances the conversation. What are the big issues designers will be grappling with in the next few years? Who are the brightest young talents? Who has solved an intractable problem in a particularly innovative way? What trends are you picking up as you talk to clients? Why should I care about what you’re pitching me?
Read the rest of Linda Tischler’s post, “How to Pitch Me.”
For more pitch guidance, read my post, how to pitch a multimedia story to MSNBC.com.
Photo: Steve Rhodes/Flickr
Revenue 2.0: Ideas for Making Money on News Sites
“News is the stuff we put around the advertising.”
—Quoted by so many people in news and advertising no one remembers who said it first
Yesterday a group of journalists of varying experience and expertise got together to do something about advertising. That’s right: News people were proposing ideas for making money.
The one-day sprint, Revenue 2.0, took a “less chat, more splat” approach to revenue solutions for mobile, classified ads, ads for small- and medium-sized business, and display ads used (or not) on the homepage.
The classified ads proposal is up on the #rev2oh site.
Notes from the other teams will be posted tomorrow morning. From what SND President Matt Mansfield tells me, the concepts-oriented document I wrote on behalf of the homepage and display ads team will go up on SND Update with mockups from team members Kristen Novak and David Kordalski.
Meanwhile, read the thoughtful day-after post by Patrick Cooper and the #rev2oh tweet archive.
Ideas for Online News, Or What’s Next for the Information Business
Someone once said the first rule of blogging is to do it regularly. The second is not to begin with an apology if you go silent without a heads up.
Screw the rules.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been asking a lot of people how news organizations can do a better job of providing and being a conduit for information and discussion while making enough money to sustain a business.
That last part is probably the most difficult question to answer. Most recently, media consultant Michael Rosenblum urged media companies to come up with a new business model for the realities of today.
Apparently, media CEOs were stymied. But there are examples out there:
David Cohn has proposed community-funded reporting and runs Spot.us, the live test. ProPublica uses the non-profit model to pay for investigative reporting. The Guardian in Britain is set up as a public trust.
So I ask you: what should we be doing to ensure there will be money to pay for the labor-intensive craft of news gathering?
Leave a comment below or send me your ideas. If the CEOs don’t know where to start, maybe we, the online collective can show the way.
I’ve been talking with people in social media, information visualization, grassroots reporting and news companies. I’ve wanted to talk with media buyers as well, but don’t have contacts. Do you?
Not related, but possibly useful to you: Thanks to the organizers of Capitolbeat, I was a conference panelist on a session about online fact checking with UNC assistant professor Andy Bechtel and staff reporter Taft Wireback of the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C. (You’ll find the links on my Delicious page.)
Photo: The (South Africa) Times newsroom by Gregor Rohrig/Flickr
Get Google to Fund Your Big Idea for Journalism
Search giant Google announced Project 10 to the 100th today. If you thought the money for the Knight News Challenge was big, this could be even bigger.
Project 10 to the 100th is a $10 million grant to fund up to five ideas that will “change the world by helping as many people as possible.”
They’re looking for proposals in eight categories, including some in which news-related projects would fit very well: community, education, and the catch-all, “everything else.”
As Google prides itself on encouraging creativity, the company has only the broadest of evaluation criteria:
Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
Longevity: How long will the idea’s impact last?
Proposals are due Oct. 20, and I’d encourage people interested in furthering and reshaping the mission of news to apply. Public voting begins Jan. 27.
