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Category: Publishing & media (Page 43 of 53)

Not All Newspapers Are Suffering

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) self-refers as the “Gold Standard in Media Audits” and is the place to go if you want to find out current U.S. newspaper circulation figures. Unfortunately, you have to be a member — they’re not giving this sensitive information away — and so it’s difficult to get up-to-the-minute data. You can find out the “Top 200 Newspapers by Largest Reported Circulation” ), but not what those circulation figures actually are, and how they’re trending.

But the ongoing decline in newspaper circulation in North America is not a well-kept secret, and if the ABC won’t spill the beans, others will.
According to a February article in Media Life Magazine, “in the U.S., the circulation of paid-for papers dropped 4 percent from 2001 to 2005, hitting 53.3 million. It also dropped 2.3 percent in 2005 compared to the year earlier.”

A May 2005 article in The Washington Post reported that “circulation at 814 of the nation’s largest daily newspapers declined 1.9 percent over the six months ended March 31 compared with the same period last year…The decline continued a 20-year trend in the newspaper industry as people increasingly turn to other media such as the Internet and 24-hour cable news networks for information.”

In the midst of this gloom, the February 17th issue of The Economist reported that in India there are some 3000 big newspapers, and they experienced a 12.9% increase in circulation last year. Competition is fierce, and profits substantial.

The article also made reference to a key factor that may explain this bright news: Internet access is available to only 1.2% of Indians over the age of 12.

I remember years ago at a DRUPA trade show in Germany (DRUPA focuses on the printing business) meeting Naresh Khanna, the editor of Indian Printer & Publisher magazine. That year everyone was speculating about the possible impact of the Internet, but Naresh said to me: “Oh, we don’t care very much about the Internet in India. We’re just excited that we’ll soon have color pictures in our newspapers.”

Publishing Giant IDG Declares Print Dead

Well, if not dead, at least dying. Via Paid Content: IDG No Longer A Print Company; Online 35 Percent Of U.S. Publishing Revenues

IDG is no longer a print media company, declares Colin Crawford, the SVP of Online at the company, in a rather revealing post on his own blog. The trade behemoth is a private company, so this insight is a helpful one.
— The absolute dollar growth of our online revenues now exceeds the decline in our print revenues. This occurred in the US in 2006 and in Europe during the last quarter.
— In the US, our online revenue now accounts for over 35% of our total US publishing revenues. Next year, for many brands online revenues will be greater than print revenues, if fact they already are at some of our key brand and by 2009 – about 50% of IDG’s US revenues will come from online.
— “Going forward IDG Communications will define itself as a web centric information company complemented by expos, events and print publications.”

The metrics are compelling, don’t you think?

Usurious Association

What is your favorite industry association, the one you find most useful?

AIIM – The Enterprise Content Management Association is pretty good. As its site says, AIIM “has been a neutral and unbiased source for helping individuals and organizations understand the challenges associated with managing documents, content, records, and business processes. AIIM is international in scope, independent, implementation-focused, and, as the representative of the entire ECM industry – including users, suppliers, and the channel – acts as the industry’s intermediary.

“The AIIM community has grown to 70,000 professionals from all industries and government, over 150 countries, and all levels of management, including senior executives, line-of-business, and IT. With every organization in the world handling some type of paper or electronic content, the ECM industry will continue to grow. As the industry grows, AIIM can be counted on to provide market education, peer networking, professional development, and industry advocacy.”

They put on a big trade show, they publish a magazine and lots of resource materials. I think AIIM is alright. And I can join as a “Professional Member” for $125/year.

OASIS has more to do with standards, but doesn’t ignore education. I can join individually for $300.

IPA, the Association for Graphic Solutions Providers is “a community of premedia professionals within the creative, corporate, print publishing, packaging and in-plant sectors.

