Today's initiative has been variously billed as "iTunes for Magazines" (correct philosophically, but wildly overstated) and "Hulu for Magazines" (incorrect, since Hulu is free). Basically you can now go to this digital storefront and buy all your favorite Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst, Time Inc., and News Corp publications, to read on your "portable digital device" of choice. Your crappy mobile phone, or iPhone, or upcoming Apple tablet, or, hey, Time Inc. is making its very own tablet, & ad infinitum.

And, of course, this is not the only "digital storefront" thing—Hearst, a partner in this venture, is also going forward with its own personal digital storefront called Skiff , and there are similar services already operating, although, hey, there's not dominant iTunes-type player yet, so you never know.

This could be a successful venture. Then again, it could fade into irrelevance in months. Somebody will make the dominant digital storefront for content like this, just like someone will make the dominant digital reader. Magazine publishing companies, one would think, are likely to get smoked by someone like Apple in this particular sector. But they think it's worth the gamble, after watching what happened to the music industry.

But it'll take a few years. How much would you pay to read Sports Illustrated on your E-reader right now? You don't have an E-reader. And you can read Deadspin for free. So, you'd pay nothing. Changing that dynamic is what media companies need to worry about.

And here's Time Inc's announcement to employees, just because we have it:

December 8, 2009
To: Time Inc. Employees
From: Ann Moore
Re: New Digital Venture

Today, five leading publishers including Time Inc., Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst and News Corporation announced the formation of a new venture to develop a digital storefront and a common reading application that will allow consumers to enjoy their favorite magazine and newspaper content on any platform they choose.

We already know that the next generation of mobile devices will be loaded with color touchscreens, flexible displays, video capabilities and other features that will make them ideal for consuming rich content and an appealing environment for advertisers. These devices will allow us to combine the best of what consumers love about magazines – quality, curated journalism, engaging content and beautiful photography – with the speed, convenience and portability of the latest technology.

While Time Inc. is pursuing a number of initiatives that will help us expand our current digital businesses and develop new products and revenue streams, our participation in this venture is an important part of our efforts. You'll be hearing more about it in the coming weeks and months.

In the meantime, for a look at some of the work Time Inc. is doing around portable devices, check out the demo Sports Illustrated developed, which will give you an idea of how our digital content might be enjoyed in the near future.

www.si.com/tablet

A.M.

The magazine group plans to publish its content on computer tablets including, per widespread speclation, Apple's highly anticipated device. Right now these super magazines are just conceptual; Time Inc.'s demo video above just outlines the company's ideas, well developed though they may be.

That's partly why the video looks so exciting: Making a great demo is much easier than making a great product. It also helps that Time Inc, like other publishers, has come to see tablets as central to its future. If only the company had felt that way about the Web, five years ago, it might not be so desperate for new revenue right now.

AOL's dynamic vision of the future: Flood the web with content designed to pop up high in Google search results, with editorial ideas generated by an algorithm based on what stupid people are looking for, on the internet. In our business we call this "stealing post ideas from Google Trends." Getcher Tiger Woods Mistress Pictures here! Tell us, WSJ, how will AOL improve the life of me, an average Park Slope Parent?

AOL says its new system determined that the most popular topic on the Web last Tuesday was "crib recalls," following news of a massive recall by Stork Craft Manufacturing of Canada. AOL had only one story on its sites on the recall. But, if the new system had been live, editors would have geared up to supply stories on the subject from a number of angles, the company says.

So not only is AOL basing its entire dismal future on the most base sort of styrofoam traffic-whoring; it's not even whoring in a new way. Demand Media, for one, has long been doing the exact same thing, with an algorithm-plus-sweatshop editorial production line that makes Gawker Media look like Aristotle's School of Taking Your Sweet Time Thinking About Things.

Ah well. Neither useless crap on the internet nor AOL sucking is anything new.

