Newspass: Why Google’s paywall plans may just work

by Matthew Buckland

Google has been quietly testing a new paywall system for publishers it is calling “Newspass”. According to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Google has been piloting the service with publishers in Italy.


The search giant will apparently launch “an integrated payment system” allowing users to buy news content with just “one click”. Newspass would allow publishers to use a single infrastructure for Web, mobile and tablet computers to monetise their content.
Importantly, La Repubblica reports that consumers will have a single log-in across a multitude of news sites that would be flexible enough to accommodate various kinds of payments, including long-term subscriptions and one-time micropayments. It would be a one-click payment for access, not too dissimilar from Google Checkout.

Paywalling systems on news sites have been controversial for a better part of a decade. There is justified scepticism about whether they work or not. A handful of publications around the world, largely in the specialist finance field, have got it more-or-less right, but for the most part, paywalls have not been a success. [...]

Read full article on www.memeburn.com/ 

The keys to managing and leading people and firms in the new age

Story by: Monique Senekal
Editing by: Francis Mdlongwa

Consultative and empathetic leadership, forging alliances to create economies of scale and of scope, embracing innovation, being communicative and balancing value creation for customers are emerging as key success factors of effective management in the digital age.

Modern management theory concurs with the new role of a human resources manager: to be proactive in managing change in an organisation. More and more, these managers need to act as strategists and contribute to the financial bottom line.

In the digital age, the modern HR manager needs to understand that the people of an organisation could be a key source of competitive advantage. As such, he/she needs to recruit, retain and retrain only the most talented people to ensure strategic management.

However, many top managers of companies who still follow traditionalist business models, even in change management, still prefer to maintain their control over subordinates and often dumb down any form of creativity. In addition, many executives supervising HR managers don’t see the need for drastic change either.

This is where the approach to media leadership training run by Rhodes University’s Sol Plaatje Institute for Media Leadership (SPI) differs: we integrate cutting-edge management theory into our practical training programmes and promote the need to embrace change management in all our learning and teaching.

The Essentials of People Management (EOPM), which took place at the SPI from 31st May to 4 June this year, focused specifically on the challenges of leading and managing diverse groups of people in a rapidly changing industry.

By the end of the week, participants agreed that great weight should be given to HR Orientation, and effective Change and Performance management in the workplace.

Thandisizwe Mgudlwa, a freelancer who contributes to Independent Newspapers Limited, explains why he now appreciates the importance of investing in staff orientation:

“When I came here, I thought I knew much about people management, but I knew nothing. I am taking back the shared experiences, education and skills learnt, in particular the importance and processes of HR orientation. In my ten years working in the media industry, I’ve never really been given that opportunity to understand the philosophy, culture and the history of the organisations I have worked for. Now I understand that it is my right, as an employee, to demand that the HR department and other relevant departments explain these until I understand.”

Jimmy Dhlamini, Station Manager at Thetha Fm, echoes these views:

“Orientation is key; employers need to ensure that the process of orientation is taken forward. There is much that media practitioners need to learn in terms of properly orientating people.”

Many young talented people today prefer to work for start-ups; promising undertakings rather than an established company because they like the entrepreneurial challenge and tremendous career opportunities. Two of our EOPM short course delegates, both relatively young, have left the SABC because they say they were fed up with top management who relentlessly “crushed” their creative spirit. They explain that top management often exclude subordinates in the decision-making process because they (management) want to maintain the status quo.

Nobathembu Kani, a former SABC radio producer, explains what the role of HR in change management should be:

“The greatest insight I have gained is that the vision and mission (of the organisation) should be clearly communicated with your staff, especially when change is taking place. We cannot only be told to do things, blind-folded. We need to understand and share the vision and mission; I speak from experience! Transparency should be in place. HR should take a more active role in the management of staff rather than simply playing a consultant role to the other departments. Motivation is very important as well; remuneration is not only monetary.”

Kani says doing this course has encouraged her to pursue her ideals in any organisation:

“Now, not only am I fully aware of how I fit into the organisation but I also see how I can be an element of change. I feel empowered.”

These EOPM delegates may occupy different positions in their respective organisations, they may be managing one or more people and have varying powers of authority, but they all agreed that the sharing of experiences and problem-solving techniques was one of the most rewarding aspects of the just-ended EOPM.

Bultcha Teguest Yilma, co-owner, Managing Director and Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Ethiopian-based Capital weekly newspaper, provides further insight:

“I now realise, very importantly, that each department needs a customised Performance Management form; I cannot expect that every department fill out the standardised form because each department has a different role to play, with staff that have different job descriptions, goals and needs.”

Another key learning area for delegates is the importance of effective communication in order to achieve the goals of the organisation.

Yilma notes:

“I now know that effective and continuous communication is crucial; you may think you have agreed on a common goal, but people forget or get side-tracked; so time and time again you need to set up follow-up mechanisms – reiterate, revise and re-evaluate those goals to make sure everyone is on the same path.

“Also, I don’t have a management background, I have an economics background. So in taking part in this course, I now understand why I fight with my Finance Manager who is also my HR manager. Now I understand it may not be because of a competence problem, but rather an ability problem. Now I know I really need to hire an HR person.”

