Media reports say that media professionals are struggling

If you’ve read the latest unemployment figures with just a touch of schadenfreude, then indulge your guilty pleasure no more. Several new reports suggest that media professionals do not have it quite so easy, either.

A feature in the Atlantic asks “Is your job killing you?” After considering the health effects of long hours, working nights and sitting in a cubicle for hours, Brian Fung concludes that “work can be lethal” – although the evidence suggests that the unemployed still have it worse.

Meanwhile, CareerCast, a job website, has released its 2012 Jobs Rated report, and magazine and newspaper reporters evidently have the fourth-worst job in America, ranking 196 on the 200-job list. Only oil rig workers, soldiers, dairy farmers and lumberjacks have it worse, based on criteria such as work environment, stress, physical demands and hiring outlook. According to Victoria Brienza:

For the first time ever, two different media jobs made our Worst Jobs list: Newspaper Reporter and Broadcaster. As the digital world continues to take over and provide on-demand information, the need for print newspapers and daily newscasts is diminishing. To be sure, both jobs once seemed glamorous, but on-the-job stress, declining job opportunities and income levels are what landed them on our Worst Jobs list.

That's good news for event coordinators (ranked 82), receptionists (85) and ad execs (98), though, who landed in the top half of the CareerCast list. Editors made it to 119. I guess we know who they’re taking their frustrations out on. Oh wait, let me fix that before it gets to my editor: on whom they are taking out their frustrations, I mean.

And to add insult to injury, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently pronounced journalists to be outrageously overpaid. And – ouch – unprofitable. Meanwhile, Dimon, who earned $23 million last year, defended the six-figure-plus salaries at his company, which average over $300,000 per employee. Must be nice.

But at least we still have jobs, right?

By Michael Moran Alterio

Congress and courts focus on database protection

Mark Sableman is ABM's information policy counsel.

A key statute that helps businesses protect their private databases is under scrutiny by both Congress and the courts.  Database owners like ABM members are carefully watching the battle between law enforcement authorities seeking to expand the law’s coverage, and employee advocates seeking to narrow its coverage.

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is an anti-hacking law passed by Congress in the wake of computer hacking scares in the 1990s.  It makes it unlawful for anyone to hack into a computer system.  It prohibits copying or use of data by anyone who accessed a computer system through “unauthorized access” or “access beyond the scope of authorization.” 

The CFAA carries civil as well as criminal provisions, and it has long been considered an effective tool for protecting business databases.  For example, if your business maintains its databases on a secure computer network, and an competitor hacks into your system, that is “unauthorized access” and it gives rise to civil CFAA claims.  Similarly, if you have given someone limited access to your computer system, and that person (say, a franchisee, a customer, or a business partner) pries into your system beyond the areas he or she was allowed to access, that too gives rise to CFAA claims.  Although the United States doesn’t have specific legal protection for databases, the CFAA affords businesses fairly good protection against database misappropriation by outsiders.

The recent controversies have arisen because of expansive interpretations of the CFAA’s “beyond the scope of authorization” coverage.  In cases where employees have harvested trade secrets and customer lists from company computers, and then used that information in their subsequent employment, the original employers have brought CFAA claims.  Their theory has been that while the employees were authorized to use the company’s computers, the use they made, gathering secrets for use against the company, was beyond the scope of authorization.  Under this interpretation, “beyond the scope of authorization” covered unauthorized purposes, not just unauthorized areas of the computer system.

Lobbyists for employees have sought to narrow the CFAA to prevent its use against employees.  But their proposed narrowing of the statute could also diminish its usefulness in protecting private databases, and ABM has joined other database companies in opposing the amendment. 

 

Meanwhile, this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in a major case, United States v. Nosal, rejected a broad interpretation of the act (including the purpose-based interpretation of “beyond the scope of authorization”) advocated by the Justice Department.  The court ruled that the CFAA’s “beyond the scope of authorization” language refers to unauthorized areas, not unauthorized purposes.  This en banc ruling by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski is likely to be influential, and, if followed, could well remove the impetus for the proposed statutory amendment, and thereby preserve the CFAA’s protections against database misappropriation by outsiders.

By Mark Sableman

Jack Griffin on the four new building blocks of b-to-b

Jack Griffin is best known as a leader in consumer media, having served as president of Meredith’s National Media Group and CEO of Time Inc. But Griffin, who will be giving a keynote at the upcoming ABM Annual Conference on The Four New Building Blocks of B-to-B, actually began his media career in 1982 as a reporter for a supermarket trade publication called The Griffin Report, and his media philosophy has always been heavily influenced by b-to-b.

