There is plenty to go by:

Gawker Media (40MM UVs / month*)
HuffPo (28.5MM)
Politico Group (6MM)
The Daily Beast (3MM)
RealClearPolitics (1.5MM)
True/Slant (1.1MM)
The Awl (276k)

(* All metrics from quantcast.com)

These properties represent tens of millions in (the people formerly known as the) audience every month. They produce a significant amount of content and coverage. And they’re not all solely reliant on banners and ad networks. Outside of their financial aspects*, what I’d like to hear is Media Thinkers’ deeper-dive into their qualitative successes as journalistic, audience-building and “new advertising” endeavors.  What’s the opinion re work done to date? What have we learned re the Best Ways Forward? In my opinion, it’s past time for ambivalence about what the New News might look like – it would be excellent to hear the Media Thinkers recognize some winners and also-rans, pick some directions, place bets and make recommendations.

(* -Understood “outside of financials” leaves gaping holes – we can cover those in other discussions; surely there’s enough to go by regarding models and content, audience and quality.)

The general message of the NYT piece was similar to the ones WSJ and WaPo gave when they covered our initial public launch in April 2009: “this new news outfit looks impressive; who the h*ck knows if what they’re doing makse any sense or will work.” Coverage of other New News startups have had essentially the same message. A year later, my hope is it’s not unreasonable to request some more informed opinion from the big players regarding work accomplished and which are doing Good Things worth examining and emulating.

There have been and continue to be tremendous challenges to overcome, but there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere … Again leaving the financials aside for now, which new journalism efforts are getting interest and traction with audiences, critics, advertisers / media planners / buyers?

Place your bets -

It’s reasonable* to expect a harder look at some of these and make some bets. Who has been rising to the challenges? Who is doing Good Work out there in the news space? Call it.

(* – and self-serving, yes: but I’m not the only “self” in this equation.)

The pie’s smaller. The business model is disrupted. The audience is fragmented and – mostly, at the moment – don’t care about quality (“Really, Wall St. Journal, you want to charge me to see this article about Goldman Sachs? BobAndDougSaveMainSt.com has a Goldman article for free …”). There is ZERO impedence to switching / ~zero brand loyalty.

Straddling the fence and saying “Hmm; interesting – wonder what’ll happen?” isn’t an appropriate position to take in 2010. Again, the jury’s generally out where financial success is concerned; but what of non-financial success? Who’s doing things of interest? If even only opinions, I’d like to see them stated: “These folks are producing quality work; these others are accelerating the race to the bottom.” There’s art and science out there to be meaningfully critiqued – Call it. (Please)

They are different - (Image by tillwe via Flickr)

NewsTilt – a new news platform backed by YCombinator – launches today. Word of their launch has been crackling on the wires (well, some of the wires) for a few weeks and they’ve been getting good ink.
From their press release

“In the future, news will be all about the journalist and their community,”
…
By handling distribution, advertising, and myriad technical issues, NewsTilt will free-up its stable of professional journalists to focus specifically on their craft, and interact with readers just as bloggers have in the past.

And from their site at newstilt.com

NewsTilt is the platform for the new model of journalism, which is centered around the journalist. We handle everything that is hard about building your brand online, leaving the writing and reporting to you.

I obviously like what NewsTilt is planning to do – I’ve been doing it myself for the past 20 months. The more the merrier, as Lewis said earlier, and “Nothing will work, but everything might” as C. Shirky did even earlier than that.

Comments on NewsTilt’s pre-announcement on Hacker News included references to us at True/Slant. As did comments on their press release. So, too, did the nice write up they got on TechCrunch. And also a bunch of stuff across Twitter. One or both of the Founders have not been keen on these comparisons. This is natural: we’re biased to think that what we create is its own precious snowflake. We felt that bias when people compared True/Slant to others who’d come before us.

They will be different: we’re different teams with different sets of experiences, different goals and outlooks. Even with much of the same basis, seemingly small tweaks can be huge differences and differentiators. I look forward to seeing those from NewsTilt.

What’s more interesting to me is the sameness of how NewsTilt (I’m really having a hard type keying in that name correctly … I’ll go buy the typo domain in case they get huge quickly …) is going about their business:

• Quality journalism created by credible sources
• Focus on the journalist / Contributor / author / proprietor / “Brand” (apologies, Caitlin, et al.)
• A simple platform that abstracts all the technology and administration and distribution, etc. so the journlist / Contributor can focus on writing and community

Focus from the outset is on quality of community member participation, too. It’s been amusing and satisfying to watch all the recent hubbub about comments, boosting the signal-to-noise ratios in web discussions, in making sure community members have a bit of skin in the game so they’re not simply flying in, tossing a molotov cocktail and flying back out. We’ve planned and done all those things from the beginning. And, again, there’s satisfaction that goes along with that. (N.B. I wish that satisfaction came with a side of “BIG FAT CHECK,” but we take what we can get …).

