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	<title>Innovation in College Media &#187; College Media News</title>
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	<description>a group discussion about the future of student media</description>
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		<title>CMA now College Media Association</title>
		<link>http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/11/cma-now-college-media-association/</link>
		<comments>http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/11/cma-now-college-media-association/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:14:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[CICM shop talk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College Media News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/?p=4167</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[(This was just announced. You&#8217;ll note a change in the header, and the press release reproduced below) College Media Advisers, the organization of professionals who train and support student-produced media on college campuses, has changed its name to College Media Association. The change is intended to reflect the association’s broader mission, according to CMA President David Swartzlander, assistant [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CMA_2011_Logo.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-4170" title="CMA_2011_Logo" src="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/CMA_2011_Logo.jpg" alt="" width="253" height="166" /></a></p>
<p>(This was just announced. You&#8217;ll note a change in the header, and the press release reproduced below)</p>
<p>College Media Advisers, the organization of professionals who train and support student-produced media on college campuses, has changed its name to College Media Association.</p>
<p>The change is intended to reflect the association’s broader mission, according to CMA President David Swartzlander, assistant professor of journalism at Doane College.</p>
<p>“The name College Media Advisers implied that we might not offer services, information or importance to someone who was not an adviser. That’s simply not the case,” Swartzlander said. “CMA strives to serve all who work with college media – professionals and educators in advertising and business, broadcast, digital and editorial.</p>
<p>“The new name will allow CMA to better define its role in the changing media world. Under the new name, we can become one voice for all college media professionals,” he said.</p>
<p>The association started in 1954 as the National Council of College Publications Advisers and in the early 1980s changed its name to College Media Advisers. CMA has more than 750 members representing colleges and universities in 50 states and Canada.</p>
<p>CMA offers training and support to its professional members and serves thousands of students annually at its national conferences and workshops. Details about the association’s events, services, code of ethics and more can be found at <a title="cma" href="http://www.collegemedia.org" target="_blank">collegemedia.org</a>.</p>
<p>“While CMA has changed its name, its mission remains clear – to provide services to all who advise college media,” Swartzlander said. “Those services members have known and used in the past will not disappear. And CMA plans to offer more services in the future. We’ll just do so with a revitalized, inclusive vision – and a new name.</p>
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		<title>Red &amp; Black takes innovative print/online strategy to new level</title>
		<link>http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/08/red-black-takes-innovative-printonline-strategy-to-new-level/</link>
		<comments>http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/08/red-black-takes-innovative-printonline-strategy-to-new-level/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:52:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[College Media News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hope for the future]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[innovation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college newspapers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[future of journalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Red and Black]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web sites]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/?p=3759</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The University of Georgia&#8217;s Red &#38; Black (previously mentioned here and here and here) has long been an innovative campus media outlet. This semester, they&#8217;ve taken that innovation to a new level, abandoning their daily print product in favor of a weekly print/online hybrid and the addition of a monthly full-color magazine. You can see [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/randb20.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-3763 alignleft" style="margin: 5px 20px;" title="randb20" src="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/randb20-242x300.jpg" alt="randb20" width="242" height="300" /></a>The University of Georgia&#8217;s <a title="red and black" href="http://www.redandblack.com" target="_blank">Red &amp; Black</a> (previously mentioned <a title="previous post" href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2010/01/redesigns-red-and-black-qu-chronicle-and-wkuherald/" target="_blank">here</a> and <a title="previous post" href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2009/04/red-and-black-covering-professor-murder/" target="_blank">here</a> and <a title="previous post" href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2007/02/red-black-soundslides-recruitment/" target="_blank">here</a>) has long been an innovative campus media outlet. This semester, they&#8217;ve taken that innovation to a new level, abandoning their daily print product in favor of a weekly print/online hybrid and the addition of a monthly full-color magazine. You can see what the new weekly print edition looks like <a title="red and black" href="http://redandblack.com/print-edition/" target="_blank">here</a>. The <em>R&amp;B</em>&#8216;s web site is still powered by the <a class="zem_slink" title="WordPress" rel="homepage" href="http://wordpress.org">WordPress</a> CMS.</p>