“That was an incredible experience covering an industry and learning how to understand an industry sector,” Griffin told ABM in a recent video interview. “I think that b-to-b mentality of knowing the customer and the customer’s business, translates to b-to-c in very direct ways that sometimes aren’t obvious. When I got to Meredith for the second time in 2004, Meredith was very focused on the home category — we were in the midst of a tremendous housing boom but it was clear that it wouldn’t last. We reviewed our position as primarily a print provider and took a b-to-b approach to build Meredith out to a vertically-oriented, surround the customer-approach.”

At ABM’s Annual Conference on April 29, Griffin (now founder of Empirical Media Partners) will talk about the Four Building Blocks of B-to-B and how they aid the “surround the customer approach” of b-to-b. “The customer is now the center of the realm,” said Griffin. “We need to look to our customers, the ability to aggregate that customer, understand that customer through data and ultimately deliver compelling content and solutions as the core organizing principles of what this business is all about.”

The four building blocks offer a framework for how to think about your business going forward, according to Griffin. They include:

1. Audience and data round that audience.
2. Content and the brands around that content.
3. The unique convening and community power of b-to-b.
4. The intersection of social media and mobile. According to Griffin, data is the new media.

“Everything is measurable—the end-user will essentially tell you what he or she is intending to do. Many best-in-class companies are building this business model around the ability to interact with the customer, to get that data, aggregate that data, and to fuse it into their business models and the way they create content. Think about what data does on the buy side. Data gives the advertiser the ability to place message where they want it at any given time. This isn’t a new concept for marketers but it is a new approach for media companies.”

By Matt Kinsman

The Pursuit of Paid Content: Can B-to-B Publishers Afford Not To Charge Online?

According to ABM’s recent Business Information Network numbers, b-to-b industry revenue posted a significant increase in 2011, up 7.2 percent to $26.5 billion. The growth was across every product category tracked, with digital up 22 percent, data services up 6.5 percent and even print beating out trade shows in growth (3.8 percent and 2.2 percent, respectively.

But despite those encouraging numbers, “advertising” is starting to become a dirty word in the investment community. “What I find a little surprising is the more general negativity toward all advertising-supported businesses – print and digital,” wrote former ALM CEO Bill Pollak in a recent blog post. “These savvy investors believe that the upheaval in the advertising business has only just begun, and will swamp traditional carriers of branded print or banner advertising.”

Meanwhile, The Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism recently offered a gloomy forecast, claiming that media is only picking up one new digital dollar for every seven that it loses in print ad sales.

Paid content is one of the solutions to evolving beyond an advertising-driven business. Brian Morrissey at Digiday wrote, “Paul Rossi, managing director of the Americas for The Economist, told me ‘it’s suicide’ for publishers to not charge online. The reason: The online ad system simply cannot support high-quality journalism. The Economist gets $70 CPMs in print and $30-20 online. Rossi isn’t the only one who is clear-eyed about this. Martin Sorrell has said as much, and he’s the head of one of the largest ad-buying firms in the world.”

However, the Economist is one of the rare success stories to date — most paid content strategies have shown mixed results. The New York Times last month halved the number of free stories at its site (good for the outlook of paid content), while The New Republic last week announced it would drop its pay wall limiting archives and comments to print subscribers but making key articles from current issues available to anyone (maybe not so good). Press Plus+ — the start-up from Steve Brill and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz now owned by R.R Donnelley that offers a metered approach for media companies including the New York Times — says almost all of its 285 media partners charge print subscribers a premium for digital access, with papers charging 10 percent on top of print subscriptions for digital access, seeing 90 percent response rates.

Paid content goes to the roots of most business-to-business publishers, whether through old fashioned newsletters, “rich data” or, increasingly, their own subscription/corporate licensed service. Strategies are moving away from the old “push” approach to more targeted, flexible solutions (with renewable revenue streams), such as ALM’s Smart Litigator service. “We like site licenses,” said Pollak at ABM’s Advanced Leadership Program earlier this year. “Right now it’s a license for one product, but the real game for us will be getting licenses for multiple products.”

