BANGKOK, Thailand.
The People’s Alliance for Democracy’s (P.A.D.) takeover of Bangkok’s main airports, the cavernous Suvarnabhumi and the older Don Muang, is finally bringing global attention to the political conflict that won’t go away. A casual observer might wonder why it is that police and the military have been so helpless in dealing with the constant barrage of protests from the P.A.D. Whether its bringing traffic on the streets of Bangkok to a crawl, preventing government workers from entering their own buildings or now, most dramatically, stopping international flights dead in its tracks, the P.A.D. are acting with apparent impunity.
Most revealing was the fact that as soon as protesters took over the main international airport, Suvarnabhumi, military leaders called on Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat to call new elections. Instead of reflexively honoring the rule of law and previous elections, it is slowly but surely emerging that Thailand’s elite, from the royal family to military leadership, support what P.A.D. is doing.
Unfortunately, and even some of the military leaders acknowledge this, a forced coup and new elections won’t likely change the political landscape. The political situation in Thailand has become irretractable, and democracy itself hangs in the balance.
Billionaire former Thaksin Shinawatra, convicted in absentia of corruption, also empowered Thailand’s majority rural base, and gained their favor with healthcare and job training programs for the poor. Now fully engaged politically, they have an enormous advantage in the voting booth, setting up a class-war with Bangkok’s urban elite.
It is this urban elite that is funding the P.A.D. movement. When one P.A.D. protester died in the chaos, it was widely noted that Queen Sirikit and HRH Princess Chulabhorn Valayalaksana attended her funeral service. Also there was none other than army chief Anupong Paojinda, the Governor of Bangkok and Sondhi Limthongkul, the defacto head of the P.A.D. movement. Such a collection points to P.A.D. as being at least indirectly supported by Thailand’s elite. Thus, it becomes more clear why the takeover of the airports, if not condoned, would not be dealt with by the army and police officials.
The Prime Minister, accused of being a proxy for Thaksin, thus holds no real power over the Thai military and police establishment. Yet, even if the military execute a putsch, and new elections were held, it’s most likely that once again, P.A.D. would be dissatisfied, as the rural vote would likely re-instate a pro-Thaksin administration. P.A.D. understands this well, and have now floated the idea of giving rural voters only a fraction of the voting power of Bangkok’s population. By doing so of course, Thailand will be giving up on the basic tenets of Democracy, just as its neighbor and rival, Cambodia, is slowly beginning to embrace it.
Phillipines President Gloria Macapagal -Arroyo has commented that Thailand’s is “an immature democracy”, yet Thailand’s is one of the oldest democracies in the region. It is not a question of political maturity but a referendum on democracy itself. A growing realization by a conservative powerbase accustomed to top-down leadership, has fueled the notion that one person-one vote democracy may not be desirable for their society. A coup, as army chief, Anupong has stated, won’t solve that basic problem – only a change in the nation’s Constitution, and its acceptance or rejection of democracy will.
For his part, former Prime Minister Thaksin warned in a recent interview by blogger Thomas Crampton that any coup by military officials would result in bloodshed. “If the coup were to happen, there’s going to be bloodshed. It’s not going to be an easy coup like in the past because the people are in hardship since dictatorship came to Thailand,” Thaksin said. He also urged his supporters, to “protect democracy”, thus adding fuel to a possible showdown between the two forces.
Counterpoint: “Thailand’s Frail Democracy” by the Jakarta Post
photo: PAD protestors, Bangkok, Thailand, by Szymon Kochanski via Flickr CC
COPYRIGHT © 2008 The New York Herald. All Rights Reserved.
The upcoming Nikon D3X, if leaked specs are to be believed, is not only gunning for the highly anticipated Canon 5D Mark II, but also for medium format digital cameras in general. We’re talking 24.5 Nikon pixels here folks. That’s the highest resolution count for any Nikon to date.
The 51-point autofocus system can shoot at full 24.5 megapixels at 5 fps. All of that resolution goodness comes at a whopping 75MB pixel cost to your memory card – but you were asking for the best, weren’t you?
Here are the full Nikon D3X specs as published by gadget blog Gizmodo, via NikonRumors, which scanned the pic from Europe’s Nikon Pro magazine.