<p>Dan Reimold outlines the strategy in a very complete article for PBS <a class="zem_slink" title="MediaShift" rel="homepage" href="http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/">MediaShift</a>: <a title="PBS mediashift" href="http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/08/revolution-in-georgia-student-newspaper-goes-digital-first230.html" target="_blank">Revolution in Georgia: Student Newspaper Goes Digital First</a>.</p>
<p>I interviewed <em>Red &amp; Black</em> Publisher Harry Montevideo about some of the behind-the-scenes details of the development of this new publishing model.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m including a transcript of the entire interview below the fold, but I did want to mention a few of the top-level takeaways from the discussion:</p>
<ul>
<li>The <em>Red &amp; Black</em> spent a lot of time looking at the issue before deciding to go from daily to weekly.</li>
<li>The staff and board of directors spent a lot of time researching the issue before making a decision.</li>
<li>Students were understanding and accepting of the change &#8211; a key buy-in.</li>
<li>The staff interviewed advertisers and received assurances that the advertising income would be similar even in a weekly format.</li>
<li>The <em>Red &amp; Black</em> hasn&#8217;t had to spend a lot of extra money on equipment to upgrade.</li>
<li>The student staff structure is pretty much the same as it was, with the exception of a few fewer page designers.</li>
<li>The new <em>Ampersand</em> magazine is an effort to pull in students who normally wouldn&#8217;t work for a newspaper, and provide another vehicle for advertising income.</li>
<li>The primary goal of the <em>Red &amp; Black</em> is still training students for their future careers in journalism, no matter what format/publication schedule they have.</li>
</ul>
<p>Here&#8217;s a look at the cover of the first issue of <em>Ampersand</em>:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/magazineonline.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3829" title="magazineonline" src="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/magazineonline.jpg" alt="magazineonline" width="520" height="675" /></a></p>
<p>The full version will be online at the Red &amp; Black web site next week, says Ed Morales, editorial adviser. The magazine might get its own dedicated web site next year.</p>
<p><span id="more-3759"></span>I&#8217;m paraphrasing the topics that we discussed, rather than transcribing my questions. It was a bit of a wide-ranging discussion, and I think this format is easier to follow.</p>
<p><strong>Discussions about changing the Red &amp; Black&#8217;s publication format</strong></p>
<p>It’s a conversation that’s been going on for probably 2 or 3 years, along with the industry. Nobody here has been unaware of the issues that are affecting newspapers, newspaper readership, the delivery of news.</p>
<p>At what point did that conversation turn in to “Hey, let’s go digital first, and print weekly?” Officially, the board approved it at their June meeting a couple of months ago. Unofficially, the discussion has been going on since November last year.</p>
<p>It’s a relatively a big change. There’s a couple of ways you can look at it. Going from a daily to a weekly sounds on the onset like it’s a big change, but when you get into it and start to look at what the mission of the paper is and the community we serve, the end result is it’s kind of a big deal, but it’s kind of not a big deal.</p>
<p><strong>Buy-in from the board of directors</strong></p>
<p>There was a huge amount of work involved in persuading a 15-member board whose average age is probably approaching 70 that life as a student has changed so dramatically that our business model needs to change. It took a tremendous amount of research … e-mails, reports, communications to give them the information that they needed to make sure that this was a sound decision for the <em>Red &amp; Black</em>.</p>
<p>And the board was diligent enough in their responsibilities to say, &#8220;Hey, we need to make sure that we’ve crossed the t’s dotted the i’s that we’ve done everything we need to do to make the best decision for the <em>Red &amp; Black</em>.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>Buy-in from student journalists</strong></p>
<p>One of my big reservations was that my perception that a majority of the staff was still print-centric and would want to hold on to a daily print edition. When we did sit down fairly early in the process and talk to them about it, I was pleasantly surprised for them to realize that they knew the industry was changing &#8211; how they were consuming news, how their fellow students were consuming news &#8211; and they were actually kind of relieved to get out of the cycle of creating the ‘daily miracle’ and packaging it up in a weekly and be able to devote more time to delivering the news digitally.</p>
<p>So, to my surprise, it was very well received among the student staff. I thought it might take more convincing, more selling them on the idea. They grabbed it immediately.</p>
<p><strong>Inspiration or ideas for the new format?</strong></p>
<p>I follow the industry fairly closely through various listservs, Poynter Institute, and trade publications.</p>
<p>We’ve been doing the same thing the industry’s been doing, looking for the golden egg or the magic pill that was going to solve all our problems, but what all of us have found is there is no one right solution or easy path going forward.</p>
<p>Part of this started with a little bit of a “What’s a worst case scenario: what does the <em>Red &amp; Black</em> look like 5 years from now?” Maybe at some point in time we’re only able to afford to print once a week. It almost kind of came in a backwards sense.</p>