Of course, paid content requires investment in content creation (something that’s been anathema for many cash-strapped media companies in recent years). As Digiday says of The Economist, “The Economist’s current issue has a 10-page special report on Cuba’s march to embrace capitalism. Rossi allows that’s a fundamentally uneconomic enterprise, hardly something the number crunchers at Demand or HuffPo would think worthwhile. But it’s also what gives The Economist the cachet to charge $120 for a subscription. It won’t discount that for digital media, Rossi said. ‘We don’t start out asking what’s the best ad product,’ he said. ‘We start out asking what’s the best reading product.’”

“Commodity content is going to go away,” said Jack Griffin, founder of Empirical Media Advisors and former president of Meredith’s National Media Group and former CEO of Time Inc. (and the opening keynote at ABM’s upcoming Annual Conference). “What you will be left with is quality content you can’t get anywhere else.”

And while business media companies are pursuing paid content, what’s the hot new revenue source for many business information companies? Advertising.

“In the world of specialized content creation we’re seeing the revival of some greatest hits from the past — what’s old very well might be new again,” says Lucretia Lyons president of Business Valuation Resources and a director of the Specialized Information Publishers Association (and a speaker at ABM’s upcoming annual conference, in which she will be part of a panel with Gordon Crovitz and Bloomberg global head of Web properties Paul Maya discussing “Paid Content Nirvana.”) “Pressure drives innovation and we’re more open-minded about generating revenue from previously untried sources or models. One of the ‘new’ ways of looking at advertising and sponsorships in the specialized b-to-b publishing world directly correlates to the value we deliver in our respective niches. The more words you enter into the Google search bar, the more valuable the results. So the sell side model for us isn’t about getting a message in front of a massively large audience, it’s about getting a product or service in front of, perhaps, 200 ‘hot’ leads. BVR recently hosted a web workshop on Monte Carlo Simulations and landed — for us — a significant sponsorship from a simulation software vendor. We were able to give them 10 minutes during the program to talk about the software at a very advanced level. The rarity of our content has opened fresh dialogue with sponsors and advertisers who demand a clear ROI calculation.”

By Matt Kinsman

Future Cloudy, Try Again Later

In the face of complaints that iPad magazine subscriptions can crowd up all a tablet’s storage space, one solution is to store back issues in the cloud.

Tablet computers, especially Apple’s iPad, are on the steep side of the growth curve. Sales in general are forecast to rise 54 percent in 2012. Use among businesspeople is set to quintuple over the next five years. Tablet users shopping with Apple’s “Newsstand” app are spending $70,000 a day on newspapers and magazines.

So why are tech pundits and media opinionators so cranky about the latest iPad 3? At TG Daily, a columnist says “Yes, the iPad 2 is better than the ‘New’ iPad.” At CNNTech, Mashable writer Lauren Indvik asks, “Why do magazines look so bad on the new iPad?” And Business Insider’s Dylan Love has no question as he explains “Why Magazines Look Terrible On The New iPad.”

One of the issues that bedevils publishers is the iPad 3’s new Retina display. At quadruple the resolution (2,048 by 1,536 pixels vs. 1,024 by 768 pixels), magazine issues built for older iPads can look jaggy, while hi-res magazine folios, optimized for the new screen, look great but require larger file sizes. That’s a problem given the relatively low memory capacities in most tablets. As iPads fill up with every new issue that a magazine subscriber downloads, especially issues filled with video ads and high-res graphic bells and whistles, the problem of bloat increases. The last thing a publisher wants is to be an object of resentment as a subscriber ponders what to delete.

(And to be fair, some less cranky writers are defending the new iPad, saying that the file size issue is manageable.)

Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite will be offering one solution when it becomes available later this year: it gives publishers the ability to manage how the reader stores back issues. For example, a publisher can specify that the three most recent issues of a magazine are stored locally, on the iPad, and the older issues are deleted from the iPad and available through Adobe’s cloud service. The DPS system, according to Adobe’s Lynly Schambers-Lenox, group product marketing manager, digital publishing, offers publishers flexibility in deciding how many issues to store on the tablet and how many to offload to the cloud.

If publishers adopt this solution, they’ll need to push it as a feature, not a bug. Publishers will have to sell this as a space saver, so that when an off-the-grid reader wants an article from four months ago and realizes it has been “deleted” without her permission, she does not get angry.

Does a reader still “own” a back issue of a magazine that lives on the cloud? Did they own it when it was on their iPad just after publication? Intellectual property rights aside, cloud-based storage of back issues -– when it launches -- may be the solution that quiets the critics of app-based publishing.