For Besizizwe (Bheki) Mdhluli, Communications Officer at Naledi Municipality, the most important lesson on the course was retaining and refitting experienced staff:

“I’ve come to realise that in the changing media landscape what is important is that you don’t just retrench staff members, but seek alternative positions for them in the workplace so that you can retain (seasoned) workers.”

Often delegates who come on our short courses feel inspired to transfer the lessons they have learnt from SPI to their organisation. Mdhluli plans on organising a formal presentation:

“When I am back at my organisation, I will speak to my manager, try to organise a sort of conference to teach what I have learnt on this course to the handful of people I manage, and to the rest of my organisation.”

Some delegates simply feel inspired to be better relationship builders.

Denise Mhlanga, Editorial Assistant/Journalist at LiveOutLoud Magazine, explains:

“You definitely need to know yourself as a manager; your strengths and weaknesses. Also, don’t assume you know the needs and wants of your employee; talk to them, ask questions.”

SPI believes in the importance of continuous management training to achieve strategic awareness and to link strategic thinking with implementation. It is a requirement for all large companies as employees cope with new ways of doing business.

Rupert Murdoch's paywall at the Times may not be a disaster

by Peter Preston, The Observer  

Those who make their livings in outer cyberspace, the wizards of web wisdom, fear the worst. Rupert Murdoch's bold new paywalls, now in construction around the Times and Sunday Times sites, are not going to work. Who'll pay £2 a week for this mush of generally available news, rather pompously decked out to look like an "elite" printed paper on your laptop?

But talk experience and human nature as well. Experience in print tells us that newspapers can be different. The Sun and the Times live on different planets. And human nature often dictates a bit of something different, too, not more of the same. The "simple choices" the gurus espy are more complicated already.

So, once I've stumped up cash for access, I don't necessarily look at paywalled paper newspaper sites in the same old digital way. I may read them as I would a print newspaper. I'm not clicking around, adding page view to page view, following a tale that interests me from site to site. Consistency counts. My habits have changed because I've paid good money. The stuff behind the wall looks like a newspaper and basically exists to be read as an electronic newspaper. There's a certain logic here.

These would-be Wapping wonders aren't intended for hardcore surfers with time to spare (so they can blog and tweet for hours on end). They're a 20-minute scan before you leave home to work, maybe an iPhone read on the train, then a point of reference during the day. They are cannily intended to act as familiar, text-heavy friends, bringing a predictable view that suits you, alongside the possibility of direct contact with those who write the words and take the pictures. They are not – repeat, not – competitors in some doomed race against video-rich broadcasting sites.

Retro in look and thinking? Perhaps: but a paper like the Times, bathed in "Daily Register" nostalgia, royal engagements and next year's term dates at Shrewsbury school, already knows a good retro pitch when it sees one. Moreover, with 125,000-plus copies already sold to regular subscribers who will get their website access for free, the audience size potentially involved isn't at all dusty.

Of course the numbers prepared to pay won't be anything like the numbers of unique browsers delivered by the leading free sites of other nationals. See the Mail racing to 40,500,000 in April, more than 8m ahead of the Guardian and Telegraph – that's 75% up year-on-year. It's amazing what a shrewdly assembled string of celebrity pictures can achieve on the net. The sudden swings and roundabouts leave print fluctuations far behind.

But those big unique numbers don't spell big money rolling in. They may remain the basic industry standard measurement for advertisers, a seemingly mountainous pile of visits to build ad rates on, yet in fact the number of surfers pausing long enough to buy anything on the web from newspaper sites is hugely more limited: about 85% never click on display ads, according to one recent US survey.

It's engaged readers who count – those who trust you and return time and again, then spend some of their cash on that stable relationship. And here's where so much of the chat about Murdoch's gamble swings way off beam. Just like the print battle between his Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, this one is about ad revenues, not soaring circulation.

Murdoch may still spend millions cutting cover prices on his soaraway Sun, but big numbers aren't the issue. So perhaps he'll lose 95% or more of his unique browsers behind the new wall. So 19.5 million out of 20 million may stay away. So what? The hard question is how much those 95% are worth, and whether they can ever generate enough cash to help keep traditional newspapers in business.

If they can't, that means they're useless drugs, astronomical totals of nothing much, signifying even less that matters. Treat a £2 a week fee as proof of commitment, though, and you engage advertisers' attention immediately (just as you do via reader clubs, bargain offers and all the sweeteners in such current Fleet Street demand). Mix in the Times's own print business readership figures, results leaving the FT far off the readership pace, and you can begin to see a ripe opportunity for tough sales talking.

The success or failure of this paywall, in short, will not be settled over a couple of months of subscription crunching: more like over a couple of years of revenue assessments. The temptation, because the web is such an instant medium, will be to make instant assessments based on quite extraneous factors (such as: Do you hate Rupert, or not?) The reality lies in what happens over time.