Another point of interest Prof. Rosen touches on is the bias inherent in journalism. We’re people; we can observe and report, but there’s always going to be a Slant or a Tilt to it; the hope is, there’s also some True or News, too.

Pick some Topics of Interest

We slice and dice our offerings by Contributor and Topic. Our site search helps find what you like across all of articles and conversations. There are a bunch of ways the Community can share articles of interest, and we’ve seen steady growth in visitors from Reddit, Facebook, StumpbeUpon and the like. A recent way we’re working to hook up our Communitiy with articles and Contributors of interest is Suggests.

Through Suggests, True/Slant Members can select Contributors they already know they like and allow us to suggest other Contributors who write about similar subjects or reference similar external news sources (e.g. NPR, The Onion, the Wall Street Journal). Suggests’ approach is similar to iTune’s “Genius” or building up preferences in Pandora.

See which Sources speak to you

Genius and Pandora have a fundamental advantage here: music is easier to categorize than news: music has qualities – tempo, dynamics, instrumentation - and accepted categories / genres – rock, deth metal – that can be analyzed and sourced from existing pools of info (the Music Genome Project; Gracenote). From this, inferences can be made (“If you like “The Ghost in You” by “The Psychedelic Furs,” you may also like “Less than Zero” from “Elvis Costello.” If I’m right, give “Zero” a thumbs-up; then I can make refinements to future suggestions.”) News doesn’t have that, exactly: it’s more difficult to find similarities between Bob Herbert and Claudia Deutsch, F. Paul Wilson and Penn Jillette than between The Beatles and Squeeze.

Suggests’ slight twist offers an alternate – and for many, more natural – way to find the news that suits you best. If you want to dive in by Topic or sources cited, you can do that. Suggests is constantly updated as new articles and Contributors appear on True/Slant. Sign in and give Suggests a try – a few hundred Members have already, and you can change selections as often as you’d like, whenever you like.

Rest easy, Bob.

The Kindle app on the iPhone is slick and handy. It’s TBD whether this app makes it through Apple’s screening process for iPad: Amazon competes directly with Apple’s bookstore and cuts them out of the loop completely when you buy books through the Kindle app. Amazon’s hedging its bets noting Kindle runs on other “tablet computers” they’re expecting to hit the market post-iPad.

Apple’s expanding its bookstore; Amazon’s got a big head start – if the Kindle and Nook apps are accepted, their combined titles will all be available, too. Tens of thousands of Project Guttenberg titles will also be freely available. Padders will have access to the whole shebang.

Choose from the photos Vogue selects or upload your own

Click the "crosshairs" to find the nearest retailers carrying the look you like

On the iPhone’s screen, Vogue’s shopping app is pretty and cool; with more available space on a tablet, it has a better chance to be useful with added depth and detail to the fashions promoted. There will be more opportunities to reference more – and more-immersive – editorial and advertising from the magazine, too.

The current app store gold rush – a $500 million per year business in the US – hasn’t nearly peaked. The iPad’s bigger screen and all-around beefier specs (faster processor, more storage and expansion capabilities) bring more possibilities to more developers – and consumers, players, interactors. And that’s just Apple - Google ’s Android Market is coming on strong, and Android OS is designed to run on phones, netbooks, and set-top boxes.

The whole “lean-in” vs. “lean-back” experience is yet to be tested on a mass scale: will users interact with these devices more like they do with a laptop, or will they find themselves consuming more passively? Where and what people do with these next-gen tablet computers is difficult to envision completely today because we’re not already immersed in it. The way we engage with our news and entertainment will change and be changed by the halo of products and habits developed around them.

Update 1:  Sony’s dropping the price of their e-reader just in time for iPad’s launch. Price wars are good for you.

Update 2: Here’s a look at some of the initial “magazines” to be offered on the iPad. It includes a tool from Zinio that lets publishers of all sizes – bloggers, even – format for and take functional advantage of the new tablet computer.

Google’s Android mobile platform was acceptable to Apple when it was mostly a concept OS – even the first few phones that arrived with Android weren’t much threat. With Motorola’s Droid and GOOG’s ‘own’ Nexus One, all that’s changed.

photo by missha @ flicker

We understand how hyped the iPhone is; it’s also rapidly become a major revenue-generation engine for Apple. Hardware sales, fees from AT&T and after-market App Store sales make the device a multi-billion dollar business on its own.