World’s highes-res SLR with Live View
• 51-point MultiCAM3500FX autofocus system
• Scene Recognition System
• Expeed 16-bit processing to handle detail on the 75MB image files
• 3-inch, 922,000-dot LCD
• 35.9mm x 24mm FX format sensor (If you can’t think in metric, that’s 1.4″ x 0.94″)
• Weather-resistant magnesium body
• Designed for medium-format shooting
• ISO range of 100-1600 with a Lo1 (equivalent to ISO 50) with boosts up to ISO 6400
• 24.5-megapixel shooting at up to 5fps; cropped 10-megapixel shooting at up to 7fps
• 12ms start-up time; 41ms shutter-release lag time
• Writes files to dual CF slots at 35MB/s
• USB 2.0, HDMI and AV-out jacks, with 10-pin terminal for GPS and other accessories
• Same lithium-ion battery as D
Price has yet to be announced, but expect it to cost much more than the $2,500 body-only Canon 5D Mark II. We’re not also not seeing anything related to movie mode, which the lower-priced Nikon D90 has covered, with 720 24p goodness. The Canon 5D Mark II of course pumps out 1080 30P, making filmmakers of us all.
The Nikon D3X is probably aspiring to be just a pure medium format digital still camera – and as such, its nearly perfect. Still, if this thing rocked 1080 24P video, it would practically declare itself king of the digital camera world.
A new study by supply-chain consulting company AMR Research shows a significant decline in the allure of sourcing goods from China. Once hailed as the world’s factory, where everything from Fisher Price toys to car parts were being made, China is now seen as a top manufacturing risk, according to the report. The two biggest concerns cited are product quality and theft of intellectual property.
A few months ago, rising fuel and shipping costs were already starting to reduce China’s price advantage over other regions, but now that fuel prices have gone through the floor, it is the lack of progress in quality control and intellectual property infringement that is weighing heavily on manufacturers. According to Kevin O’Marah, AMR’s Chief Strategist, “China is in a league of its own in terms of risks associated with intellectual property and quality..Companies are realizing that the fully loaded costs of importing from China are a lot higher than they imagined,”.
Where should American manufacturers turn next? Their own backyards. Mexico and the U.S. are beginning to look like sensible and cost effective places to manufacture. The key is as basic as transportation. Transportation costs are significantly lower whether from Akron, Ohio or south of the border. That means closer supervision by management of factory operations, quality control and worker morale. America’s slowing economy, along with the BRIC nation’s rapid growth and inflation, also means that our costs are starting to become more competitive, especially when factoring in stability, quality, productivity and intellectual property security.
An Obama administration can make much progress in bringing back manufacturing jobs from overseas. Forward thinking politicians already understand that having a strong manufacturering operation in Mexico has several long-term advantages over China. By encouraging Mexico’s industrialization, we are supporting stability for a friendly neighbor to the south. By giving them jobs and helping to grow the middle class, we are absorbing less of the problems Mexico exports vis a vis illegal immigration due to poverty and lack of opportunity. The AMR report suggests that American companies are starting to see the advantages for themselves, but it would certainly speed things along if government leadership encouraged it.
photo: Mexico City, a few days after Independence Day, by schlaeger via Flickr CC
COPYRIGHT © 2008 The New York Herald. All Rights Reserved.
Kara Swisher’s Boomtown blog gives us some juicy tidbits as to why Twitter eventually rejected Facebook’s $500 million offer to acquire Twitter. Twitter if you’re unaware is a fast growing “life streamer” that has spawned not only direct competitors, like FriendFeed, but also feature-cloning from the likes of Facebook and Gmail.
Apparently Twitter felt that $500 million in Facebook stock wasn’t necessarily worth $500 million. Twitter investors and execs also felt the timing wasn’t right, and that Twitter still had room to grow and needed time to try to monetize the site to see its full potential. While Twitter has grown 600% in the past year, investors such as Charles River and Union Square Ventures determined that it was still too early in the game to be acquired. Facebook has recently surpassed Myspace, accumulating 120 million users, but so far has yet to be revenue-positive.
The acquisition offer was in all-stock form according to the report, at an earlier buzzed-about $15 billion dollar valuation from Microsoft. Twitter reportedly pegs Facebook at $5 billion, giving their true acquisition payout to be $150 million – too low, even in this current economic climate.
Read more at AllThingsD.com
History of The New York Herald.
1794-1797. “Herald” of New York has a three year run as a “Gazette for the Entire Nation”
1802-1826. The “New-York Herald.” has a successful run and is predessor to the Gordon Bennett Publication.