<p>Once we started looking at some of those things, and looking at the pros and cons and seeing how many of the pros outweighed the cons, we said, well, maybe if this happens in 5 years, it’s not such a bad idea. Maybe we should look at having it happen now rather than having this decline continue, being forced down that path.</p>
<p>One of the key factors for us was, we actually went out and did interviews with advertisers, and asked them how would they value the <em>Red &amp; Black</em> as an advertising vehicle if we published once a week versus daily. And the feedback we got from the advertisers was that they were most interested in reaching that market in the most efficient way, and that they saw the value of being able to put their ad in one product that reached a larger percentage of the market through a longer shelf life, through increased pickup.</p>
<p>And basically, it told us that they would spend in essence the same amount that they would spend whether we were daily or weekly. They are interested in reaching what’s a very affluent 40,000-plus demographic in a relatively small marketplace. The university community is a huge player in the economic portion of Athens. That didn’t change anything.</p>
<p>That kind of gave us some confidence that the business model … that we could support ourselves financially. We’re pretty confident that that’s going to hold up.</p>
<p><strong>Campus response</strong></p>
<p>Honestly, there hasn’t been a huge response. I’m not sure we were expecting anything. There hasn’t been a lot of “Gee, I want my daily <em>Red &amp; Black</em> back,” there hasn’t been a lot of that. We’ve got the largest freshman class ever at the University of Georgia, so we’ve got 5,500 students who don’t know any different anyway. They’re new to the university, they weren’t expecting a daily newspaper, didn’t know there was a daily newspaper. Close to a third of the student population on campus isn’t familiar with the fact that the <em>Red &amp; Black</em> wasn’t a daily product.</p>
<p>We took a fair amount of time trying to promote it, trying to explain it, so maybe we did a good enough job in saying what we were doing and why.</p>
<p><strong>Staff restructuring</strong></p>
<p>We’re breaking news every day. We’ve got pretty much the same staff structure that we had before. The one area that it’s impacted is page design. We’re putting a few fewer pages out, and spreading the work out a couple of days. So I think we’ve got a couple of fewer page designers, but by and large, they’re still working some on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights getting the weekly product out.</p>
<p>If you were inside the <em>Red &amp; Black</em>, you wouldn’t see things much different than it was when we were printing. We’re just delivering the news digitally versus in print.</p>
<p><strong>Online traffic</strong></p>
<p>We’re seeing about a 20 percent increase in unique visitors and a tad bit less than that in page views. Our local traffic is up as well. We’re expecting this to be somewhat of an evolution as people who had been daily readers some of them will convert and read us online daily, some of them probably won’t.</p>
<p>That’s something we’re going to promote over the course of the year, we’re going to try to encourage people to get their daily news, to keep in touch with what’s happening at the university on a daily basis by either going to the web site or viewing us on their mobile device or following us on Twitter or getting our e-mail headlines or even interacting in Facebook. social networking, all those things are part of the plan to stay engaged with our audience, basically.</p>
<p>(Print circulation) has gone up to 14,000 each Thursday. It was 12,000. We feel that with the paper being out there over the course of a week, we’ll be able to distribute 14,000 papers.</p>
<p><strong>Ampersand</strong></p>
<p>We’ve got a 32-page 4-color magazine going out. We’re excited about that, to see how that’s received. Some of that will be distributed in the racks that would normally have a Monday paper in it, but we’ll also be distributing them through retail channels, hotels, visitor’s center, so it’s a little bit different distribution channel than just sticking it in news racks.</p>
<p>We expect that to go a little bit quicker. We may increase that circulation as time goes on. We wanted to start the product with a fairly low cost of entry for the advertisers and just gauge how well it’s picked up. Not having anything like that on campus now, the first issue covering football, football being so huge here, we’re pretty optimistic that it’s going to be picked up fairly quickly.</p>
<p>We’ve never done a magazine before, and it’s one of the largest disciplines in the journalism college here. We’ve tried to encourage them to work in the newspaper in the past, but the magazine is more of an attempt to give the magazine students their sandbox to play in so to speak. If we can make a little bit of money, we’re happy to, but for the most part, the magazine is put together with a  volunteer staff with some oversight from the regular newspaper/online core of students that make up every media operation.</p>
<p>The idea from the educational standpoint is to provide the tools and the infrastructure here so that students to get all the experience that they need so that when they graduate they’ll be more marketable in the marketplace. That’s kind of bottom line what I think the mission of student newspapers ought to be.</p>
<p>We want to serve the community and give them dynamic products … but our real mission here is focused on giving the students the training and experience that they need so that they can go out and get jobs when they graduate. We try to add software, hardware, whatever, that enables them to do more, to deliver news as it’s currently being delivered.</p>
<p>I think the shift to weekly is a pretty big shift in itself, the magazine is a pretty ambitious product. Where we’d like to focus this year is to try to get those done as best we can, and deliver those two products solidly, and obviously deliver more content online.</p>
