Growing Audience

The Growing Audience blog features regular postings regarding business strategies, market forces and new technologies that impact the audience development initiatives at media companies. Many of these postings reflect current news headlines as summarized in the Growing Audience e-alert which publishes on Thursdays, others may come from you, the audience. Please feel free to contact me with your interest in creating and posting a blog entry by emailing me at john.murray@naa.org or by phone at 571.366.1030.

Check Out The Miami Herald's New Blog Aggregator 

The Miami Herald is recognizing the contributions the blogosphere is making to journalism by launching South Florida Blogs next Monday, a page that will aggregate content from more than 200 blogs throughout South Florida as well as blogs from corporate media companies like the New York Times and the South Florida Sun Sentinel. The page took one year to develop and launch and will allow users to rate each posting.

Source: Carlosmiller.com

NY Times Enlists Readers as Community Reporters

The New York Times is expanding its' blog initiative, The Local, by asking citizens to cover local body meetings. Their Virtual Assignment Desk will launch next week and accept requests from citizens to cover community news, as well as solicit citizen volunteers to cover meetings and events. Volunteers receive basic training and specific details about the assingment to help them complete it successfully. The desk has a "Be the Journalist" category where volunteers can scan and accept assignments, and an "Assign the Journalist" category which is meant to serve as a "tip jar" where readers can post content and events they'd like covered.

Source: Evolving Newsrooms and New York Times

Plans Announced to Launch New Daily to Fill Home Delivery Gaps in Detroit

A new, home-delivered paper is due to launch in Detroit in an attempt to capitalize on the changes announced by the two dailies of the Detroit Media Partnership reducing their home delivery to Thursday, Friday and Sunday. The Detroit Daily Press will be published in the next 60 days by two brothers who are veteran newspaper publishers, Mark Stern and Gary Stern. The paper is expected to sell for 50 cents daily and $1 on Sundays with a brief summary of the news available for nonsubscribers on its' Web site. Mark Stern, co-founder of the paper, sees success in their model due to their lack of overhead costs such as delivery trucks, facilities or employee pension funds.

Source: Editor & Publisher

 Digg.com's New Advertising Model Rewards Advertisers That Users Enjoy

The social news sharing site, Digg.com, launched a new advertising platform that will give users of the site more control over the advertisements displayed. More popular ads -- as determined by the community -- cost the advertiser less, while those deemed unpopular cost the advertiser a higher price, providing greater incentive for advertisers to offer ads that the audience finds enjoyable.  "Audiences don't hate ads, they hate mindless ads" said Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners, a Chicago-based design agency.

Source: PoynterOnline

Digital Newspapers Increase Reach, Politico, ‘USA Today'

An affiliate partnership between QuadrantOne and Politico increases the distribution and online reach of the newspaper network as well as new digital mobile editions introduced by USA Today. Advertisers using the network have access to roughly six million unique visitors per month, as well as the combined audience of about 39 million unique visitors for the other 340 sites in the network. QuadrantOne is a joint venture between Hearst Corporation, Gannett, Tribune and the New York Times Co. Politico operates its own ad network and shares content with affiliates such as The Arizona Republic, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Source: MediaPost

Charging (a lot!) for News Online: The Newport Daily News' New Experiment with Paid Content

The 12,000-circulation Newport Daily News in Rhode Island is charging more to read the paper online than in print, hoping the move will incite more interest in the print-and-ink product. Publisher Albert K. Sherman, Jr. said some readers responded to the announcement by asking, "Why would they pay for it on the Internet when they could go buy the printed paper? And that's perfect - that's what we want."  The paper is now offering a three-tiered pricing structure: home delivery is $145 a year, home delivery and online access is $245, and online access only via electronic edition is $345.

It's a "print-newspaper-first strategy" according to Executive Editor Shelia L. Mullowney.

Source: Nieman Journalism Lab

‘USA Today' to Launch Digital (Paid) Edition, Gets Bullish on E-Readers

USA Today Publisher David Hunke is moving the national newspaper more towards mobile apps and wireless devices than towards a paid content model. "You will hear us talk about hybrid solutions as the key to us moving forward," he said. And on the topic of paid content, "I don't believe there is an easy day coming where everything flips to micropayments or subscriptions." The newspaper will roll out a paid e-edition on August 3 and is actively involved with e-reader developers such as Plastic Logic which is planning e-reader testing with Gannett in Detroit in 2010.

Source: Editor & Publisher

Quote of the Day: Audiences don't hate ads, they hate mindless ads"
-- Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners, a Chicago-based design agency on Digg.com's new advertising platform 

End of this week's e-alert

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