I just renewed my subscription to Wired magazine. $12 for another year of the print edition, plus I get the tablet edition for free to read an enhanced edition on my iPad. What a deal!

Alas, I don’t want the print edition! I’d prefer to receive only the iPad edition and reduce my carbon footprint a bit by causing one less copy of the magazine to be printed, shipped around by trucks, and so on. Also, I prefer reading on my iPad over print magazines, the latter which tend to get lost in piles of paper and books around the house. But for the $12-a-year renewal offer, I have to get the print edition.

Sure, I could opt for paying for just the digital-tablet edition with no print delivery, but that would cost me $19.99 a year. (That also happens to be the price advertised for new subscribers on the Wired website for print edition and tablet subscription. The site doesn’t offer tablet-only for that price, as far as I can tell; you can pay $19.99 a year and avoid the print edition by purchasing a digital edition via the iPad app.)

If I was truly committed to avoiding the extra resources consumed and pollution created by taking the print edition, I could of course just pay the extra $8 a year. It’s not much, right? I considered that, but I’m on a meager university salary and my wife is a public-school teacher, and in this economy we’ve had to watch expenses and cut back on some things (bye-bye, exorbitant cable-TV bill!), so if I have a chance to save money, I do. (I’ll donate my printed Wired magazines to my wife’s school library.)

Besides, what logic is there to charge subscribers more for getting less (i.e., digital-only subscription), and charging more for subscribers who want to do the right thing environmentally? It’s stupid.

Well, it’s not stupid from the publisher’s standpoint, of course. Wired and its parent company want me and others to continue to take the print edition, whether we want it or not, because those colorful print ads that fill up the magazine bring in lots of money. It won’t do to encourage or support subscribers giving up print in favor of digital only, because the print ads would then bring in less money.

I get that. But it pisses me off that in this media transition that we find ourselves in, print publishers resort to discouraging the digital transition and encouraging subscribers to continue receiving a product that consumes physical resources (trees) and pollutes the environment (trucks and delivery).

It’s not just Wired. Making the cheapest option for newspaper and magazine subscriptions be print + digital is a current major trend in media business models.

In another few years, perhaps we’ll be past such stupidity (I mean in an environmental sense, not a business one). For now, all I or any magazine or newspaper subscriber who wants a publisher’s product and are caught in such a situation can do is gripe, or be altruistic and pay more.

Here in Boulder, Colorado, our dominant newspaper is moving out of its long-time home in the heart of downtown. Next weekend, the Daily Camera is vacating its home at 11th and Pearl Streets — where it has been downtown’s longest-operating business — to an office in a business park in east Boulder.

The Daily Camera building on Pearl Street

It’s a sound business decision. The Camera building sits at the west end of the Pearl Street Mall, a four-block pedestrian-only shopping area that is the heart and soul of the city and a major tourist draw. The building afforded reporters close proximity to municipal government and the county courthouse, plus many of Boulder’s most prominent companies, including many in the city’s thriving tech start-up scene.

In other words, the land that the Camera’s building sits on is very valuable real estate, and with fewer employees and the paper’s printing presses long gone from the premises, it made sense to unload the property and move to smaller, less-expensive digs. The Camera and its owners, MediaNews Group of Denver, sold the building to Los Angeles-based Karlin Real Estate for $9 million last August. Now it’s time to move out.

But wait!…

Particularly for a city like Boulder, where the downtown area is more special than most (stated as an adoring resident of this college town), it is not a good thing that the primary news source no longer has a physical presence in the heart of town. This is a loss to the community.

I’m not going to gripe about the move, or suggest that the Camera’s executives reconsider their decision to move to an impersonal office park. Rather, here’s my suggestion to editor Kevin Kaufman and publisher Al Manzi — to turn a negative into a positive:

• Lease shop space on the Pearl Street Mall and open a coffee shop (or move in with an existing popular coffee shop as a partner).
• This might be an independent shop run by people in that business, in partnership with the Daily Camera. (Boulder has several tony coffee shops that are favorites of the tech crowd: Ozo’s, The Cup, Atlas Purveyors…)
• Or it could be a deal with a chain like Starbucks or Pete’s, where cohabitation of the space is negotiated.
• Brand the Pearl Street coffee shop with the Daily Camera name: e.g., Daily Camera’s The Cup, or Ozo’s at the Daily Camera.
• Expand the notion of a typical downtown coffee shop to include:
  • Plenty of comfortable furniture for casual work and reading while partaking on pricy coffee drinks and pastries.
  • Print editions of the Camera available (of course), as well as digital tablets that customers can check out (credit card imprint for deposit, please!) to read the Camera and other websites using free wi-fi.
  • Coffee shop loyalty programs or memberships, which give members special privileges (such as discounts on drinks and food, or hassle-free check-out of digital tablets).
  • Meeting/lecture space for periodic newsmaker lectures and public discussion events, with free events subsidized by sales of those expensive drinks. Or low admission prices but free admission to coffee shop members.
  • An editor (or two) stationed at the coffee shop, available to interact with the public but also physically positioned to respond quickly to report downtown news events. (And with a desk to perform normal newsroom duties.)
  • A couple public computers designed to solicit story ideas, news tips, and feedback for the office-park newsroom dwellers.