<p>We’ve made a few minor improvements in the web site. But we’re looking at it as kind of an evolution, not just a big shift &#8211; here we are. It’s going to take some time to build more online-savvy students, it’s going to take time to get more magazine expertise, the weekly newspaper will probably be tweaked over the course of the year. I think for the next year, we’ve got our hands full with what we’re doing.</p>
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		<title>Q&amp;A: CMN&#8217;s Rusty Lewis and Jon Beck about new advertising options for College Publisher</title>
		<link>http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/01/qa-cmns-rusty-lewis-and-jon-beck-about-new-advertising-options-for-college-publisher/</link>
		<comments>http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/01/qa-cmns-rusty-lewis-and-jon-beck-about-new-advertising-options-for-college-publisher/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:26:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[College Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College Media News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College Publisher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Advertising network]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College Media Network]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Content management system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Online advertising]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/?p=3618</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Editor&#8217;s Note: As I mentioned last week, I asked Rusty Lewis at College Media Network to answer some questions related to the company&#8217;s announced new advertising option for college newspapers. These responses were supplied by Lewis and Jon Beck, who recently joined CMN on the business side. When will these new options take effect? It [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><strong><a href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/collegepublisher.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2990" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="collegepublisher" src="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/collegepublisher-300x57.png" alt="collegepublisher" width="300" height="57" /></a>Editor&#8217;s Note:</strong> As I <a title="previous post" href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/01/cicm-interview-rusty-lewis-on-new-cp5-advertising-options/" target="_blank">mentioned last week</a>, I asked Rusty Lewis at <a title="college media network" href="http://www.collegepublisher.com">College Media Network</a> to answer some questions related to the company&#8217;s announced new advertising option for college newspapers. These responses were supplied by Lewis and Jon Beck, who recently joined CMN on the business side.</em></p>
<p><strong>When will these new options take effect?</strong></p>
<p>It is a rolling process that took effect January 1, 2011.  We are honoring the contracts we have in place with our newspaper partners.  That said, beginning this month we are giving the requisite 90-day advance notice that we will not be renewing the contract in place with current terms.  We are making one-on-one phone calls with each newspaper outlining our new options, how they would specifically impact each newspaper and outlining the next steps.</p>
<p>The new advertising options are available right now – it is a matter of a few settings changes.</p>
<p><strong>Is the &#8220;AdGear&#8221; platform currently in use, or is this a new technology that will be used for this new system?</strong></p>
<p>AdGear is currently serving all the ads (both national across the network and local campaigns on CP5) – we made the switch from mish-mash of Atlas and Doubleclick we had under MTV.  We are almost complete with the newspaper access portal to upload ads in AdGear and will begin training newspapers on that system shortly.  AdGear is a huge step forward from both a traffic and flexibility perspective.</p>
<p>This system can be used with any publishing platform.  It comes off-the-shelf with College Publisher and we have ready-made plugins for the most popular open-source CMSs.  Obviously, the advantage of this system is the support and the year-over-year continuity that comes along with the tools.</p>
<p><strong>How do these options differ from the way things were done in the past?</strong></p>
<p>We view this change as a reboot, a chance to make things easier and more equitable for everyone.</p>
<p>Ten years ago, we created a CMS in exchange for advertising rights.  Later, we responded to feedback and developed an ad-deployment tool in the CMS so that a few newspapers with good ad sales teams could deploy local online ad campaigns.</p>
<p>When launching CP5, we contracted a leading vendor to manage the ad system and recreated the two-tiered system in the image of CP4.  As site designs evolved, ad sizes got bigger, and CPMs got smaller it became difficult to keep all parties happy.</p>
<p>This entire change is about making the management of the inventory easier.  The three options break down to:<br />
- CMN sells the inventory (and cuts rev share checks)<br />
- The newspaper sells the inventory (and cuts rev share checks)<br />
- CMN and the newspaper share the inventory and keep their respective revenue</p>
<p>These options address the variety of needs and strengths that exist in the college media sphere.  Regardless of size, we found some newspapers small and large had very good local sales teams and could sell out the inventory.  Conversely (and more commonly), we found that the newspaper focused on content and had little interest or desire for advertising (which is a missed opportunity for everyone).  Obviously, there is a great number of papers in between.  These options address those different scenarios without over-complicating the issue.</p>
<p><strong>Do these options apply equally to all of the CP standard plan participants, i.e. those who are paying the fee and those who are having the fee waived?</strong></p>
