REPORT: Notes From… Talk by Steve Newhouse
[ Another in our “Notes From…” series - short notes by volunteers summarizing various events around the school, to help those of us who didn’t/couldn’t attend. Watch for several other “Notes From…” throughout the year. If you have one, send it in! Or let us know in advance that you’d like to do one; or after the event, too. ]
Below, notes from a talk in the J-school World Room by Steve Newhouse, chairman of advance.net. Many thanks to volunteer notes-taker Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, J2007. Feel free to drop him note or post a comment below (free, one-time registration required).
Notes From… Talk by Steve Newhouse
By Ahmed Shihab-Eldin
E-mail: ars2157[at]columbia.edu
WORLD ROOM, J-SCHOOL, SEPT. 20, 2006: Steve Newhouse, chairman of advance.net, came to talk about the business side of journalism during a Publisher’s Roundtable discussion with students at the Columbia Journalism School on Wednesday.
Newshouse manages all the internet sites for Conde Nast and Advance Newspapers, including the Portland Oregonian and other major dailies. The company has long been a pioneer on the web. Newhouse said that advance.net runs 10 websites associated with newspaper groups. He is in charge of magazine companion websites and four destination sites.
Newhouse emphasized that websites are different from print forms of journalism since they are interactive and must serve the purpose of a two-way conversation with readers. He said it is hard to compare web audiences with those of print media. epicurious.com attracts 2.5 million unique users a month while Gourmet magazine has a circulation of 800,000. The two biggest sites in his stable are epicurious.com and style.com.
Newhouse said that the web is largely an advertising-driven medium. He has not concentrated on paid subscriptions or access on the web since they didn’t work. Local websites are growing at 40 percent revenue in a year. He said that magazine companion sites are meant to sell subscriptions, showcase the magazine, and take advantage of the new medium by offering real time coverage using video and photography.
When asked to offer a day in the life of Steve Newhouse, he said it was difficult to answer that but instead said that he is always thinking of how to accelerate growth. He said they already have 30-50 audience audience growth per year but he wants to cement their prescence and find out how to get really big, like Yahoo and Google.
Newhouse raised an interesting question: How do we as traditional media company bring in the wave of citizen activity? He offered the example of a football writer for the Syracuse paper who started a weblog that became widely successful. It was opinionated, and of value to the audience. Newhouse advised the students, “Those of you not doing weblogs should start trying. It will enhance your [job] applications.”
Newhouse said that there are three ways that his websites can interact with blogs. They are about to unleash a weblog tool that will allow eventually anyone (although it will be targeted at first) to have a blog on their site. This is a way of establishing a relationship with weblogs that are not on his site. When a student asked about regulating blogs, Newhouse said that the word “regulate” is an old media word. “I think you have to decide whether you want to be part of the new or the old,” he said.
Advance.net has a network of people that screen for certain things such as racism, obscenities, and harassers. But he did say that he wants to encourage conversation that would not appear normally in the letters to the editor page. Newhouse said that the web is not going to takeover great media entities that are great in their own right, such as Vanity Fair. It is very valid to look at how skills that work on the web will offer many entrepeneraul opportunties that do not require much funding.
He spoke about how successful Teen Vogue has been but said that in trying to make a website to acompany the magazine he found that readers are not interested in reading content on the site. They wanted a place to express their creativity . He said Flip.com will launch to offer fashion and beauty and allow teen girls to create their own content.
Other tips from Newhouse:
- Putting content from magazines on the web leads to lack of use. Unless it was specialized like a trade magazine, it would not create new value.
- In the case of citizen journalism, sometimes quantitiy trumps quality.
- Lots of money is not required to take advantage of what the web offers.
- Your portfolio will be enhanced by having blog-format work on , it will give you a leg up.
- A great website complimenting a great traditional media source should offer something different.
- In the newsroom of NJ.com, there are about 15 people and most of them are packaging content so that people can navigate it.
- We are very early in the game, and the most important thing is to have an audience.
- It doesn’t hurt to know HTML.
- The worst thing out there right now is the negativity climate regarding all of this.
- The more involved you get in the new media stuff, the more you will learn about issues that are facing us all.
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