If I were in Manzi or Kaufman’s shoes, I’d worry that the Camera brand would suffer by the loss of a physical location in the heart of the action downtown. A trendy coffee shop co-branded with the Camera could alleviate that problem. And if the partners running the drink and food side of the business know what they’re doing, the co-branded business won’t cost the newspaper company anything — and might even bring in some new profits.

Old (left) and new (right) Daily Camera offices

View Daily Camera old and new locations in a larger map

As I noted yesterday, web donation network Kachingle has launched a good-natured guerrilla marketing campaign to allow Kachingle users to financially support any of NYTimes.com’s 50-plus bloggers. The theme is “Stop the Paywall!” (as in, NYTimes.com’s upcoming “metered paywall,” set to debut in early 2011) … “Keep the NYT Blogs you love in the open web.”

And as I predicted yesterday, Times executives have decided to put their lawyers on the case and send a cease and desist order to Kachingle founder Cynthia Typaldos and CEO Fred Dewey. So, rather than let an innovative marketing campaign by a tiny company run its course, Times executives are doing Kachingle a potentially big favor by flexing their legal muscles.

If this gets much press/Twitter/blogosphere attention, then Kachingle will benefit from a big boost in visibility. (Perhaps NYTimes.com could run a news story about the dispute!)

Typaldos today blogged about her encounter yesterday with Times executives: “But we love you The New York Times. My conversation with Mr. Digital and Mr. Legal and Mr. Paywall.” In her blog item, she recounted the discussion and reported that she would be receiving a letter soon:

“They said they were going to send us a legal document via FedEx called a ‘cease and desist’ order. I have never received one of these before so it’s going to be quite exciting. As soon as it arrives I will scan it and post.”

It doesn’t sound like Typaldos intends to back down:

“I told the three NYTimes executives that we have the same goal — saving the NYTimes Blogs from obscurity. Finding a new business model for news. At Kachingle we passionately believe that paywalls are truly bad … they cut off information from the open web, they dampen social discourse, they exclude people all over the world who cannot afford to be nickel-and-dimed-and-quartered-and-dollared for quality content. We believe paywalls are the enemy of democracy. We believe in our mission, and we will not back down.

While I can’t imagine it’s fun to be threatened by a huge media company’s lawyers (and there are financial risks in fighting back, of course), there’s clearly potential for an upside. I’m reminded of a former business partner (our company died in a bit less than two years from launch) who, when traffic to our websites failed to grow sufficiently fast enough, bemoaned that we needed something that would make a bigger splash. Getting sued by a big media or other company and the accompanying publicity and controversy would certainly do the trick, he said. I don’t believe he was joking. (He was a veteran of several previous Internet start-ups, and now is a partner at one that’s doing very well.)

I’ll keep watch on what happens next and report any interesting developments.

(Disclaimer: I have written about Kachingle in the past as a former columnist, and in this blog; I’ve also done a small amount of consulting for the company.)

This is an interesting case of what I guess would be termed “guerrilla marketing.” Kachingle, an online user-donation network that aims to financially support many websites and blogs, has begun a campaign to “STOP THE PAYWALL” at NYTimes.com.

First, some quick background:

• NYTimes.com has announced that it will put up a “metered paywall” on the site in early 2011. That means that site visitors after viewing an as yet unspecified number of stories in a month will be asked to pay to subscribe to the site or otherwise pay to access more Times content. It is likely that web users referred via links on Google, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. will not be counted against the monthly free allotment. (In other words, it’s a porous paywall, unlike the “hard” paywall that’s on Rupert Murdoch The Times (UK) website; that paywall allows no free content, and only paying customers can see beyond the headlines.)

Kachingle’s founders don’t believe in paywalls for general news websites, and they think that they have a better idea: Get readers of news across many sites and blogs to band together, pay $5 a month to Kachingle, then have Kachingle distribute that money based on individual users’ tracked visits to sites and blogs that they like (and that display Kachingle “medallions”).