“IPA is a forum for peer networking and a vital source of business, technical, and management resources for graphic solutions providers. It’s where the industry’s leading technical managers turn for information on how to strengthen their graphics workflow competencies and increase profits. It’s where business leaders turn for tools that will help them grow their business.”

If I could pass myself off as a student, I could join for $30 a year, but instead pay the consultant rate of $400. It’s a good group.

CM Pros, the Content Management Professionals, a timely and hard-working association appropriately affiliated with Gilbane, charges me only $100/year.

There’s another association that I think does some good and interesting work. It’s the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), “a trade and standards organization dedicated to the development and promotion of electronic publishing.” (It’s the old OEB — Open e-Book group.)

“The work of the IDPF will foster and promote the development of electronic publishing applications and products that will benefit creators of content, makers of reading systems and consumers.

“The IDPF welcomes book, magazine, journal and newspaper publishers, booksellers, software developers, authors and other groups interested in digital reading to join our organization.”

Every year in the late spring they run a one-day seminar in New York that brings you up to date on what’s happening in this space. The seminar is very reasonably priced: only $89 for members. The problem is the cost of membership: the lowest price is $1,000 (except for non-profits at $650). There are no associate memberships or consultant memberships or student memberships: it’s $1,000 or get out of here. Now this isn’t the biggest nor most important trade group in our industry today. I don’t understand why they price their membership so as to exclude interest from the industry, rather than to encourage it.

Boston Area DITA User Group

Bob Doyle alerts us to the next meeting of the Boston Area DITA Users Group. On Tuesday February 13 at 6:30 pm, Judy Kessler will present, “How Sybase Made the Business Case for DITA.”

The meeting starts with light snacks and networking at 6:30 and the presentation starts at 7:00. The meeting will be at the Information Mapping headquarters in Waltham. For directions, click here. Bob asks that if you are planning to attend, please RSVP to Judy Kessler.

For more information on this and future Boston meetings, check the User Group homepage.

Vignette Launches Digital Services Hub

Vignette (NASDAQ: VIGN) announced the immediate availability of the Vignette Digital Services Hub, which enables organizations to manage and deliver rich multimedia content to any Web-enabled device through a single unified framework. Vignette Digital Services Hub also provides tracking and analysis to ensure content reaches the intended audience with the desired effect. The initial offering targets telecommunications, media and entertainment companies that depend on differentiated and interactive content such as ring tones, video downloads and mobile TV to attract and service customers. However, the technology has broad application across all markets, such as financial services, healthcare, distribution and retail, which require anytime, anyplace connections with their customers. Vignette Digital Services Hub combines Vignette’s Web solution with technologies from partners to provide a single, flexible application for collecting, managing, approving and delivering electronic assets and rich media to customers based on preferences, demographics and demonstrated interests. Vignette Digital Services Hub go-to-market partners include: SafeNet-Digital rights management for content protection and rights enforcement; Sun- Identity management and integration hardware; Valista-Merchandizing, payments and settlement solutions; and, Volantis-Optimized and personalized mobile content push, device detection and recognition and asset resolution software. To bring the solution to market, Vignette is working with global and local systems integrators including DPCI, Future Technologies, Inc., Hyperlink, iFactory, Informatica El Corte Ingles, ioko, Morse Group, Sapient, Stefanini, Tata Consultancy Services, Tallence and Virtusa. http://www.vignette.com/

Document Sciences Announces Acquisition of CambridgeDocs

Document Sciences Corporation (NASDAQ: DOCX) announced it has completed the acquisition of CambridgeDocs a provider of document transformation and repurposing technology. The acquired technology will allow xPression, to import and repurpose content from popular formats, including Word, HTML, PDF, Excel, RTF, and Adobe FrameMaker, enabling customers to leverage the tens of thousands of documents existing throughout an enterprise without having to manually recreate the content. Once transformed, the content can be made available for delivery through Document Sciences xPression product suite, as well as independently through XML-based Web Services. The transformed content can also be classified and indexed within enterprise information portals, and aggregated, assembled and (re)published in multiple formats, including HTML, PDF, Postscript, IBM AFP, PCL and RTF. In addition to tighter integration with CambridgeDocs technology, Document Sciences will continue to develop CambridgeDoc’s xDoc product suite. The xDoc products sold through OEM software agreements with vendors in the XML content management and publishing area. The entire CambridgeDocs team, located in Cambridge, MA, and Lahore, Pakistan, will be joining the Document Sciences. http://www.docscience.com, http://www.cambridgedocs.com

