NAA Digital Edge Blog

Welcome to the Digital Edge Blog! The Digital Edge Blog focuses on developments, trends, best practices and more in newspaper digital media. The blog launched in 2006 (archives before August 2008 are here). We look forward to reading your comments and contributions to the Digital Edge Blog. Questions? E-mail Beth Lawton at beth.lawton@naa.org.

In a year, the media world has gone from no large-scale, truly-personalized, printed news products to five. MediaNews Group's I-News, The Washington Time's personalized news weekly (the pilot project ended recently), Printcasting and others seem to indicate that personalized news has reached a turning point.

All of the programs rely on highly complex RSS to choose-your-medium technology.  (By the way, who would have thought that RSS would power things so complex?!)

Printcasting

At yesterday's Individuated News Conference at The Washington Times complex in D.C., Printcasting founder Dan Pacheco said his venture is partnering with MediaNews Group and is now available in five cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and Boulder, Colo., and its original site in Bakersfield, Calif. MediaNews Group owns newspapers in 11 states.

How newspapers can benefit: By making select content available to individuals who want to publish small newsletters, newspapers could take a share of whatever revenue comes in through the upcoming self-serve paid advertising service in the program. In addition, it offers a way for small businesses with limited ad budgets to get into print advertising. Pacheco noted that in Bakersfield, 65 percent of the local businesses have ad budgets below $10,000 per year, but less than 40 percent of print advertisers in the newspaper were from companies that had ad budgets of this size.

Washington Times' I-Newsweekly

The Washington Times presented at yesterday's conference about its weekly edition, currently mailed to more than 50,000 subscribers across the country. Sixty people - not all of whom were regular newsweekly subscribers - participated in the individuated news pilot project.

The final product looked exactly like the newspaper's regular newsweekly - a large, newsprint tab. People in the pilot project could choose their topic areas of interest, and their newsweekly arrived with dozens of half-page (or longer) articles designed to meet their needs. This was the first time a project on this scale had incorporated half-page modules rather than full-page or full-section ones.

People in the pilot project said they liked it and indicated that being able to choose their own content and interests was very important to them. Seventy percent said they would subscribe to the publication (though fewer said they were willing to pay more than the normal price for it).

MediaNews Group's Peter Vandeventer suggested this type of personalization could be used to personalize e-editions of newspapers, rather than print/deliver personalized, full-size publications. That way, people can have their own e-edition with stock tables, personalized sports content and other content (blogs, maybe?) that isn't normally printed in the standard-run newspaper.

I-News

Vandeventer also showed a short infomercial for MediaNews Group's I-News program, which allows people to choose their news and their way of receiving it: Either through e-mail, through their mobile phone or through a home-printed multi-page newspaper. (MediaNews has already started giving wireless printers to some home users to test the program.) Earlier this year, MediaNews Group tested a print program with guests staying at a Marriot Residence Inn in Denver.

You can read more about these projects through Newspapers & Technology's coverage of the conference.  Also check out these stories:

MediaNews to Begin Customized Printing in Denver Homes (Poynter) 

MediaNews to Test Individuated News at L.A. Daily News (Poynter)

IndividuatedNews.com

Printcasting.com

About Beth Lawton