Alert Blog Reviews

There are few email newsletters that I can recommend marketers subscribe to–we live in an RSS world these days–but Dr. Ralph Wilson’s Web Marketing Today is on the list! If you’re not familiar with Dr. Wilson, then I suspect you’ve entered your marketing career in just past the few years– Dr. Wilson is the grandfather of internet marketing advice. Hopefully, he’ll take that as a compliment Anyway, when Dr. Wilson asked me to jump on a video interview with him at SES Chicago, I made time for him in my busy schedule. The result? The video below will take less than 7 minutes of your time and hopefully give you a few tips for your own online reputation management efforts .

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Talking Online Reputation Management with Dr. Ralph Wilson

Imagine just a few short years ago what a headline like this may draw out from the newspaper industry and newspaper readers alike. The shock of such a claim would be the first reaction followed by the naysayers that would predict the rapid decline and fall of the newspaper company silly enough to make such a move. Welcome to 2009. The newspaper industry is a shambles and no one is able to cover up the fact anymore. Online delivery of news and media of all sorts has changed the way consumers obtain and ingest the news. As a result the delivery is changing. In a way, it’s like a huge media train wreck that has people doing and saying things never imagined before. Are you shocked, though? Desperate times call for desperate measures and it looks like the Tribune Co. newspapers are ready to at least experiment with an idea that was unfathomable until recently. No AP news wire service for the week of Nov. 8. The Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Co. newspapers plan to utilize as little content from the Associated Press as practical during the week of Nov. 8. The goal, as the papers review costs and needs, is to see whether severing ties with the news cooperative next fall is a viable option, the Chicago-based media company confirmed Monday. The trial is scheduled to be conducted almost 13 months after Tribune Co. gave the AP a required two-year warning that it might drop the news service, effective Oct. 15, 2010. Tribune Co. said at the time that it was keeping its options open while weighing what role, if any, the AP would play in its future. While it’s not a complete removal of AP sources for material this is very dramatic considering how the news business has traditionally worked seemingly forever. So where are they getting their news from you ask? Is it all going to fall on the Tribune and its paired down staff? The short answer is no. Besides the content provided by the staff of its own titles, Tribune Co. newspapers will draw from such news sources as Reuters, the Washington Post, New York Times, Agence France Presse, Cable News Network, Global Post, Bloomberg and McClatchy newspapers during its AP-less trial. Not all of those sources are normally available to Tribune Co. papers. How does the AP feel? They’re not really letting on with statements like this one. “The Associated Press has been working with all members of the cooperative, including Tribune Co., to ensure that the AP news report retains its value to member newspapers and their readers,” AP spokesman Paul Colford said in a statement. If you read through the comment thread of this article you will find some pretty dissatisfied tribune readers with the current state of the paper so maybe the Tribune Co. figures it can’t get any worse. Or can it? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Tribune Co. Papers Set to Go Almost AP-less For Trial

Here’s an interesting twist on the ‘pay for access to conten’t dilemma that faces the newspaper industry these days. Newspapers who do this may actually lose a writer or two! While it’s not likely that staffers at any newspaper are looking to just walk out the door to another job because there really aren’t any but you may get some that are going to walk n principle. A case in point is what happened at New York Newsday. The New York Times reports Customers of Cablevision, the cable and Internet provider that owns Newsday, and people who subscribe to Newsday in print will still be able to browse Newsday.com unfettered. But Newsday recently announced that everyone else will have to pay $5 a week to see much of the site, making it one of the few newspapers in the country to take such a plunge. As a result of this announcement long time columnist Saul Friedman threw in the pen, so to speak, and walked. In an interview, Mr. Friedman said, “My column has been popular around the country, but now it was really going to be impossible for people outside Long Island to read it.” That includes him; living outside Washington, he is not a subscriber to Newsday or Cablevision. This sounds like a real bold move I know but now the cynic in me (which I love and hate all at once) has to take into account the fact that Mr. Friedman is 80 years old. Not exactly the prime of his career but he could go on writing for many, many, many more years (and I sincerely hope he does). While this is noble it’s not the same as if some newspaper industry giant walked away from a central job at a huge paper to make the point. Once again, I am not trying to minimize what Mr. Friedman is saying but I am trying to see this in context. I’m actually more interested in how many people are willing to spend the $5 a week for the paper online? If they are not sacrificing their current subscribers and most of the New York region is a Cablevision subscriber is Newsday really doing anything here other than trying to make a few bucks? There are quite a few folks who have left the New York area for other areas of the country but most don’t check back on the local media but occasionally (I am one of those). If I had to pay $5 a week for it I would go without it for sure because it is for fun and not a necessity. If you have moved from somewhere would you pay for access to the local media to keep up? All of you transplants from Chicago, LA, Philly etc do you care that much about what happens ‘back home’?

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Newsday Charges and Columnist Walks