<p>Yes.  They are also the same for any newspaper outside CMN that want to participate in our ad network or want access to these tools.</p>
<p><strong>I am not exactly certain that I understand the logistics of the 70/30 plan. Could you explain it in a little more detail, especially as it relates to the higher ad positions on the page, and the way the percentages would work in selling local ads?</strong></p>
<p>The inventory split is really quite simple.  Within AdGear we can set thresholds (by percentage) of available inventory.  We will apply a threshold for newspapers who select this option such that they only have access to 30 percent of the inventory on each ad position.</p>
<p>For simplicity’s sake, let’s say a newspaper gets 100k page views per month on average.  That means in the old model, they had basically 300k impressions (3 ad units X 100k page views) to sell below the fold – which we were told were hard to sell.  Now, with this option, that same newspaper has 150k impressions to sell, but 60k of those can – <em>and should</em> – be sold at a much higher premium (because they are the top spots).</p>
<p>The real critical piece to this plan is that newspapers are committing to sell on a CPM basis when selecting to share the inventory.  This is a tough transition for some newspapers who have found success with the flat rate sponsorship method of online display advertising.  That said, we can share strategies we have seen work at other college newspapers.</p>
<p>One additional layer to this plan is that CMN will back fill any unsold impressions with remnant ad campaigns.  The newspaper will receive 20 percent of the revenue originating from these ads.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>Does this preclude the plan participants from selling ads outside of those five positions?</strong></p>
<p>The short answer is no.</p>
<p>The five ad positions are five different sets of ad tags deployed on the page.  The AdGear tools allow newspapers to use a variety of targeting methodologies and strategies to help advertisers get the most out of their placements.</p>
<p>If a newspaper is selling ads on a flat rate basis and their advertisers want full exposure on all pages served, well that is really a sponsorship opportunity and not advertisement.  We fully expect newspapers to offer these advertisers creative ways to have a presence on the site without using up ad impressions through the ad manager.</p>
<p><strong>As to option C, is $7.50/cpm what the cpm is if CP sold the ads, or a percentage of that? if so, what percentage?</strong></p>
<p>CMN underwrites the operation, support and training on the AdGear system with advertising revenue.  Option C, where newspapers pay a CPM to CMN, was designed to enable newspapers to take full control over their inventory.  The $7.50 figure represents the value of each page view if all the advertising positions were filled with ad network campaigns – which pay very modest CPMs.</p>
<p>In this option, the newspaper is essentially purchasing the inventory for a $7.50 CPM &#8211; which, when divided out between 5 ad units, is $1.50 CPM per unit.  We felt this was sufficiently low enough where newspapers had the opportunity to markup the CPMs as they sold the inventory.  They are then able to recoup their costs and create net profits.</p>
<p><strong>Could you provide an example of how option C might work?</strong></p>
<p>Using the example above, the newspaper with 100k monthly page views essentially would remit a payment to CMN of $750 per month and keep whatever they made over that.  Obviously, since this is a CPM, the payment would fluctuate with traffic.</p>
<p>If the newspaper is successful and has a sophisticated staff, they can command CPMs in the neighborhood of $5-10 across each individual ad position which more than covers the cost of the inventory.</p>
<p>For the opportunity to have free run of the ad inventory, we are asking the newspaper to assume the risk of selling it out.</p>
<p><strong>How will the ad prices be set for the various ad placements? and will CP be sharing information re: advertising rates with CP5 customers?</strong></p>
<p>The ad prices are set as high as the advertisers will bear.  I cannot publicly disclose specifics around this as it would jeopardize active negotiations with Access Network partners and potential advertisers.  Obviously, when sales close I can privately discuss figures with those newspapers with which we share revenue.</p>
<p><strong>Would a college that opted to go with the WordPress option have the option to join this ad network plan?</strong></p>
<p>The AdGear solution is compulsory with the CMN WordPress package.</p>
<p>Please keep in mind that we are offering the WP solution as an alternative to College Publisher CMS.  Similarly to CP5, we are providing a service to manage the environment and provide a full-service solution for a newspaper’s digital publishing needs.  The ad systems, email newsletter systems, traffic reporting systems, and other core services for content distribution remain the same between the WP and CP5.</p>
<p>To that end, the three ad options remain the same for CMN WordPress package.</p>
<p><strong>What about the hosting option?</strong></p>
<p>The hosting option is literally just a hosting option.  A newspaper has free reign to use whatever set of solutions/plugins/ad tags they prefer.  This hosting option is simply out there so newspapers know they have an option with CMN if they do not want CP5 and are priced out of our WP managed solution.</p>
<p>As a benefit of using this service for hosting (be them WP, Drupal, etc), the access to CMN plugins such as AdGear exists.  In those situations where a newspaper wanted to use AdGear while maintaining their own site, a setup fee would be assessed.  Again, all three options exist and come with training and support.</p>
<p><strong>And, per Daniel Bachhuber&#8217;s comment the other day: Are those advertising options the same as what&#8217;s available to the lower-end Polopoly users or different? If different, what are they?</strong></p>
<p>AdGear is the same 5 ad spots no matter what content management solution is used.</p>