The well-covered sniping continues to escalate, with most barbs coming – so far – out of Apple’s offices. One interesting bit is if there’s anything to rumors that Apple may be changing the default search engine on Safari from Google to Bing.

Bing’s been making headway in search engine popularity – taking share mostly from players other than Google, but growing still. Safari usage isn’t huge, but it’s ~100% of the iPhone market and an important chunk of desktop users, too.

Google’s working their way into our living room and perhaps forcing Apple to spend some more time polishing their AppleTV. AppleTV’s a decent product. Like Boxee and Roku, it’s a few humps away from being a very cool, widely-used product. Google’s entrance into the market is sure to address some of those humps directly or otherwise. Both companies continue to work with music, movie and technology providers to improve the experience. Wins all-around for consumers.

Google’s Chrome browser and OS have already had impact on Safari and OS X: all four offerings are focusing on speed and sveltness as opposed to features and bloat – this is a clear Win for users.

The key battleground remains mobile:

Apple’s Mobile Me, coupled with their phone, offers a well-unified experience for people who want email, voice mail and file storage (photos, docs, etc.) everywhere they go. Google offers much of this in a not-yet-so-polished state. Improvements there will benefit those of us who already want these services and make it more compelling to those who don’t yet realize they do.

As the Android App market continues to grow, it’s going to force Apple’s hand to relinquish a bit more of the control they hold over their App Store. Improved hardware from Google means more significant iPhone updates. All around, their escalations mean improvements – and a show – we get take in and enjoy.

Image by meg and rahul via Flickr

The Pew Foundation’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s 2010 survey paints in some grim hues for most news orgs: only 15% of audiences surveyed would pay for their news; nearly 80% don’t click through* ads.

We’re OK, though:

the commentary and discussion aspect of media, which adds analysis, passion and agenda shaping, is growing – in cable, radio, social media, blogs and elsewhere.

via There Is Literally No Way to Make Money Selling News – journalismism – Gawker.

And Gawker commenter “sgidge” brings us all our Ray of Hope:

Plan to Revive News Media:

1. Let news die

2. Let world fall into chaos and uninformed confusion

3. Let all computers be destroyed in apocalypse

4. Start news media again

* Also, “michaelduff” reminds us all that, just because online’s the only medium where advertisements can elicit immediate, direct and measurable responses doesn’t mean that response is the sole measure of efficacy (right on, “michaelduff”!):

Why does an ad have to be clicked on to be considered effective?

If I see an ad for Domino’s pizza or Tide with Bleach I’m likely to recognize and think about those products just like I would if I saw a commercial, a billboard or a print ad.

I don’t need any extra information about my pizza or my laundry detergent. There’s no reason to click on it, but the ad still made an impression on me.

Why isn’t that good enough?

Outside the funny, the survey’s got plenty to make you worried – e.g. of the top 9 original news content sites Pew cited, 5 of them produce less than 50% of their own original news content; and some to make you hopeful – e.g. international stories were covered better than ever online; audiences are growing and the ability to measure them and their preferences is improving.

But no one’s saying it’s going to be anything but a scratching, clawing scrap to find a winning – or even marginally-sustainable – formula for making a go of it in the news space. It makes for an interesting challenge, but sometimes the apocalypse of uninformed confusion doesn’t sound like such a bad way out.

And Wired on the iPad looks gorgeous already:

Nieman’s got an interesting and informative take re getting in the game. Regarding one of their suggestions, we’ve already been doing a fine job here:

Work with marketers to invent new ways to interact with customers: to facilitate conversations, to blend news, social media and brand messages, to actually sell stuff and facilitate transaction — in short, to leverage those new relationships of trust into brand new streams of revenue.

In fact, the head of one of the largest agencies in the world has seen plenty he admires regarding our Ad Slants.

The new form factor and actual usage profile – where and what people do with the iPad – make possible things that are difficult to envision today because we’re not already immersed in it. The way we engage with our news and entertainment changed from print to the web, from the desktop to the phone, from browser to Kindle and Nook. It’ll change again with the iPad and not just for iPad users, but the entire halo of products and habits developed around it.

Richer advertising means more possibilities for ad sales and related revenue streams – sales commissions, advertorial, video shopping. A better editorial experience means subscription possibilities, too. Your local paper and favorite magazines have work to do: How to charge (monthly?), what to charge ($2? $10?) and other specifics are To Be Determined. Condé plans to have Wired, GQ and Vanity Fair ready for the iPad by summer, so determining quickly is imperative.