1835-1924.
Top Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, economic advisor Lawrence Sumner and others, upped the ante for a proposed Obama stimulus package to rescue the ailing economy.
Economic advisor Robert Reich and New York Senator Charles Schumer suggested in interviews Sunday that a stimulus package in the $500-$700 billion range would be required to be effective.
That amount would rival the recent $700 bil. bank bailout, and would represent a New Deal-like amount of government intervention, or as Robert Reich explained on CNN, “there’s not enough buying power in the economy,” forcing the government to be the “spender of last resort.”
While Obama has indicated that infrastructure and green collar jobs would be the focus of stimulus spending, very little specifics have been released on actual spending priorities. Infrastructure for example, could imply repairing crumbling roads and bridges, or it could focus more on train-based transportation infrastructure, such as California’s proposed bullet train from Sacramento to Los Angeles, or Minnesota’s proposed Light Rail Train for its southern corridor – from suburban Shakopee to downtown Minneapolis.
photo: train in the desert, by wili_hybrid via Flickr CC
As a novice ‘news brand’ publisher, I read with great relief that the best in the business, Rupert Murdoch, is bullish on the future of newspapers. He ought to know – not only is Mr. Murdoch a legend in the publishing business, known for his tenacity as well as his populist, reader-knows-best editorial perspective, he has also recently impressed many by taking a decidedly old-world brand, the Wall Street Journal, into the digital age with finesse and aplomb. The new Wall Street Journal’s website looks great, makes money, and is outpacing its rival The New York Times in the one metric that counts most – ad rates.
My take on his perspective on the future of newspapers is that while the challenges of printing on “dead trees” and competing with the likes of Craigslist is very real indeed, news brands can survive and dominate because they offer something thousands of blogs don’t – instant credibility earned over decades of journalism. The focus of that credibility of course is in the brand, and the journalists, journalistic standards and corporate resources the brand represents. The challenge is for these news brands then is to walk the fine line between editorial integrity and modern communication standards, while still managing to earn a profit. Its not as easy as it sounds. Newspapers that veer towards “advertorial” content do so at great risk to their reputations, and some esteemed news brands, such as the Christian Science Monitor, have jumped off the printed press entirely, choosing to double down on their journalists while cutting off the cost and hassle of a daily printed edition.
As a digital strategist who learned the ropes through direct response online marketing, I’ve been trained to think most importantly of R.O.I. Search engine marketing, vs. banner ads bought on a CPM, is as ROI-centric as you can get. You are literally picking keywords and landing pages and measuring conversions on each creative decision you make. According to Hitwise, 25% of all online news brand traffic arrives via search engines. Thus, a new editorial dilemma, along the lines of the advertorial controversy, is taking shape. Do you write for the reader, or Google?
Although I’ve yet to find a clear roadmap that addresses such dilemmas, I offer my current perspective on how newspapers can please Google, maintain editorial integrity and monetize traffic enough to remain viable and even market-leading in the world of online publishing.
Change Perspective. A blog is a newspaper concept without the kind of editorial and journalistic qualities usually associated with newspapers. A newspaper is a blog that is generally behind the curve on the new business and communication models of a blog. The answer is for blogs to structure themselves in a professional manner along the lines of a respected newspaper, and for newspapers to take technical advantage of the blog platform. They are not mutually exclusive – and in fact are the same entity but with polar strengths and weaknesses.
First, we have to accept the following premises:
The economies of scale for newspapers have changed permanently, thus newspapers have to radically alter their organizational ratios. Newspapers made a great living off paid classifieds, so much so that Craigslist is often credited as the newspaper killer. While charging for display ads still brings home the bacon, the competition for eyeballs has generally lowered ad rates across the board. Newspapers compete not ony with other newspapers, but also blogs, cellphones and increasingly multi-media televisions and computer screens.
News has become a low value commodity. Subscriptions have fallen off a cliff, as news, for example, about the MTA’s planned fare hikes, can be found anywhere and everywhere. In the case of printed subscriptions, printing such news is akin to printing “yesterday’s news tomorrow”.
The printed newspaper, along with its distribution, is too resource-intense and will continue to be so in the future. We’re talking dead trees, mammoth factories and printing presses, diesel trucks winding its way through thick city traffic and guys lifting 50 lbs of news into a bodega every morning, yes, to deliver “yesterday’s news”.