For years, newspapers and other media companies have complained about Google reaping profits by indexing media content for free. Google has responded that media companies are free to remove themselves from Google's search engines if they wish. But media companies never actually did it, because the hit to their traffic would be too big. They'd prefer to just get paid by the search engines. Which is what Rupert Murdoch may now do.

Business Insider estimates that the Wall Street Journal, News Corp's most prized media property, would lose about $15 million by pulling out of Google—meaning that Bing could theoretically secure exclusive search engine rights for that price. The money is almost too small to matter. But this could be a trigger for much bigger things. Namely, the Great Search Engine Wars for media content.

Brian Lam argues that this move would hurt consumers. Instead of being able to go to Google to find everything, consumers would have to know which specific media outlets had exclusive deals with which search engines in order to track down their content.

And that's absolutely true! This trend, if it becomes widespread—every big media company hunting for the richest deal it can get from a search engine—would make life more inconvenient for media consumers like you and me. Which doesn't mean that it's necessarily bad. The fact is that the current situation cannot stand. Have you read our #layoffs tag lately? Rupert Murdoch—and other media owners—are tired of Google making money off their content, for free. The original idea was that the traffic driven to media sites by Google would provide enough revenue, through ads, to make everyone happy. That hasn't turned out to be the case. Online ad revenue is not doing the trick.

So media companies will need new revenue streams to survive. A big one will be paid content; i.e., if you want to read the New York Times online, you will have to pay some sort of subscription fee. But search engine deals like this—in which media companies make search engines pay for exclusive rights to access their content—are another online revenue stream that could become significant. News Corp's deal isn't big money, yet. But presumably if Google and its competitors realize they will have to engage in bidding wars to lock in rights to good media content, the value of those deals would increase considerably.

The bigger picture is this: Yes, the "journalism" industry will shrink. That's part of the future. Fine. But even with the wondrous world of blogs and nonprofit journalism foundations and every other new permutation of creating content, the fact remains that if people want to enjoy a fundamental baseline of serious news media in this country, they will have to pay for it, somehow. Yes, it's more inconvenient to have search engines with exclusive content deals. It's also inconvenient to have to pay to read online news. But these and other new revenue streams will have to come into place if we don't want to keep griping forever about journalists being laid off and news quality getting shittier. Everything cannot always be free and delivered directly to us on a platter when it costs money to make, okay! So try not to fear the portentous coming of the Search Engine Bidding Wars. We're just going through the bumpy phase of things now. You'll get used to it. And the annoying kid you sent to J-school might actually be able to land a job one day, too.

[My colleagues do not necessarily agree with me!]

• The new medium could rot people's brains and erode cultural standards: "What you'll be seeing: [Ventriloquist dummy] Charlie McCarthy or the [intellectual radio broadcast] Chicago Roundtable?"
  
• The government is making huge new media decisions with far-reaching implications for the future: "Battle in the spectrum... Uncle Sam Looks at Television."
  
• The new medium will impact this old medium: Title: "Movies and Television" Article: "Film companies are watching television development with a careful eye."
  
• The elite first adopters will be overrun by the masses: Title: "Is Television Ready for the Public?" Article "Before the war about 7,000 television sets had been sold... the purcahses were all in or near a handful of cities. among them New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Schenectady, and Los Angeles" Those big-city bastards of Schenectady were liberal elitists even back in the day!
  
• The new medium will usher in a new crop of media lords: "Who Are the Leaders in the Fight?"
  
• The new medium means fun new gadgets (which could get us loads of advertising): Title: "What Kind of Television? War improvements cut costs / Look before you buy / Network possibilities / Buy wisely / Color television"
  
  
  
  Article (emphasis added): "Before you start looking for a receiver, check up on the television station in your area and find out whether its programs interest you...Don't let the salesman double talk you into buying one before it is demonstrated in your home. Who knows, you may be living in a "dead spot" where it is not possible to pick up television pictures. [AT&T has apparently been in the wireless business a long time.]

