Judging from frequent posts to the CMA listserv, more and more former students are attempting to get college media outlets to remove news items from their online archives. The Washinton Post may have pointed out a way for college media to divert those requests with an article about online reputation management firms: Calling in pros to refine your Google image.

Google’s ubiquity as a research tool has given rise to a new industry: online identity management. The proliferation of blogs and Web sites can allow angry clients, jealous lovers or ruthless competitors to define a person’s identity. Whether true or not, their words can have far-reaching effects.

Charging anything from a few dollars to thousands of dollars a month, companies such as International Reputation Management, Naymz and ReputationDefender don’t promise to erase the bad stuff on the Web. But they do assure their clients of better results on an Internet search, pushing the positive items up on the first page and burying the others deep.

The most frequent reason former students seek out the campus press is because of what I’ll politely term “youthful indiscretions” that show up in police blotter stories. Five years away from college, these former students find that those police blotter items show up high in search engine results.

From various discussions, it’s pretty clear that student media outlets aren’t going to erase history, so the only real avenue for change would be for these individuals to push the offending item farther down in the search results by getting online and becoming more of a digital presence - through their own web sites, comments on weblogs, and social networking sites. There’s nothing inherently wrong with trying to ensure that relevant, current information shows up at the top when people search your name.

So next time someone asks you to remove something from the digital archives, after you decline their request, you might point them to this article from the Post, which can help explain how they can manage their online identity.

The Business Beat

Participants at the recent CICM new media workshop in Nashville listened intently to keynote speaker Jennifer Carroll. Carroll is Gannett’s vice president of new media content in the newspaper division of the company.

Carroll played a key role in the development of Gannett’s “Information Center” concept and was named Gannett corporate staffer of the year in ‘06.

In addition to her duties at Gannett, Carroll also served on the journalism star-studded, 25-member task force for the American Press Institute’s “Newspaper Next: The Transformation Project.”

After Carroll’s keynote speech in Nashville, she sat down with the CICM video crew for a 20-minute interview fielding numerous questions that included:

*Advice for students
*Creating a new journalism mindset
*Innovating and taking risks
*Selling “audiences” rather than circulation numbers to advertisers
*Non-traditional research methods used to learn about news consumers
*Newsroom VS Information Center
*Changes in newsroom culture

A 20-minute talking head interview breaks just about every rule in the book for a blog, but if you want a deeper understanding of the fundamental changes taking place in journalism, Carroll’s interview is required viewing.

Click To Play

The Business Beat

It is still lost on many journalists and journalism educators that most changes in the industry are based on economics. Satan is not waving a wand bringing plagues on newspapers (although sometimes you have to wonder).

Publicly traded media companies rely on stockholders to fund companies. If stockholders don’t believe their investment will pay off, they put their money somewhere else.

Morningstar is basically the gold benchmark when it comes to analyzing investments in the Standard and Poors 500 market. They pick apart companies from top to bottom trying to determine a valuation and then sell that info to others to they can make good stock picks (okay, very oversimplified).

In a recent article, Morningstar took a broad and critical look at big media. Still lots of bad news out there and the bottom is yet to be reached, especially in newspapers.

Meanwhile, we think margins will continue to be pressured at newspaper publishers. Newspaper companies should see some benefit in 2007 from lower newsprint prices and usage. But newsprint and supplements make up only about 15% of publishers’ total operating costs. Because the bulk of newspaper publishers’ costs are fixed, anticipated top-line challenges should cause negative operating leverage to continue. We wouldn’t be surprised to see yet another round of layoffs in the near future as publishers attempt to combat this.

However, not all is doom and gloom in media according to the Morningstar report. The Internet, while only providing five percent of media revenue currently continues to hold great promise. This is especially true for specialized information providers like Dow Jones which can almost charge face value for their financial commodity most of which will be delivered in real time over the Web.

The rest of the Morningstar piece here.

The Business Beat

We conclude our look at Gannett’s business plans with their efforts in broadcasting.  In addition to owning 90 daily newspapers, Gannett owns 23 TV stations . In a report to investment bank, Credit Suisse, Roger Ogden, president and CEO of Gannett Broadcasting, talked about the performance and transformation of Gannett television.