By Michael Moran Alterio

Tablets Open Readers Up To Longer Stories

When you’re reading on a desktop or laptop, there are always distractions. An email message pops up. Links take you to new windows. A chat icon starts flashing. When you’re surfing on a smartphone, there are constant distracts there, too. It’s annoying to read long articles on tiny screens, and text messages keep coming in. On the other hand, a tablet or e-reader shows you just one thing at a time, with fewer distractions. The whole point of the e-reader is to encourage reading actual books in peace. E-book and tablet tech is nudging users to relax and enjoy a longer read.

Case in point, user statistics show that people who use smartphones for Web browsing spend less time on sites and click away quickly. In comparison, iPad users spend “about 35 percent more time browsing, they view more pages per visit, and they are more likely to be loyal visitors,” according to Metro Media Works. These new tablets are encouraging readers to slow down.

And tablet use is exploding, not only among consumers generally, but among business users. Apple shipped more iPads in the fourth quarter of 2011 than any single manufacturer sold personal computers, double the same pace a year ago. According to a CNet report, businesspeople are quickly adding tablets to their work routine, and it should be easy for Apple to convince enterprise users to adopt them. A new study released this month reports that tablet use among small and medium business owners quadrupled over the past year.

Consider the intersection of the tablet boom with trends like online e-book stores. New technology is steering readers away from top ten lists, quick-hit Web surfing and SEO-friendly headlines toward an old-is-new resurgence of thoughtful long-form journalism. From high end tablets like the iPad to inexpensive e-readers like the Kindle and the Nook, readers are learning to value longer texts and in-depth reporting. And for b-to-b publishers with deep knowledge resources, that may present an opportunity.

For a long time, short snippets of content, search-engine-optimized for catchy headlines and high Google ranks, was the norm for generating Web traffic. Some still say — with more or less snark — that throwing a ton of content online, with little regard for quality or accuracy, is a successful business model.

But now, despite being conditioned to regard the quick hit as the best hit, editors are finding that you can boost Web traffic by running fewer articles. That’s been the case for Salon.com, where year-over-year traffic is up 40 percent as the site has decreased the number of posts it publishes by 33 percent. Salon editor in chief Kerry Lauerman attributes the trend to an emphasis on “high-impact, important stories.”

The same philosophy is driving a new start-up, called Matter. Crowd-sourced through KickStarter (where it raised $100,000 in nine days), the new Web magazine promises to “focus on doing one thing, and doing it exceptionally well. Every week, we will publish a single piece of top-tier long form journalism about big issues in technology and science. That means no cheap reviews, no snarky opinion pieces, no top ten lists. Just one unmissable story.” With media attention from Reuters, Poynter, Mother Jones and more, even if nothing comes of Matter, the idea is certainly
buzz-worthy.

Matter’s micro-payment business model is very similar to the emerging trend of cheap e-books, inspired by the Apple iTunes idea of 99 cent songs. Many writers, self-publishers and now even mainstream publishers are turning to low-cost e-books as a way to drive sales — and given the extremely low overhead, profit margins are high enough to make even the most inexpensive e-books pay off. With no physical distribution or print costs, as e-book stores such as Amazon’s and Apple’s offer 70 percent of the purchase price to publishers, it is relatively easy to make money.

According to the New York Times, short e-books are the long magazine articles of today. Dwight Garner rhapsodizes over the possibilities of Amazon’s short e-book, called Kindle Singles: “Here’s what Kindle Singles actually are: probably the best reason to buy an e-reader in the first place. They’re works of long-form journalism that seek out that sweet spot between magazine articles and hardcover books.”

According to j-prof Wayne MacPhail, Apple’s free e-book creation software has the potential to create a new kind of long-form journalism. He says, “as a journalism instructor, it's iBooks Author that has me most intrigued. … I think iBooks Author could be the platform for a whole new form of rich-media, long-form journalism.”

Another advantage of the long-form piece, according to Matthew Yglesias, is that these articles often remain valuable long after they are written. “Really well-done non-newsy features now have the ability to live forever,” he says, forming a kind of digital back catalog that can continue to generate revenue into the future.

Business-to-business publishers know that tablet browsing is growing in importance, but they do not know what to do about it, a new ABM survey reveals. One possibility, as they explore strategies to ride the coming trend, is to take a look at repurposing the high quality evergreen content they already have in hand, and to consider giving writers and editors the resources they need to create longer, in-depth articles that can thrive in a new media environment of tablets and e-readers.