My bet is that paywalls are only part of the answer for newspapers' futures, one survival stream among many (some yet to be discovered). No plausible arithmetic shows a great river of revenue replacing old business models at a stroke. But rising walls will surely have a part to play, for part of the time. For instance, they already make the whole WSJ package a more profitable bet – and haven't affected a 20% increase in that newspaper's print readership since News Corporation bought it three years ago. They will surely help other papers – or specialist sections of papers – to coin an extra penny.

But what works on the Journal over there may not work on the Times over here – or the Sun in a few months' time. Like those web wizards, you can tout building walls as some fundamental decision which defines what can live or die. Don't believe it. "Simple" choices are much more complicated than that.

Article first published on The Guardian, UK : http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/may/30/rupert-murdoch-times-paywall

Who’s in charge here?

by Georgina Guedes, freelance writer, editor and member of the South African Freelancers’ Association Executive Committee.

One of the scariest things that you have to confront about going freelance is that there’s no one in charge. When things start to go wrong, when you’ve been treated unfairly, when payment is late or when a relationship turns sour, you have no one to turn to but yourself.
There’s no rulebook, no governing body, no ten commandments and no HR manager. When you find yourself in a tricky situation, you have to find your own way out of it, with nothing to support you but your own experience and hopefully that of friends and colleagues who might be willing to share their ideas with you.

The sad fact of the matter is that as a freelancer, you are less valuable to a publication or client than its own employees. I’ve even found this to be true of companies that I used to work for, for whom I now do freelance work. It can be a subtle shift – in situations that were resolved in your favour in the past, you suddenly find that you’re no longer supported by management.

Even though you might have had a contract, a verbal agreement or a great relationship with a previous editor, you can easily find yourself in a situation where you have to stand up for your rights, but risk losing business.
For instance, I used to work at Company A. After I went solo, they asked me to do some project work for them. I put a lot of effort into the preliminary planning, after which they suddenly realised that they had the capacity to handle the job internally. They cut me loose, and weren’t willing to pay for the initial time I’d spent on the job. When I worked for them, they were great at acknowledging my overtime – and of course it hadn’t mattered to me as much because they were paying my salary at the end of the month.

At the same time, I was benefiting from the relationship and doing plenty of work for other departments at their organisation. Do I think the situation was fair? No. Was I going to have a huge fight with them about it? Also no. Sadly, they were far too valuable to me as an ongoing client for me to make too much of a fuss about one issue of non-payment. I kept the relationship sweet at the cost of a single paycheque.

The rules of relationship management
 
There are a couple of things to bear in mind when managing a freelance relationship.
1. Always be polite. You may be a journalist in good standing with years of experience, and you may be cleverer than the teenager who has just been appointed as editor, but he is your client.

2. Push your case, but not too hard. If you disagree with something that your client has done, from providing a bad brief to dodging payment, your initial response should still be polite. Alert them calmly to your reason for concern, raising it as a topic for discussion rather than as a direct challenge or criticism.

3. Once you’ve come up against a brick wall (which doesn’t always happen), you then have to make the decision about what to do next. Are you going to fight it out and risk damaging the relationship, or are you going to agree to disagree, and hopefully secure future work. It helps in this situation to weigh up whether this is the kind of disagreement that is likely to repeat, or is an isolated event.

4. Try to work out what measures you can put in place to stop the incident recurring. Ask for clearer briefs in future (in a polite way), mention that you prefer to be paid on delivery, request that they show you any changes that they make to your work before printing it with your byline.

5. Be very careful about involving others. As I mentioned earlier, company’s loyalties lie with their employees. If you really feel that you have been wronged in a way that reflects poorly on the professionalism of the publication and it needs to be brought to the attention of somebody more senior, by all means escalate it. Try to phrase it as a request for intervention or mediation rather than telling tales. And accept that while there’s the possibility that your transgressor will get a rap over the knuckles, there’s also a good chance that you’ll alienate everyone in the process.

6. Take clients out to lunch or coffee. Pay.

7. Drop occasional emails unrelated to work, but related to the relationship. “I remember you said you liked macramé. I saw this great site…”

8. Don’t get furious about missed payment deadlines if you always miss your copy deadline.

9. Don’t miss your copy deadline.

10. Accept that sometimes it is worth walking away. Even then, do so with good grace.
To try to head off any troubles before they arise, always:

• Sign a contract (even though you might not enforce the clauses later).

• Extract a clear brief and make sure you understand it.

• Deliver good work, that you have double checked, by deadline.

• Communicate any issues as they arise.

• Behave professionally at all times.

This all paints a pretty bleak picture of the client-freelancer relationship, and this is certainly not the case.

I have forged many fantastic professional relationships and even friendships in the three-and-a-half years that I have been a freelancer – some of them even in spite of the occasional quibble or spat. I wouldn’t change my freelancing situation for the world, but I am often confronted with hard choices, and have sometimes accepted a resolution that I see as unfair to preserve the greater relationship.

Oh, and join the South African Freelancers’ Association (Safrea) – http://www.safrea.co.za/ . The support and advice of a network of experienced professionals is worth its weight in membership fees.

Originally published on TheMediaOnline – http://www.themediaonline.co.za/ 

South African Freelancers' Association Executive Committee - http://www.safrea.co.za/ 
Email:  georgiwrites@icon.co.za