The next miracle (v11.1): Owen Youngman

Knight Professor of Digital Media Strategy, Medill / Northwestern

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Monthly Archives: May 2009

Adventures in paid content, with actual payment

The check was in the mail. I didn't cash it, however.

The check was in the mail. I didn't cash it, however.

Drowned out in the buzz about the yet-to-appear Kindle DX a couple of weeks ago was the semi-related announcement that Amazon was opening the gates of remunerated e-publishing not only to newspapers and magazines, but to everyday bloggers.  Among the first to “sell out,” as he headlined it, was my industry colleague Steve Yelvington, who blogs at yelvington.com.

Yes, you now can pay a monthly fee to Amazon.com not just to read the New York Times or LA Times or Chicago Tribune on your current and future Kindle.  You also can pay them to get yelvington.com, although  ”I don’t know whether anyone will buy it (and I have my doubts, since the idiot who manages this operation gives away the same content on the Web),” he noted.

Well, us journalist types at the end of the alphabet need to stick together. So as of today version 11.0 of “The next miracle” is also available in a Kindle edition (is that version 11.1?), and the low monthly price of $1.99 “includes wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet.”

Line up, sign up, subscribe today.
Line up, sign up, subscribe today.

Plus, “Kindle Blogs are auto-delivered wirelessly to your Kindle and updated throughout the day so you can stay current.”

Plus plus, “It’s risk free—all Kindle Blog subscriptions start with a 14-day free trial. You can cancel at any time during the free trial period. If you enjoy your subscription, do nothing and it will automatically continue at the regular monthly price.”

Plus plus plus, I already know how to make money on the Internet!  Just look at the check at the top of this post!

Yes, in early 2000, I succumbed to another e-publishing siren song.  I signed up with MightyWords.com, which billed itself as ”a definitive digital marketplace for the written word.” According to Library Journal, MightyWords, which was launched by the evocatively named Fatbrain.com, “offers authors and publishers a new digital channel to read, write, buy, and sell written content, including essays, short stories, chapters, and additional works.”

“By creating the first digital marketplace to read, write, buy, and sell ideas, MightyWords will unleash a wealth of written content and will create a powerful distribution channel that will significantly affect the publishing world,” said Chris MacAskill, Fatbrain.com CEO. Well, who could resist?  Not me.  Even though it was available for free here at owenyoungman.com, I uploaded my 1997 travel essay “From Hong Kong to Hershey:  Or, I Liked the Thick Chocolate Shake More Than the Thick Soup of Snake” and waited for the royalties to roll in.

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The Internet, it’s a helluva town; the news is up, but the newsies are down (The Economist)

The winds of ... (The Economist)

The winds of ... (The Economist)


(T)he plight of the news business does not presage the end of news. As large branches of the industry wither, new shoots are rising. The result is a business that is smaller and less profitable, but also more efficient and innovative.

via The news business: Tossed by a gale | The Economist.

New sources of news are proliferating online. Many, it is true, are unreliable. Most are badly funded. Some are the rantings of deranged extremists. But some—like Muckety, an American site which enriches news stories with interactive maps of the protagonists’ networks of influence, and NightJack, the revealing and depressing blog of an anonymous British policeman, which won the Orwell prize last month—enhance society’s understanding of itself, and could not have existed in the old world.

From the same issue, a leader: Media: The rebirth of news | The Economist.

 

Many of the hard lessons being learned around the industry this year and last are assembled in one place in these pieces from The Economist, living up to its reputation as the best source in the world for carefully selected obituaries.  No, wait, just kidding; of course it is the best place in the world to find those one or two obits you need to read per fortnight (this week: Margaret Gelling, “expert on British place names”). But taken together, and even taken separately, the editorial and the news story show a better than fair understanding of what has happened (“The main victim is not so much the newspaper . . . as the conventional news package”) and what might happen next.

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Students offer 5 ideas for marrying journalism, technology (Poynter)

This semester, Medill’s Spring New Media Publishing Project offers journalism students an opportunity to design and build those new tools, working side-by-side with computer science faculty and students. Five teams are researching, designing, building and testing new information-driven applications. In the process, the journalism and computer science students are forging a common language and are starting to understand one another’s cultures.

via Poynter Online – Students Offer Five New Ideas for Marrying Journalism and Technology.

What Northwestern’s Jeremy Gilbert writes about here is very promising stuff indeed.  I have parachuted in a couple of times – once to do a brief presentation to the Medillians about successful collaboration with technologists, and just this week to begin helping with the project presentations that will climax the quarter. 

Much remains to be seen and done, but you are invited to stay up with the students’ work in progress on the class blog, www.writeclick.org.