<p>To be clear, these changes we are making to the CMN business separate the content management solution and the advertising system completely.  CMN is providing them as a package for CP5, but the ad software solution can be licensed as an a la carte option for any newspaper using any hosting facility on any CMS.</p>
<p><strong>On a related note: How do these options affect advertising on mobile?</strong></p>
<p>We have the capability to schedule and deploy mobile ads through AdGear.  This is part and parcel of the AdGear service.</p>
<p><strong>Anything else you would like to add at this point?</strong></p>
<p>Banner advertising is still a useful way to drive revenue for publishers, but its best days are in the rear view mirror.  Banner ads will never have the value they once did.</p>
<p>The vision for revenue at CMN looks for opportunities beyond traditional display advertising.  CMN, in sort of a newspaper holding company capacity, can enable sponsorship opportunities with major brands across the entire network that can be lucrative enough to share revenue with every network member.</p>
<p>We will be looking for beta testers for these revenue sharing programs.  When we have seen some success, we will share the data and begin applying these measures across the network at large.</p>
<h6 class="zemanta-related-title" style="font-size: 1em;">Related articles</h6>
<ul class="zemanta-article-ul">
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/01/college-publisher-changes-business-model/">College Publisher changes business model</a> (collegemediainnovation.org)</li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/01/qa-rusty-lewis-on-cmns-new-business-model/">Q&amp;A: Rusty Lewis on CMN&#8217;s new business model</a> (collegemediainnovation.org)</li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2010/10/cicm-interview-rusty-lewis-on-sale-of-college-media-network/">CICM Interview: Rusty Lewis on sale of College Media Network</a> (collegemediainnovation.org)</li>
<li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/01/cicm-interview-rusty-lewis-on-new-cp5-advertising-options/">CICM Interview: Rusty Lewis on new CP5 advertising options</a> (collegemediainnovation.org)</li>
</ul>
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		<title>CICM Interview: Rusty Lewis on new CP5 advertising options</title>
		<link>http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/01/cicm-interview-rusty-lewis-on-new-cp5-advertising-options/</link>
		<comments>http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/01/cicm-interview-rusty-lewis-on-new-cp5-advertising-options/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:43:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[College Media News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College Publisher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business model]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College Media Network]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[college newspapers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newspaper]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Online advertising]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/?p=3605</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the wake of College Media Network&#8216;s announcement in late December that they were changing their business model, most of my attention focused initially on the fee structure that would exist for current and new clients. See interview here. Now, I turn attention to the second part of the announcement, the change to the College [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="../wp-content/uploads/2010/06/collegepublisher.png" class="broken_link"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2990" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="collegepublisher" src="../wp-content/uploads/2010/06/collegepublisher-300x57.png" alt="collegepublisher" width="300" height="57" /></a>In the wake of <a href="http://www.collegepublisher.com/">College Media Network</a>&#8216;s <a title="cmn announcement" href="http://www.collegepublisher.com/news/licensing-fees-to-begin-in-2011-1.2335" target="_blank">announcement</a> in late December that they were changing their business model, most of my attention focused initially on the fee structure that would exist for current and new clients. See interview here. Now, I turn attention to the second part of the announcement, the change to the College Media Network ad revenue sharing structure. Here&#8217;s the part that deals with the advertising revenue splits.</p>
<blockquote><p>Newspapers will have more choice with managing online ad inventory by selecting one of the following on an annual basis:</p>
<p><strong>A. </strong> CMN and the newspaper will share the inventory  among all 5 ad units with a 70/30 breakdown.  The newspaper will be  able to utilize each ad placement up to 30% of the page impressions.   Each party will retain 100% of the revenue made off the campaigns placed  on the site, but any unused inventory on the newspaper-side will be  filled with remnant ads (of which the newspaper will receive 20% of the  revenue).<br />
<strong><br />
B. </strong> CMN will sell all 5 spots and remit a payment of 20% of the total revenue to the newspaper.</p>
<p><strong>C. </strong> The newspaper can buy the entire inventory from  CMN at a rate of $7.50 per 1,000 page views.  Naturally, the newspaper  would retain all the revenue from the advertisements placed on site.</p>
<p>While license fees are billed up front on an annual basis, revenue  sharing provides an opportunity to offset that cost acreoss the year.</p></blockquote>
<p>I have an e-mail in to Lewis with a number of questions related to the new revenue sharing options, and will post it as soon as he responds. In the meantime, any thoughts on the new structure?</p>
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		<title>Q&amp;A: Rusty Lewis on CMN&#8217;s new business model</title>
		<link>http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/01/qa-rusty-lewis-on-cmns-new-business-model/</link>