By Michael Moran Alterio

Don’t Follow Lead Gen Over The Cliff

Paul Miller

By Paul Miller, CEO, UBM Advanced Technology Group
(UBM Electronics, UBM Channel, UBM Canon Media)

From new software “Apps” for mobile devices to social media powerhouses promising anything from peer recommended buyers to local augmented reality solutions that will show you which of your friends are eating in a certain restaurant and what they are thinking of their meal (check out the Oink App!), we are bombarded with new ideas for interacting with customers.

As someone who has spent an entire career in the tech media space and most of that in electronics, I have had the opportunity to see what technology can and will do to many industries from consumer electronics to the factory floor, from communications to medical solutions, and media is not immune. Indeed, information industries are likely to continue to be the most affected by the convergence of computing, communication and consumer technologies. Today, in the b-to-b space, this technology lead disruption is experienced in the areas of “Big Data,” marketing automation and the “democratization of information production” (think blogs, communities, forums, etc.).

These technologies have offered the marketing community a route back to the board room, out of which they were unceremoniously dumped in the late 1990s as the profession was unable to provide accurate measurement for the dollars spent on creative brand building campaigns. With the rise of Google, it was “simple” – you only pay if someone “clicks” on your keyword and ”hey presto” you have an “interested customer”(why else would they come to your website?)

As the “noughties” decade rolled on, it just got better and better for marketers as they could reach customers via the “free” social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Then came the revelation that we were simply driving people to a website that didn’t work well or provide a great customer experience. Millions of dollars of focus group research with sophisticated eyeball tracking and integration of websites with back end CRM systems promised to solve the problem. However, by 2009, the world economy hit a major speed bump and we realized that all of the websites looked the same and all of the “leads” we were generating were hard to measure in terms of quality. Again, technology promises to solve part of the problem with the advent of marketing automation software solutions from Eloqua and Marketo (and a stack of others).

It turns out that strong brands with great content targeted with the right information at the right time with the right software can help us “score” visitors to the website. With the right amount of attention and care, marketing pros can nurture the lead through to sale (and beyond!) – for each dollar invested in marketing we can drive $5 of sales…marketing is back!

However, as always, the overhype of each new technology is bound to be followed by a trough of disillusionment. When I have seriously questioned customers on if they can truly measure sales of marketing dollars and, if they can, how about we media companies get to see two dollars for every
five we are measured to create, it turns out that the measurements are pretty rudimentary despite all the technology- who gets the credit in a complex BtoB purchase? Is it the first generator of the lead of the last click?

The analogy I often use is that this holiday season, I was at the movies with my family and we saw the trailer for the new Peter Jackson film – The Hobbit – which will hit cinemas in December 2012. No doubt we will see further trailers, film reviews, advertisements, billboards and, eventually search on Fandango for local showings and, buy the tickets. What marketing tactic actually created the purchase of 4 tickets to the show??Which has the most influence? Does Fandango get all the credit? What if my trusted friend tells me that he saw a pre-release version and it is awful and I decide not to see it after all?

The part of the story that I have missed in this blog (and the part that is nearest and dearest to my heart) is that “traditional” b-to-b media companies have been written off as “yesterday’s thing” – in response, the industry’s approach has been to (over)promise leads to its ever hungry customer base. In my opinion, this has been done at the expense of the audiences we serve – bombarding readers with e-mail invitations to webinars that they do not want to go to or for products in which they have little interest. This focus on generating leads for advertisers risks destroying the one thing we have as an industry – the trust of our readers.

Of course, generating leads is where the money is today, so none of us can ignore the revenue potential, BUT there is so much more to our offering than bludgeoning our database to death with offers they don’t want (maybe even our own products!). We are experts at creating content on subjects that our customers dearly need help with, we can sell our expertise on our readers to customers and help create products that the reader and advertiser benefit from and, even if these fail, we can join with our customers and sell our readers products directly – now that’s lead generation with immediate payback!

I expect the chaos to continue, content to remain king and engagement as queen – I also expect that technology will continue to offer solutions connecting buyers and sellers – however, destroying the relationship that we have with our audience is simply a disaster waiting to happen, and this article in Fast Company really captured the value of trust for me.

Paul Miller was appointed Chief Executive Officer of UBM Advanced Technology Group which is comprised of UBM Electronics, UBM Channel and UBM Canon Media in January 2012. Prior to that Miller served as CEO of UBM Electronics and UBM Canon (Publishing) following the acquisition of Canon Communications LLC in September 2010. UBM Electronics was formed by the merger of UBM’s EE Times Group with the Canon Communications electronics business. Miller also served as CEO of UBM’s EE Times Group, a global leader in media and marketing services for the electronics industry. In addition, Miller is a board member of the eMedia Asia Joint Venture (a Global Sources and UBM joint venture producing EE Times print and online and events in China, Korea, Taiwan and ASEAN) and a board member of Design & Reuse, an IP Catalog information company headquartered in Grenoble, France.