Somehow we still have movie theaters, radio, books and newspapers decades later. And every one of those sectors is still fabulously profitable and growing. (*Cough*)

[via Brendan Koerner]

NYT editor Bill Keller told Clark Hoyt that the paper is "within weeks of a decision" on the long-discussed question of whether, and how, to charge for its online news.

So here is what their decision will be: You will have to pay for their online news. One way or another! Maybe you will pay a $5 per month subscription fee, or maybe you will pay micropayments for every story, or maybe they will roll out tiered membership packages with fancy extras designed to get hardcore fans to pay more in exchange for more access. Probably a certain level of news will be free, and a better level of news will not be free. Or maybe someone there has actually come up with an elegant solution to this mess! Though we doubt it.

But somehow we will all have to pay something, because if we don't, the New York Times is totally going to go broke, bit by bit, by giving its product away for free. Which is something that it and every other newspaper have now come to realize. A more interesting question: Will any of the NYT's star columnists flee the paper if they're shoved behind a pay wall, like Newsday's Saul Friedman just did?

They might! These same NYT columnists sat through the Times Select fiasco and watched their readership drop precipitously. Things are different now though! Because somebody like, say, Thomas Friedman, or David Pogue, or Maureen Dowd, could legitimately decide that their own BRAND would gain more by going off on their own than by sitting behind a paywall at the NYT. Thanks for the help with everything, Times, but we're off to be A Brand Called Me-s! Fewer readers could hurt their speaking fees. Can't have that.

This result would bring in some much-needed fresh blood and get rid of Thomas Fucking Friedman, so let's all pray it goes down exactly like that. We have our (employer's) credit card ready, Bill Keller.

One of the internet's most important legacies is its absolute destruction of credentialism. So who better to explain it to the world than New York Times TV-watcher-and-internet-looker-and-writer-about Virginia Heffernan, the one person that every American too old to figure out how to get onto the internet turns to to tell them about said internet, in a magazine column? And tell us, Leon Neyfakh, could the book have a name and theme commensurate to the preposterousness of its ambition?

In the proposal [for the book, tentatively titled The Pleasures of the Internet: How to Live in the New Online Civilization], a copy of which was obtained by the Transom, Ms. Heffernan's book is described as "a complete aesthetics of the Internet" that will treat the Web as a complex work of representational art, complete with "a poetics, a scale, a palette, a rhythm, a sensibility, a set of rituals and spectacles, a system of metaphors and an emotional range."

Haha yes. Very good. A good book to give to, say, your grandmother who retired as a college literature professor a long, long time ago. Explaining the entire internet in a book: Actually a very internetty type of thing to do!
[NYO]

This is the very first question from a Q&A with Anderson in the German mag Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Anderson, let's talk about the future of journalism.
Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don't use the word journalism.

Uhh...

SPIEGEL: Okay, how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States and worldwide.
Anderson: Sorry, I don't use the word media. I don't use the word news. I don't think that those words mean anything anymore...

SPIEGEL: Which other words would you use?
Anderson: There are no other words. We're in one of those strange eras where the words of the last century don't have meaning. What does news mean to you, when the vast majority of news is created by amateurs? Is news coming from a newspaper, or a news group or a friend? I just cannot come up with a definition for those words. Here at Wired, we stopped using them.

Uh huh. Then he goes on to talk his new age "Free" shit about how news just "comes to me," but media outlets themselves aren't important. Hey Chris Anderson, I haven't read your new book, but I hear from the internet or whatever that you plagiarized it, and that it sucks. That's that new journalism!
[Spiegel via Media Decoder. Pic: Getty]

Bloomberg reports that the NYT is floating the idea of charging $5 a month to access its website in a survey of readers. (It also asked if subscribers would be willing to pay $2.50 per month).

Unless anybody has any other bright ideas, this is inevitable, and necessary. There's no way the NYT—or most other papers—can continue to allow their own free website to cannibalize their revenue forever. Print subscription levels will probably never rise again in a meaningful way. Online news is the future. Online ads bring in only a fraction of the revenue of print ads. Therefore, the website has to find another way to generate cash. And that way is charging for content.