		<comments>http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/2011/01/qa-rusty-lewis-on-cmns-new-business-model/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:34:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Bryan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[College Media News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[College Publisher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Content Management Systems]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media Companies - College Related]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Content management system]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[future of journalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[web sites]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wordpress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/?p=3593</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[UPDATE: Additional questions appended after publication. Editor&#8217;s note: These are the responses I received from College Media Network&#8217;s Rusty Lewis in response to questions I e-mailed him about their new business model/fee structure. Since the announcement says that papers with an average of 25,000 page views/mo. will not be charged a fee, how many of [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong><a href="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/collegepublisher.png"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2990" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="collegepublisher" src="http://www.collegemediainnovation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/collegepublisher-300x57.png" alt="collegepublisher" width="240" height="46" /></a>UPDATE</strong>: <em>Additional questions appended after publication</em>.</p>
<p><em><strong>Editor&#8217;s note</strong>: These are the responses I received from College Media Network&#8217;s Rusty Lewis in response to questions I e-mailed him about their new business model/fee structure.</em></p>
<p><strong><em>Since the announcement says that papers with an average of 25,000 page views/mo. will not be charged a fee, how many of your papers do you expect would be charged? What percentage of the total client list is that?</em></strong></p>
<p>Approximately 100 CMN news sites are above the 25k threshold; this is about 20 percent of our network. We attempted to create several lower cost options for the publications with traffic below this mark, as we know many of them have limited resources.</p>
<p>When it comes to paying fees, there’s never a great time to implement such a change or make this sort of announcement.  We understand many student publications use the spring and early summer to budget for the upcoming school year, so the start of the calendar year was as ideal as any time. This announcement allows CMN a full semester to explain and educate the market about the new options with enough time for publications to understand what they need to budget for in the coming school year.</p>
<p><strong><em>What kind of feedback have you received since announcing the licensing fee?</em></strong></p>
<p>While it feels like a sudden change, many of the publications or individuals we have reached out to expressed that this change makes sense In an industry full of semester- and year-based turnover, CMN’s success is largely due to the continuity our staff and services provide college media. We wanted to remain in existence, and so far our partners understand that desire.</p>
<p>That said, we have received a some very positive feedback in our efforts to provide multiple options/packages.</p>
<p>Today is actually the second wave of social activity. A CP partner tweeted the initial post within 12 hours of posting it to our site, and we saw an initial buzz for a few hours after that. Overall, though, a surprising amount of the conversation we’ve seen has taken place between people beyond the college media circuit.</p>
<p><strong><em>Why the difference between the standard CMN/College Publisher package ($1995/yr) and the WordPress package ($4500/yr)?</em></strong></p>
<p><em>College Publisher</em> software relies on already existent infrastructure designed to share resources and provide streamlined support. This allows us to spread costs across the entire network. Our WP option is an individualized installation enabling the newspaper staff to customize their site (through themes and plug-ins) in ways network-based software can’t do as easily.</p>
<p><strong><em>Will you charge $150/hour to support <a class="zem_slink" title="WordPress" rel="homepage" href="http://wordpress.org">WordPress,</a> and what sort of support is offered in the yearly plan?</em></strong></p>
<p>The $4,500 annual license fee covers support related to CMN services related to server environment operation, DNS services and integration of CMN plug-ins.  Many of the CMN plug-ins –advertising system, traffic reporting, city guide publisher, e-mail newsletter – power the core functions for a news site.</p>
<p>This support package does not include CMN digging into the custom code web editors write.  If the site is experiencing failures, we will make sure that CMN plug-ins are not causing the error and then roll back to previous versions in order to isolate what is wrong.</p>
<p>CMN will be responsible for deploying WP core updates, which can be frequent, but are essential to assuring security and stability of the site. Compatibility development post-update for themes and plug-ins (non-CMN plug-ins) is solely the responsibility of the newspaper.</p>
<p>Any supplemental charges for support (at $150/hr) would be discussed and approved in writing in advance of any work being done. These charges would be limited to requests for review of custom code, design work or staff training.</p>
<p><strong><em>Is there a cost associated with moving to WordPress on the CMN network? (i.e., from CP5 to WP on your system)</em></strong></p>
<p>Data migration projects can vary from publication to publication so we are not setting a policy on costs for archives. CMN will tackle these requests on a case-by-case basis.</p>
