MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for March 31st :

• The New York Times Plans to Eliminate City Section; Connecticut, New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester, and Escapes May Also Be Affected | The New York Observer -
• CNN in third place in prime time for first time -

MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for March 23rd :

• The Associated Press: Adam Carolla goes from canceled to podcast king -
• How the iPhone 3.0 Will Create a New Mobile Economy -
• Social Media Marketing Budgets on the Rise -
• Newspapers fold as readers defect and economy sours - CNN.com -

MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for March 19th :

• Time Inc.'s new made-to-order magazine lets readers tailor content - Yahoo! Canada Finance -
• How the iPhone could save the newspaper industry : Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech - An interesting take on how Apple's iPhone 3.0 technology can be leveraged for struggling publications to build a new stream of revenue.

MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for March 9th :

• iTunes Celebrity Playlist Become Podcasts…with Tom Jones | Cult of Mac - Looks like iTunes has taken the next step with their “celebrity playlists” and brought them to life with a new Podcast series… at the very least this provides a unique way to gain some perspective on music maybe you haven’t thought about previously, and offers a chance to get some insight from your favorite artists…
• Column: Spinning the Web on the TV Set - TVWeek - News - TV Shows on the Web on the TV, it’s the next reality.
• Seattle paper may shift to online-only: reports - The newspaper business continues to be hit hard, in a sense more of the same that sent The Rocky packing a few weeks ago.
• NBC Is Buoyed by a Matrix of Winners - NYTimes.com - In a time of increasingly diverse audience segments - can an hour long news cast survive? Or does it in fact help the network to reach an even broader audience and extend its brand?

Goodbye Colorado

Today, after 150 years of news coverage the Rocky Mountain News went to the press for the last time.  With the Rocky’s presses coming to a halt, it only highlights the larger issue of the newspaper business and brings to the forefront of our dialogue on the modern media landscape where print media outlets are headed in the future.

Rich Boehne, President and CEO of e.w. Scripps, the parent company of The Rocky Mountain News captures the essence of the situation in his address to the staff of the paper, “…its certainly nothing you did, you all did everything right, but while you were out doing your part, the business model and the economy changed and the Rocky became a victim of that.”

In an unstable economy, coupled with a population that has increasingly become used to obtaining its news and information for free from the internet, it’s a poignant question to ponder: what business model can work for print outlets in this day and age?  Is it something along the lines of the model of cable channels, as Mark Cuban suggested earlier this week, or is it gated walls, which will only allow paid subscribers access to content – a strategy which has been tested by outlets such as the Wall Street Journal.  For the moment, if its not too late already it seems as if more and more outlets are going to turn toward online subscriptions, which is now reportedly being explored by Newsday and The San Francisco Chronicle.  If the industry turns toward that model, the question remains with so much content online is it possible to reverse course and alter the expectations audiences have online and convince them to pay for quality content?

Think about it – it’s a topic we’ll be coming back to in the coming months.  In the meantime, here’s a documentary that The Rocky Mountain News posted on their website today, and it provides a unique perspective as to the value newspapers have on informing and shaping their local communities.  What will provide that communal bedrock moving forward in the digital age?

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for February 27th :

• Cablevision: Newsday Deal Wasn’t (Quite) as Bad as We Feared | Peter Kafka | MediaMemo | AllThingsD - An update on a story we discussed last summer… while Cablevision is notorious for making bad acquisitions and having even poorer management…it seems like Newsday is still in business…for now.
• Google to gobble Twitter » Adotas - How Twitter can be monetized is a big question…can you foresee a day where you’ll update your status right from Gmail?