Paying the price, part 2: baseball sites

My first reactions to the Time magazine cover story could be read with a nice, tall glass of Haterade. "We know these new ideas can be bad," you're thinking. "Who's going about it the right way?" Now, in no way am I aware of the financial stability of these three examples. However, as a consumer, I thoroughly enjoy their editorial products in various ways. And as someone who hopes to be paid for his writing/journalism work the rest of his life, I am encouraged by the possibilities these three editorial outfits present:

Baseball Prospectus - the subscription/"taste" model
My subscription to Sports Illustrated will end soon after the arrival of Bar Refaeli in my mailbox (what a way to go!). I pondered extending the subscription at reduced rates and with various "free" items tempting my postcard return. After going back and forth, my mind and wallet converged on the idea of consuming some of the interesting personality profiles and features online rather than in print at the low $20 annual rate.

Contrast this with my Baseball Prospectus subscription, at a cost of $35 annually. I made sure to re-up a few days in advance just to make sure I didn't miss any articles during the heat of the September pennant race.

What is the difference? BP succeeds in offering a diverse, unique product that can't be found easily anywhere else. As a hopelessly devoted baseball fan, I know where I can find good writing, reporting and analysis online about baseball. The best sports blogs stand as some of the strongest examples of where the fan can do a more engaging and entertaining job than an uninspired beat reporter. But BP stands out in a couple of ways:

• hiring skilled analysts who do this type of thing for a living (and do it well),
• proprietary information (such as stats) that can't be found anywhere else,
• and aggregrating information (transaction analysis, injuries) in ways that save me time as a reader.

BP supplements its online model with an annual book, a couple of articles each week that show potential readers what's available, chats, a free podcast called Baseball Prospectus Radio and some partnerships with other media outlets, like Sports Illustrated during the 2008 season. All these efforts strengthen the brand while working toward the business goal, which is to get you to subscribe. Other media outlets can look toward this model, but only in instances where you've got the goods to make it happen. This requires talent and carving out a unique niche in the marketplace that can't be easily duplicated.

Baseball America - concurrent online/print subscriptions
If Baseball Prospectus "owns" the statistical analysis field (amid some worthy competitors), then Baseball America certainly owns the minor league and college baseball arenas. The baseball draft, long thought of as an afterthought when compared to pro basketball or football, has turned into BA's busiest time of year in satisfying the information cravings of amateur baseball fans following their boys to pro ball and prospect hounds hoping to see their team land the stars of the future.

BA provides order (top 10 prospect lists, etc.) to a massive amount of information that accumulates each night from Kane County to Sacramento. And readers can get to some of that information via a couple of free blogs at baseballamerica.com. But the real product comes via online and print subscriptions. I haven't crossed the threshold to subscribe just yet, but I appreciate the options of receiving the information via the Web only (at $66 annually) or both in print and online ($91.95 annually). This allows the publication, should the need arise, to transition into a potential online-only business model much easier than its publication competitors. As is, the site uses the blogs and a podcast to tease out some of its "money" features and never forgets where that bread gets buttered. And, having picked up the magazine at the bookstore, I know what I'm getting for free now is just the tip of their news coverage.

Baseball Musings - stop, aggregate and listen
But what about those lone wolf bloggers who want to make their own way? David Pinto shows one way how to do such a thing. He was one of the first baseball bloggers to successfully aggregate* content both from newspaper sites and blogs, and do it as a full-time profession. You can see his influence in sites like MLB Trade Rumors, that does the heavy lifting (compiling) in similar fashion.

And how does the site make money? One, you notice quite a few ads on Musings, especially compared to BP and BA. These click-throughs can add a few pennies to the coffers every time (like an ad-based form of the micropayment proposal). Still, as any Google AdSense participant knows, that won't always pay the domain name bills. Pinto makes like public broadcasting and holds a pledge drive, which generated $3,600 in 2008. I read of a similar outreach effort at the Gannett Blog as it details the crumbling of that once-mighty newspaper empire. This concept most closely resembles the micropayment possibilities, but still relies on donations rather than mandatory payments.

*While time-strapped readers appreciate the efforts of these aggregators, the micropayment idea most likely would hurt their efforts. Not only would it be hard to figure out good stories to link to, but people could come to the site and not have to click on anything. While this probably appeals to some in the newspaper profession who don't like the link culture, one wonders how it would affect traffic numbers.

Now, these are simplistic samples of business models. But all three derive much of their revenue from consumers rather than ad sales, and that seems to be the concept pushed as a solution to surviving economic downturns. But all three devote large amount of resources per employee to their editorial product, and all to reach a readership that will leave for other options if a better opportunity presents itself. My feeling is that many news organizations will splinter into niches they can own and aggregation for the consumer on the go (iPhone apps, headlines, etc.) This allows the product to be more nimble and authoritative in coverage, while making things easier for advertisers targeting markets that are increasingly elusive.