Magazines and Digital Publishing

Magazines have been doing electronic publishing for a long time. Magazine articles, for example, have been in databases for at least 20 years, and some of the magazine publishers were the earliest to leverage the Web–and some with tremendous success even at the very beginning. (I was at ZDNet briefly in the 1990s when the traffic seemed to double monthly.) Yet some other magazines have been laggards, nervous perhaps about what the digital product might do to the print. Still others have developed interesting mixed models, where some content in the print ends up free on the Web while other content is available only to print subscibers. And others have developed wholly different digital products that share little more than the brand with the print product. There is no end to the potential models, and perhaps for very good reason–every audience is different and every mix of advertisers is different.

I happened on a very thoughtful discussion about magazine digital publishing models. Staci Kramer of paidContent.org moderated “a fireside chat” with Jim Spanfeller, CEO of Forbes.com and Jeff Price, President of SI.com at the SIIA conference in NYC earlier this week. The video can be watched in its entirety here; it’s about 30 minutes long, and well worth your time if you are thinking about these issues.

The PDF ISO Standard

Much is being made today of Adobe Systems announcement that “it intends to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).”

The main hubbub surrounds the contention of several bloggers that this represents another attack by Adobe on Microsoft and its recently-released XPS format, “the PDF killer.” Quite probably so. It’s a subject worth examining, although not superficially.
For today I’d like to consider what it means to become an ISO standard. I think of this as the equivalent of getting a lifetime achievement award from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (The Oscars). It means you were pretty good, but you’re now almost dead.

As of December 31, 2005, there were 15,649 published ISO standards, with 1,240 released in that year alone. Under the heading of electronics, information technology and telecommunications, there were 2,447 published standards. How many does your organization conform to? If this impresses you, remember to celebrate World Standards Day on October 14! And for even more fun, there’s the new isomemory game (http://www.iso.org/iso/en/commcentre/isomemory/startpage.html#). I hear it’s fun for the whole family!

You can’t read the published standards on the ISO site without giving them a chunk of cash first. That says something in itself; I’m just not sure what. But you can see listings of the bodies buried in the ISO graveyard. For example ISO 12639:2004 is the TIFF/IT standard, once used widely in the prepress industry, but no longer a player. You can however download it for 176 Swiss francs, 8700 Yugoslav dinars, or about $140 Yankee dollars.

ISO 6804:1991 covers “rubber hoses and hose assemblies for washing-machines and dishwashers — Specification for inlet hoses.” It’s yours for 48 Swiss francs!

I could go on (and am tempted to do so).

At the same time, there are certain relevant standards that have crept into ISO…as Adobe mentions in its press release, all of the PDF sibling are now ISO standards (PDF/X, PDF-X1, etc.). The OpenDocument Format is a standard. And so on.

So what is the significance of becoming an ISO standard when your standard is one that people actually use? Historically, none; more recently, some.

As the publishing industry has evolved into an ever-more-complex microsystem, more and more organizations (and indeed states, countries, etc.) are choosing to endorse standards that have been accepted and published by ISO.

Will more organizations use PDF if it’s an ISO standard? Probably not. That is, unless Microsoft gains real traction with XPS. There are some very high-stakes games being played against the Microsoft/Windows juggernaut, and standards have become a key weapon in the game. Adobe has played a major trump card. Microsoft: your move.

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