* Due mainly to political advertising, odd years mean less revenue, overall ‘07 growth will not match ‘06

* Broadcasting at Gannett is no longer just broadcasting,”it’s multimedia” with a Web focus

* TV stations will expand local news

* TV stations will expand community programming

* Gannett will repurpose locally generated news stories for other TV programming and online portals

* Online/digital revenue was up 58% in ‘06

* Broadcasting sales force is being retrained to better tap online revenue streams

* An unexpected shift is taking place,  local advertising interest seems to be declining while national advertising interest is increasing

The Business Beat 

In prior posts we began to examine Gannett’s business strategy for the upcoming year based on the company brass report to major investment house, Credit Suisse. The 51-minute audio post is pretty boring and filled with enough business jargon to choke any self-respecting journalist.

So, we made a few crib notes to spare you.

We’ve already heard from CEO Craig Dubow and Gannett’s president of its newspaper division, Sue Clark-Johnson.

Here’s a summary from president and CEO of USA Today, Roger Ogden. 

* 2007 marks the 25th anniversary of USA Today, the paper has always focused on easy access of news/info for readers, and that will continue

* USA Today dropped 1.3% of circulation last year and continuing drops may be anticipated

* Five percent decrease in page ads in 2006

* Six percent increase in ad rates for 2007 (fewer readers, but more expensive?)

* Fifteen percent loss in auto ads in 2006

* Increased focus on Web in 2007

* Major online redesign scheduled for launch this fiscal quarter

* More user interactivity to be built into online site

* Renewed focus on podcasts and blogs

* Will increase partnerships with TV (Good Morning America and ABC News) in ‘07

* Online revenue increased 25% in ‘06, projects 18-20% growth in “07

* USA Today online measured 50 billion ad impressions in ‘06

* Expects overall revenue for USA Today to be up in the mid-single digits for ‘07

Next time, we will finish up with Gannett’s broadcasting plans.

The Business Beat

The incomplete story from Tallahassee.

An editorial about the strike in the Famuan Online.

* Accessing the Famuan online requires registration. Ugh.

CICM’s Business Beat

General manager of The Daily Tar Heel, Kevin Schwartz made a post yesterday on the CMA list-serv regarding Gannett’s acquisition of The Central Florida Future, the student newspaper of the University of Central Florida. You can find the story of the sell in the news column on the right hand side of the page.

Here’s the brief story as it appeared in Florida Today paper.

This is Gannett’s second acquisition of a student newspaper. The Florida State paper was the first.

Is there a pattern here?

Is college media in the crosshairs?

At a media conference in December, 2006, Gannett’s corporate brass gave a detailed business report to Credit Suisse, a major investing house. It’s basically an annual report without all the mind-numbing statistics.

The report is available online in podcast form until March 7.

You cannot directly link to the podcast. Instead, go to this site and click on the Credit Suisse report which will give you an option to listen.

This 53 minute Gannett report is required listening for anyone interested in the future of journalism. A theme repeating throughout was the development of “niche: audiences.

This is a major report for a major stockholder. It’s very interesting that Gannett’s Chairman, President, and CEO, Mr. Dubow, makes mention of the aquistion of the Florida State student paper (10:10) on the podcast.

A CEO mentioning the aquistion of a student newspaper at a major stockholders meeting?

This is a company with 90 daily newspapers including USA Today and numerous commercial TV stations.

This is but another wake up call for college media.

Colleges have a prime “niche” audience and it looks to me like the corporations have us on their radar.

This news comes on the heels of Landmark’s announcement of BigLickU.

I strongly urge you to listen to the full Gannett report mentioned above. It’s downright spooky listening to the media money people talking about the future of journalism.

Mark Potts, who is quickly becoming a must-read in my daily stroll through the mediablogosphere, posts a great list (we love us some lists!) of things he would do if he ran a newspaper: NewspapeRx.

He has detailed explanations of each point, but here’s the short list:

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From FutureLab’s Alain Thys of the marketing profs, 8 truths of real innovators. A short list below with some adaptions for college media, but read the full explanations at the Marketing Profs Daily Fix blog.

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Earlier this semester, I e-mailed Tom Nelson at the Loyolan newspaper at Loyola Marymount about the blogging policy at the paper. I know Tom was interested in the topic earlier this year. I got a response recently that I’ll share here.

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