How then do we move forward? The key is to leverage the news brand as an authoritative source and voice. Polls indicate that the internet is becoming more trustworthy to consumers than what they hear on television. That’s good news for newspapers, and newspaper-like blogs. We can maintain or accelerate that credibility by maintaining and improving on the editorial voice and quality of the news brand. Thus advertorials are out, and working to please Google ahead of readers is a no-no. All we have is our news brand’s credibility and authoritative voice – its golden and should be protected and expanded above all else.
Secondly, we have to recognize the new economics. The online news business doesn’t make the kind of margins the printed newspaper did in its hey day. That’s ok, if we’re able to cut costs in two areas – the printed newspaper, and news as commodity. In other words, stop printing if you can’t get people to subscribe, and stop spending so much time and money on telling readers about the fare hike that 1,000,000 other blogs and newspapers have already reported on.
Instead, focus the newsroom on analysis, observation and generally high-quality, well-researched unique content. Instead of 5 people hired to chase every news bite, hire one good reporter to research the sexual habits of 18-25 year old girls in New York City. Its an example of a story that would be picked up by every other blog and newspaper. That in turn gives your news story and website backlinks – something Google weighs very heavily in determining what website results they want to display. Of course, if you’re the Washington Post, you can aim a little higher. Their most recent example of such good investigative reporting can be found here. Its a story I couldn’t find anywhere else – and its the kind of thing that makes the Washington Post, well, the Washington Post.
Syndicate content to leverage economies of scale. In this day and age, that fare hike story should be an RSS feed from an external source, which ideally will act as a sort of news wire service (AP/Bloomberg/Reuters specialize in syndicating their content). This allows the news brand to spend their resources on chasing unique stories, the accumulation of which defines their editorial focus and voice.
Don’t be afraid to charge for unique, highly respected content. Of course, you have to earn that respect, but newspapers like the New York Times and WSJ already have earned it – over many Pulitzer Prizes (Paul Krugman, a NYTimes columnist for example, just won an Economics Prize). The WSJ is charging for its online access, the NYTimes is not. Once you’re content is mostly unique, via investigative reporting or highly credible and popular columnists, you have something you can begin charging for, again.
Understand behaviorial/contextual marketing, while not breaching editorial integrity. The furor over advertorials is that the newspaper shouldn’t be paid to tell you what to buy. They certainly shouldn’t make it look like a standard newspaper article if the main goal is to sell you a product. Agreed, but what if you did a standard news bite story on the latest cars at the LA Auto Show. Why not below the article, have a list of offers related to the story, such as:
Comment | Related Stories | Related Offers
where related offers might include Car Loans, Auto Insurance, etc. By using SEO best practices (tagging, title description, etc) combined with the best technology available to connect that offer with that contextually related article, you’re improving monetization rates, without veering into advertorial land. In my estimation, most newspaper sites are far behind the curve with their use of technology to match content with offers.
Don’t just consider CPM! CPM means cost per thousand, and generally refers to the sale of eyeballs to your article. $10 CPM means it costs an advertiser just $10 to make 1,000 impressions. Unfortunately, unless you’re pulling in 12,000,000 viewers a day, that payday is quite small.
Focus also on CPC or better yet CPA – which is cost per action. That means it doesn’t matter how many people viewed that article on the LA Auto Show, it just matters how many people clicked on the offer for auto insurance and actually signed up. You get paid for example, by Progressive, for every new sign up. By putting the onus on the publisher to match the offer with the content, the advertiser enjoys less risk, while the publisher who can best organize data to match offers, will enjoy a bigger paycheck WITH LESS TRAFFIC.
The various strategies to match content with offer is technologically driven, and changes all the time. However, with a strong tech team who’s mandate is to match offers with content WITHOUT veering into advertorial land, a well-funded organization like the New York Times should be able to multiply their income almost immediately. I’ve seen it in a very small scale with the monetization research I’ve done, and many small but well-respected bloggers have earned a healthy profit from savvy content/offer matching.
In conclusion, news brands can and should lead the way on monetizing traffic, while still winning awards and the respect and envy of their blogging peers. They have all the resources to do it. All it really takes is a change in perspective and a re-allocation of their resources. For a non-funded start up like The New York Herald, that’s easier said than done, but from our perspective, its the roadmap forward.
Ponara Steven Eng is digital strategist and publisher of The New York Herald.