If all 650,000 print subscribers paid $5 a month for the website, that would be an instant $39 million per year. More likely, many people would choose either only the print subscription (old people) or only the online subscription (non-old people). That means that the NYT could potentially sell many more online subscriptions than it sells print subscriptions. Its website is orders of magnitudes more popular than its print product already. Five bucks a month is not an outrageous fee for the premium newspaper site on the internet. Yes, the Times would lose some online readers, and therefore some online ad revenue. But they should be able to make up much more than that by charging a reasonable fee—particularly as this practice spreads and becomes more accepted. Bitch now, pay later. The paper will still have to face some pretty severe staff cutbacks. But this is the future. If you like to read the NYT, pay up.

Paid Content talked to NYT digital guru Jonathan Landman, who announced Preston's hiring via Twitter. They say "he denied Valleywag's speculation that Preston's role will be to clamp down on the newsroom's [Twittering]." What they meant to say was "he confirmed that she will do that":

"This isn't about policing, although that is a small function [of the social editor's role], but as only as a matter of making things consistent. It's not the main purpose at all," Landman told paidContent. "It's really just the opposite of policing. it's about helping everybody figure out how to use social media as a tool for journalists. A number of people have discovered social media a form for marketing and promotion, but it's also got explicitly journalistic uses."

In other words, watch for those Twitter guidelines soon, newsroom! [CLARIFICATION: Yes, she will clearly be doing many more things than just that. Come on.] Preston herself has gotten into the Social Media Spirit (which is socialism) by taking her own Twitter page (just started today!) off its "Private" setting, which was a little incongruous, and opening up to the world. Here, her very first public insight into bridging the gap between old and new media:

Pay her whatever she wishes.

[Paid Content, Previously. Pic via]

It's really a laughable patent. Most offices can't even reliably use the mature technology behind video conferences. So holograms, exponentially more complicated, should be yet another idea people won't be able to get working.

And, besides, the challenge is in the execution, not the conception. Patenting a holographic meeting is like patenting a flying car. Particularly when you skimp on the details:

The patent is rather vague on the actual hardware and software that would create these holographic meetings, although it does include 21 pictures and diagrams of how these meetings would take place.

Chalk this up as yet another indelible mark Bill Gates has left on his company. According to the Microsoft founder, we should all be enjoying computerized light fixtures and internet-connected ovens in our smart homes, where we carry around the tablet computers that have swept the market, and where we'll play with touch-sensitive tables made out of LCDs (if we can figure out how to set them up).

Luckily, Microsoft has a lucrative initial market ready to go this time around: cash-drenched cable-news networks, who are eager for ratings. Like CNN. As we all learned at election time, they love holograms.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

The execs are telling the newsroom how the imperiled paper is planning to move forward in the digital age and whatnot. Jenny 8. Lee and Michael Luo appear to be the most active Tweetpersons on this. Summary: No micropayments, but a paid membership plan for online access seems likely. The nonprofit model is out. More paid mobile apps. And the NYT "significantly outperformed" the market in display ads last year, allegedly.

From Michael Luo's Twitter:

From Jenny 8. Lee's Twitter:

The gist seems to be that soon you'll have to pay to read NYtimes.com like you do now. Press release... TK.

UPDATE: A bit more clarity: Apparently the NYT does not want to have its standard content be paid per se, because they feel that it would hurt online ad revenue too much. The paid online plan that's being floated sounds instead like some sort of backdoor way to get revenue out of those readers who love the NYT so much that they'd be happy to donate money to it. So—and all of this is still in the planning stages, it seems—the idea would be to keep access to the current content free, then devise some sort of program offering superlatives or rewards to people who want to pay to be "members." Keep ad revenue high and add additional revenue streams, rather than gate content and risk seeing traffic plummet.
(Which is kind of the Holy Grail of online news that nobody's really mastered yet, so it will be interesting to see if this thing they develop is a huge success or a spectacular failure!)