Image by jared via Flickr

The core concept is this: links of interest shared by one friend get clicked-though by others. As of this writing, links to stories posted on Fb are clicked through by friends 3.5% of the time.  (perspective: links on Google News are clicked through .5% of the time; ads – text or banner – are clicked through between .1 – and 1% of the time – 3.5% is a significant improvement).

Facebook, from the outset, has been interested in – and working toward – “graphing” your friends and relations: Who do you know and how do you know them? “Which of those relations yield the most clicks?” is a new area of interest.

News organizations pay attention when the “What are my friends reading?” question is answered with new visitors. And once you nearly quadruple Google’s success rate at something, you can bet interest is well-piqued.

The Huffington Post has made way for readers to share every HuffPo piece they look at:

At HuffPo Social News … Facebook users can see what their friends have been reading and exchange stories and comments with them.

A special report on social networking: Global swap shops | The Economist

We take a more curated approach: True/Slant’s shared news links are in the form of “Headline Grabs” that Contribs share with their community. A core driver of True/Slant is interest in the Contributor: our platform is built around Contributors and their community members. Contributors here have complete control of the stories appearing on their site. We provide tools, distribution, and guidance; Contribs provide their PoV, hard work and devoted community.

HedGrabs are a simple way for Contributors to share what they’re reading; the idea is “If you like Mark’s writing, you might also be interested in what Mark’s reading.” We currently get about the same clickthrough rate Google Reader does. I bet we can do better - We need to find more creative ways to get those shared news links in front of the community.

It could also be interesting to see what some community members were reading, too. We have 50,000 members and more than a million monthly visitors – how do we get them more involved? Going back to our Contributor-centric model, we could enable Contribs to say “This is an especially interesting member of the community. I’d like to see what else she’s reading.” And it would be interesting to see how the rest of our community responded to what was being shared.

With Google’s forays into social news and clickthroughs, we’ll want to get moving.

Sites can let nonpaying readers see the top of an article, while only paying readers see the whole thing; they can allow unlimited reading of certain articles, while charging for others; they can charge by the month or by the click; they can limit free reading to a certain number of articles a month; they can treat readers differently depending on their location; they can charge a single price or have a tiered system; they can give print subscribers free access or charge them, too.

Some News Outlets Ready to Try Charging Online Readers

One Publisher in Pennsylvania is taking advantage of that flexibility and baby-stepping toward charging for some of their content:

In Lancaster, publisher Steinman Enterprises will charge readers outside the circulation area for access to obits, starting with a certain number free and then requiring a fee.

Journalism Online’s Private Beta Goes Public; First Press+ Screenshots

With all of the options available, it’s hopeful some of the experimentation will yield positive results: there are a lot of us who’d love to see more direct, monetary value from the work that goes into creating and publishing news, opinion and entertainment online.

Newsday’s underwhelming results for “pure-play” subscription sales can be instructive: they’re lucky enough to have Cablevision and newspaper customers to serve, but the lack of paid subscribers to newsday.com outside of those customers shows the need to offer more tangible value that’s not easily available elsewhere.

There are technical issues to be worked out still – Search Engine indexing for content placed behind paywalls chief among them. Paywalls can have the effect of “hiding” authors from their community and decimating readership. Google has been offering to work with newspapers and other publishers in this regard. People working the baby-steps is a Good Sign.

Image by uhuru1701 via Flickr

While direct monetary compensation is good to hope for, a larger hope is that publishers aren’t counting on direct subscription payments offering substantial returns. Some returns would be great; creativity to create other streams are well-advised.

Another hope is that the lure of direct subscription revenue (a model we know and love) doesn’t prevent the deeper dive into creative new models that aren’t as well-known. Unproven models will stay that way until time and effort is put in to prove them. Ideas like rewards for frequent readers – e.g. getting a coupon for a free coffee upon clicking through the 10th story this month – is something that can be implemented alongside requests for payment. Popping ads from local businesses based on geography, number or types of articles read, answering survey questions can all work. Even simple “badges” – like “Most Helpful Answer” and “Comment of the Day” have been effective at building a dedicated membership.

Encouraging deeper engagement between author and community will yield direct benefits (authors get read; community members find and relate to voices they like); beyond asking those members to shell out directly, an engaged audience is also something of value to other publishers, advertisers, local businesses, and players we haven’t yet considered. A great way to see what works is getting ideas out in front of your membership, see what resonates and tweak the next ideas based on that feedback.