B-To-B Media Salaries Forecast To Rise 3 Percent In 2012

The economy is getting better, and media companies are keeping step with this overall trend, according to the 2011 ABM/MPA Media Compensation Survey released last month. As the most recent unemployment numbers point to an improving economy, salaries at business-to-business media companies are rising as well. Compensation packages that had been reduced to record lows are now rebounding to mid-2000 levels.

The increases, however, are relatively modest, in line with the slow recovery. Base salaries continue to see modest gains, with 2011 and 2012 projected merit budget increases of 3 percent across all employee groups. CEO base salaries are also up about 3 percent, although total cash compensation is up 17 percent. Total cash compensation is the sum of annual salary, bonus and other cash compensation payments from variable pay programs.

Publisher base salaries are up about 3 percent, with total cash compensation up 20 percent, based on data from 54 publishers at 11 ABM member companies. Editor base salaries are up 4 percent on average, with total cash compensation of 15 percent, based on data from 178 editors at 15 ABM companies.

The 2011 American Business Media / Magazine Publishers of America Compensation Survey Report was issued by Towers Watson, a global consulting firm with special expertise in human resources. Including data from about 50 companies and 7,400 employees in 175 job titles, the survey reveals the latest compensation trends for media professionals. Only participating members are eligible to receive the full report. However, ABM members can still participate in the survey and receive a copy of the final results (although it will not include their data). To do so, contact Towers Watson compensation analyst Kevin Kraus at 914-289-3389 or e-mail kevin.kraus@towerswatson.com.

Posted by Michael Moran Alterio based on data provided by Towers Watson.

Who Owns a Column Name?

A recent dispute between the New York Times and the Huffington Post raised the intriguing issue of who owns the name of a blogger’s column—the blogger, or his or her original publisher?

Lisa Belkin edited the Times’s parenting blog, then titled “Motherlode.” She moved to Huffington Post, where the blog was rechristened “Parentlode.” That change wasn’t enough for the Times, which sued on trademark and unfair competition theories.

After a little huffing and puffing about editorial freedom and the lack of any credible consumer confusion, Arianna Huffington waved a white flag (stylish, we are sure) and announced a contest to rename the Belkin blog once more.

The underlying issue is an intriguing one. Absent an agreement, who owns the name of a column or blog? Under standard law, the issue becomes one of consumer understanding—whether consumers understand the name to identify the publisher or the writer. The Times contended that the column developed loyalty because of its association with the Times, and it took that Times aura with it when Ms. Belkin went to HuffPo. (And the Times saw little distinction between Motherlode and its near-synonym Parentlode.) Ms. Belkin claimed that her readers were too intelligent to be “thinking you are somehow reading the New York Times when you are here at the Huffington Post.”

HuffPo’s decision to change the name rather than fight tells you that Times had at least a prima facie case. In these days in which reporters, columnists and bloggers can easily move a few pixels away to a competitor, publishers would be well advised to protect their interests by contract. For any writer who you promote, who may attract a loyal following, consider non-compete agreements, and explicit written policies or contracts covering even such details as who owns the column name.

Posted by Mark Sableman
MSABLEMAN@thompsoncoburn.com

Media Companies, Facebook and Monetization

BPA Worldwide recently polled visitors to its website about the most effective social media channel to market a company's brand. Not surprisingly, Facebook garnered the most votes as the best tool for marketing companies’ products and services.

But while Facebook remains the popular choice for both commercial and private applications, at least one industry pundit suggests media owners aren’t using the channel to its fullest potential. According to Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at New York University who recently addressed the MPA’s American Magazine Conference, “The reason you’re having trouble making money is because you’re not relevant - profits are an indicator of relevance. Not a brand in here is managing capital allocation correctly in relation to Facebook.”

To read the full story with the rest of Galloway’s comments, click here. The question now is whether media companies will respond to the challenge.

What do you think?

In the meantime, here is the full question posed by BPA and the ranking of survey results: What has been the most effective social media channel to market your company's brand?

1. Facebook (43.5% of respondents)
2. LinkedIn (21.7%)
3. Twitter (19.6%)
4. Other (8.7%)
5. YouTube (6.5%)