<p><strong><em>Will you assist in the site design for WordPress as a part of the yearly fee?</em><br />
</strong></p>
<p>No. Our design services are available for our core platform, CP5.</p>
<p><strong><em>What would be the advantage to having CPPro? ($8995/yr)</em><br />
</strong></p>
<p>This system has dedicated resources (from a hardware, software and personnel standpoint.) A publication choosing this option can expect a high level of customization for any convergence type of project or newsroom work-flow situation. All customization would be unique to this instance (as opposed to CP5) and tailored to the specific needs of the news organization(s) on an ongoing basis.</p>
<p><em><strong>Why was this announced Dec. 20, when most college media are on holiday break?</strong></em></p>
<p>It was really simply an unfortunate byproduct of the way the calendar fell with regard to the new ownership of CMN. It took almost three months to fix, assess, plan and announce. The Access Network Co. felt it was the most responsible thing to announce plans for the CMN business as soon as they were finalized (as we would look to start implementing these changes early in 2011.)</p>
<p>The posting of this policy change on our site served as a reference point. In contacting our partners via phone and e-mail, we have somewhere to refer folks to dig into the details. When considering the alternative – “sitting” on the story until the New Year – we hope the news hounds out there understand the decision to post the information as soon as it was ready.</p>
<p><em><strong>Beyond the business model, what is the overall vision here?</strong></em></p>
<p><em> </em>CMN is a collection of niche sites serving the college community. When we started, there was a great need for getting online quickly.  We filled that need the best we could.  In the previous decade, needs changed and spread to reflect the diversity that exists in college media.</p>
<p>This change is long overdue. College media is unique in that all of our partners serve the same purpose in their local markets, but they do it in a variety of ways. We needed to offer options and customization.</p>
<p>In order to provide college media with more services and more distribution channels, we needed to make tweaks to the business that allowed for client customization. Now, college newspapers can be a member of CMN and use one or all of our products.</p>
<p>This major change in our business model was always an internal discussion point, but only until the most recent change in ownership has the capability from an accounting perspective existed to make this adjustment possible. The Access Network Co. is a technology provider to publishers and brands – they have the infrastructure to help CMN navigate this change.</p>
<p>Innovation is essential to college media’s survival, and ultimately ours, too.</p>
<p>Our goal is allowing students and faculty to focus on storytelling and information dissemination. This doesn’t have to exclude the handful of students who have a passion for custom development. While this is a growing number of students, it’s not nearly a critical mass.  We are looking to create an ecosystem that allows publications to experiment with that minority of student developers and easily transition to something else when those students move on.</p>
<p><em><strong>Anything else you&#8217;d like to add that I haven&#8217;t asked about?</strong></em></p>
<p><em> </em>All of the prices and packages came from competitive analysis of various providers to the college market. When it came to pricing CP5 and CP Pro, we really took a look at the costs we are incurring to support and develop these systems to determine the price tag. We need to cover costs.</p>
<p>Our focus in 2011 is generating revenue, not just for us, but for our partners. The Access Network Co. is looking to create new revenue programs and hopefully get more digital advertising dollars to college media.</p>
<p>We thrive on feedback and sincerely want partners to let us know if they have any concerns or questions about this model change, our services or anything else related to our goals for 2011.</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212; ADDITIONAL Q&amp;A &#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;</p>
<p><strong><em>When did CMN begin looking at charging for the product?</em></strong></p>
<p>This has been an idea kicked around for years going back to Y2M days. The issue was we never really had the infrastructure to execute this type of business model and client tracking.  Investment was put off at several points in the past for a variety of reasons, but the economy definitely made our budgets lean (at least in recent history.)</p>
<p><strong><em>How soon will this begin affecting existing customers?</em></strong></p>
<p>We are contacting some newspapers now.</p>
<p>As stated in our communications, we are honoring all existing contracts.  Our process involves giving 90 days advance notice to our partners that we are not renewing the existing agreements under the current terms.  We have only just begun the process, but under the new set of options, we feel that newspapers will be getting more than they were under our older agreements.</p>
<p><strong><em>How do you plan to get the word out to your partner news outlets?</em></strong></p>
<p>We are using all the means at our disposal.</p>
<p><a title="college publisher" href="http://www.collegepublisher.com" target="_blank">Collegepublisher.com</a> is the hub of info newspapers can use for research and information gathering.  We are beginning outreach via email and phone this week and will continue to do this all through the semester, prioritizing newspapers by the renewal date of their contract.</p>
<p>We definitely appreciate CICM for covering the story as it helps clear up any confusion.  However, if a newspaper has any questions, we are available through email (support@collegepublisher.com) , phone (866.733.9231) and twitter (<a title="twitter" href="http://www.twitter.com/collegepublish" target="_blank">@collegepublish</a>).</p>
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