Marcelo is pioneering the world of paid endorsements—on Twitter! Everything is different now. Here's how it works: people watch Marcelo on TV; they think he's funny and interesting; they follow him on Twitter; then, when he bizarrely busts out and recommends a specific new fiber optic internet service there, in Brazil, they'll all buy it, because hey, it's Marcelo!

In his first tweet mentioning Telefónica's service, Mr. Tas told his followers about a recent promotional event he hosted in São Paulo. "Xtreme event was fun, informative and full of insights," he wrote. "I loved it!"

We congratulate Mr. Tas on his new, creative way of soaking a corporation for its marketing budget. He should have gone into branding. [WSJ]

[via Modern Mechanix]

• Business will bribe customers with discounts so they'll hand over access to private information like shopping history and online activity. Algorithms will help store clerks make better personal recommendations.
• Spectators at sporting events will be able to order nachos from their seat.
• Expect more iPhone-esque touch screens.
• Videogames will become more like movies as new technologies improve animated facial expressions.
• Motion sensors will take videogames another step beyond the Wii as users control on-screen actions with just their body.
• Made-for-Internet feature films with budgets around $10 million will proliferate.
• So will big-budget 3D movies, like James Cameron's 2009 film, Avatar
• One box will deliver the video you get from satellite, broadcast, cable and the Internet now.
• Holographic TV.
• Social networks will keep your friends abreast of all your activities including where you are and what you've purchased. (Apparently the WSJ believes Facebook will figure out how not to creep people out with Beacon.)
• After tracking your behavior through GPS, Google will give you a list of restaurants you might like for lunch when you get into your car. Directions included.
• You'll be able to locate where old home videos took place.
• News will come to you on a mobile device, from multiple sources, based on your declared tastes.

1. No one's ever worn a digital watch.
2. "I'm Rick James, bitch" is just something old people say.
3. To relax, they've always turned on the nightly news. The news has always been delivered by comedians.
4. They don't know what a LOLCat is or why it talks that way.
5. They've always been able to use a cell phone on a plane.
6. Tattoos have always been normal.
7. Mr. Rogers has never taken them to the Land of Make-Believe.
8. Good sitcoms have never had laugh tracks.
9. Apple has always been a big deal, as have Google and Facebook.
10. They've never paid for a classified ad.
11. They've never danced to "Numa Numa."
12. Who's Mario?
13. Katie Couric has still never been a respected news anchor.
14. Kids have always had their own phones.
15. They've never "missed" a TV show that they couldn't watch an hour later.
16. Movies have always come in the mail.
17. They've never licked a stamp.
18. Americans have always worried about Muslims.
19. They don't care if Tony Soprano died, if Ross and Rachel ever got together, who got to be a millionaire, or who was a Cylon.
20. Lindsay Lohan was never innocent.
21. They've never read "People" Magazine.
22. They don't remember Castro or why he was ever a big deal.
23. What's a mousepad?
24. "Lord of the Rings" looks fake and the effects are laughable.
25. Andy Samberg has always been a movie star.
26. The Olsen Twins have always been legal, but it's still creepy to want Mary-Kate.
27. There's never been smoking in restaurants.
28. Saturday Night Live's good stuff has always been made for the Internet.
29. Pop stars have always worked with rappers.
30. Perez Hilton has always been on TV.
31. Computers have never been beige.
32. Role-playing games have always been played on the Internet. What's a 20-sided die?
33. All TVs are "high definition."
34. They've never had to pull over for directions.
35. Cafes have always been a place to work on a laptop.
36. The "dot-com bust" means as much to them as the Great Depression.
37. Ipods have always come with a phone.
38. Global warming has always been a major voter issue, and Republicans have always acknowledged it.
39. Vice presidents have never been useless.
40. Quarters have never all looked the same.
41. Abe Vigoda is still alive.