You Don't Say: 'Biblically' on winkers

AJ Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically mixes earnestness, anecdotes and humor to write a book that just feels ... honest. He wears his biases on his (tasseled) sleeve, and isn't afraid to write about instances where he changes his mind or looks bad in his quest for religious knowledge. His journey among the various sects of people who follow the Bible in one way or another makes for a great "gimmick" memoir, in the best sense of the word and the genre. One of my favorite excerpts comes in month seven, and it's one that would have been hard to remove from my head during the presidential election:

The Bible's antiwinking bias (there are at least four warnings against winkers) is one of the least-studied scriptural motifs around. I found negligible literature on the topic. But it does seem wise and ahead of its time, the wink being perhaps the world's creepiest gesture, with the winker coercing the winkee into being a part of his little cabal.

Sarah Palin found out the hard way, and we all discovered no one looks good on a freeze-framed wink.

Paying the price in journalism

Time magazine* featured a column by Walter Isaacson in its Feb. 16 edition, delving into the problems of print journalism and picking out micropayments as a solution. That is, paying 10 cents to read a story online with a click of a button (conveniently compared to the iTunes model as something that works). My experience in newspapers, though limited in circulation numbers, found plenty of problems with the story and its central concept.

• "In an advertising-only revenue model, the incentive is perverse," Isaacson writes. "It is also self-defeating, because eventually you will weaken your bond with your readers if you do not feel directly dependent on them for your revenue."As the editor of a free weekly paper, I can tell you that such a broad generalization misses the success stories at the smaller, community level (where many Americans get their news outside the major cities and suburbs). Besides figuring out what page an advertisement should go on, our reliance on advertisers never got in the way of our newsgathering process. Sure, our reporters were charged with limited enterprise and investigative reporting that could uncover some unsavory business practices. But in cases where the newspaper might be a business' major advertising outlet, all involved found it best to work out any problems and continue the existing relationship.
• I think a lot about small dailies and weeklies when people talk about moving to a Web-centric news operation. In DeKalb/Sycamore, many of my readers still didn't know anything about the Web, and weren't exactly taking library classes to get in on that action. But how much of the population does that encompass? Is that number shrinking? Or will this group, having already built up a dependable newspaper habit in their lives, be shoved to the margins as media companies go after the fickle tastes of a Twittering 20 year old?
  
• More than the readers, local businesses depend on good community newspapers to advertise their wares. With the competition including costly direct mail and low-impact cable or radio ads, newspapers still find themselves as the best option in town for a small business. In my experience, many of these businesses also worry about the storefront first, and then the online presence. Thus, the online banner ad doesn't always work (even if you can give that business a report detailing impressions/click-throughs/etc. that a print ad can't match). The best ads I can remember usually involved a 2x2 coupon ad placed in the first few pages of the paper.
• Isaacson imagines something like an E-ZPass that deducts from a pre-paid account. First, the iTunes model works in part because it is limited to one software product (granted, across multiple platforms like the iPhone). But if you want something like this, you not only need to have the major daily newspapers sign on to a standard. You also need to sign up independent papers throughout the country if you're looking for it to really work. And would the Associated Press just set up its own Web site to take advantage of these pennies from Pennsylvania? Already, some newspaper chains drop the ball on their Web presence, promoting ease of uploading and chain consistency more than ease of navigation. I am bearish on some of these chains, pending survival, adapting fully to anything approaching easy, secure navigation.
• If such a payment plan was implemented, would newspapers sue if blogs like Gawker aggregated the best content, like the site does for the weekly gossip rags?
  

I do agree with the idea that many newspapers do a poor job with what they put up online. The idea that the Web needs the full, best version of stories puzzles me. Under the current business model, I would consider the Web site a window into the community and a tease to search out the paper. That means focus should be placed on news briefs, multimedia, full archives and - most importantly - online-only content. The medium requires a different set of storytelling skills and just uploading a story and placing a few html tags on it just won't work. I bookmark a number of newspaper blogs, and for every success like Pop Candy at USA Today, there are text-only, seldom-updated monstrosities that serve as little more than an outlet for meandering musings (hey, a new tagline for my site!).

I am encouraged about some of the video pieces I have seen, and see the podcast as an under-utilized tool that can further the current goals of furthering the brand cheaply without immediate financial gains. Actually, a few non-newspaper entities have best grasped these ideas, and I will describe how some of the giants in baseball media have done so in my next post later today.

* As an aside, I haven't picked up a Time magazine in a while. Like most longtime magazine readers, I was struck at its pagecount, as well as its lack of ads. But as a designer, I was amazed at the amount of whitespace used throughout (reflected accurately in the stark cover pictured above). If you use that much whitespace, you're giving the impression that there's no better (or longer) content available. Also, and this is just a pet peeve of mine, but I really dislike columnist mug shots cropped at odd angles. Either show a full shot or not; the halfway art project doesn't serve any function.