"Out of Print" by Eric Alterman

For those of you following the trials and tribulations of the evolving news media, another great read is a recent article in the New Yorker, "Out of Print" by Eric Alterman.

25 Most Valuable Blogs

On March 26th, 24/7 Wall Street published its analysis of the 25 Most Valuable Blogs. It's an amazing list of new media that have been largely built in the last three-to-five years. In most sectors, technology (TechCrunch), Politics (Huffington Post), Media (Gawker) these blogs are now driving the news cycle for both online bloggers and off line print journalists. It's clear that this trend is only the beginning and the value of these and other blogs should continue to move up and to the right.

State of the News Media

Much has been written about the "State of the News Media" report published in late March by the Project for Excellence in Journalism so I won't spend time restating any of the obvious. Suffice it to say that, as we all know, disruption is overtaking traditional media and it won't be long before we consume all of our news digitally. This shouldn't be any surprise to those of us who work closely with the media and technology; in terms of a growing transition away from print, that train has left the station.
What I find most interesting about this report is the section "The Future of Advertising". This should be on the "must read" section of all practicing marketing professionals. It gives a concise analysis of the recent media trends from an advertisers perspective. And, talks about the dramatic shift in ad dollars to the Internet which is being preceded by the growing amount of time consumers spend online each day.
Most interesting, from a marketing services perspective, is the following:

"This ability to get much more granular data and the pressure felt by chief marketing officers to justify their ad dollars have made ad spending accountability the No. 1 priority among marketers today.
“ 'Accountability has gone from a buzzword to something that is much more expected in marketing and advertising spend,” says Matt Freeman, CEO of Tribal DDB, a digital offshoot of the ad agency DDB Worldwide, part of Omnicom Group. “That has led to a client shift to more addressable media.” More addressable media usually means anything digitally trackable, from online display ads to offline ads that ask cell phone users to text-message the advertiser to win a prize. Adds Denise Warren, chief advertising officer of The New York Times Media Group, “The [chief marketing officer] has to really show that their marketing spend is delivering results.' "

The challenge for all of us is to figure out how to measure the results of the services we provide in this brave new world.