The Kachingle guerrilla marketing campaign has specifically targeted the 50-plus blogs published on NYTimes.com, by allowing Kachingle’s paying member (I’m one) to “Kachingle” or support any of those blogs — without NYTimes.com’s cooperation. (I regularly read some of the NYT blogs and have Kachingled the ones I like. So, when I visit those blogs from now on, some of my $5 a month will start going to NYTimes.com bloggers — that is, if they choose to sign up to collect it.)

Since the Times doesn’t appear to want to do business with Kachingle or support its donation scheme, Kachingle founder Cynthia Typaldos and CEO Fred Dewey had their staff create browser plug-ins for Firefox and Chrome that allow a Kachingle member to support the NYTimes.com blogs. With the plug-in installed, when you visit one of the blogs, a thin Kachingle medallion banner appears above the page, pushing down the rest of the NYTimes.com page. That’s how you can “Kachingle” a specific NYTimes.com blogger. … NYTimes.com visitors who do not install the Kachingle browser plug-in will not see the medallions.

There’s also an automatically updating “Leader Board” that shows which NYT blogs are getting the most Kachinglers (i.e., financial supporters). As I write this, Paul Krugman’s blog is leading the Bits Blog and David Pogue’s Posts blog. The numbers aren’t much, but the campaign was launched only last night, and paying Kachingle members and some journalists and bloggers were notified today.

We’ll have to wait and see what the reaction is from NYTimes.com executives. As I see it, they can ignore this innovative but perhaps annoying (to NYT) ploy by a small Internet donation start-up, and it will either catch on with web users who think it’s a good idea, or die quickly. Or the Times execs can make a stink and try to force Kachingle to halt the campaign.

My experience with big media companies is that they often can’t help themselves from the latter approach: Call in the lawyers and send out the cease-and-desist orders! That would not be wise, since it will turn Kachingle’s guerrilla marketing ploy into a David-vs.-Goliath saga that could get lots of attention in the blogosphere and on Twitter.

Hey, what better way for a small business struggling to catch on with the public than to get a boost by being threatened or sued by New York Times lawyers! And it will raise more questions about the NYTimes.com paywall strategy.

I should learn more later, so we’ll see where this goes. In any event, it looks like fun.

(Disclaimer: I have written about Kachingle in the past as a former columnist, and in this blog; I’ve also done a small amount of consulting for the company.)

I spent Monday and Tuesday this week participating in the “Upgrade to Digital” workshop at the brand spanking new Boulder Digital Works at CU facility in downtown Boulder, a bleeding-edge training program to teach advanced creative, tech, and business digital-media skills. (Disclaimer: I attended on a free pass since I’m working on building a digital-media initiative for CU’s Journalism & Mass Communication School.)

What was especially great about the experience was that the workshop was run by Scott Prindle and Joe Corr, VP/director of technology and senior technical lead, respectively, of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the white-hot ad agency with offices here in Boulder and in Miami. Other CPB personnel also floated in and out (plus other special guest presenters), so attendees were treated to being taught, and critiqued, by ad agency rock stars.

Since I’m focused on the news industry and its transformation, I had a different perspective than most of the other workshop participants; I was thinking of how what we were seeing and learning could be adapted and/or applied to news (from digital techniques, to business models, to technology). In this and perhaps more blog entries, I’ll share a few take-aways from the last two days, as viewed through my news-colored glasses.

1. It’s the utility, stupid! Those companies savvy enough to be on the digital forefront (enough so that they’re spending money with CPB) are experimenting with smart-phone apps and web applications that emphasize utility for the customer, not just trying to get a brand message across. A phone example is Nike’s Nike+ running shoe with an embedded chip that communicates data with Nike+ on an iPhone (or iPod). There’s a website and social training community built around the product and its personal data from you, so that you can do stuff like time yourself time on a specific route, then compare it to a friend who runs the same route at a different time — a virtual competition. The phone and online components are meant to sell Nike+, certainly, but they provide the Nike+ customer with a great training log and social tool. It’s not just about selling, but improving the shoe buyer’s life. Utility.

Apply this to news: When developing mobile apps, think utility, not just presenting news. An app that keeps track of local road construction projects and finds re-routes around them could be handy for local commuters, for example. It might be introduced one time to accompany a big story about all the local road projects under way due to the federal stimulus money coming into the community — but it could be used by commuters and residents long term, and re-marketed each time there’s another road-construction and traffic-delays story.

On the web, CPB presenters showed us their NCAA Final Four Bracket-o-matic Flash project created for Coca-Cola Zero. (Link is to video.) The idea was to make the NCAA basketball championship grid easy to fill out; instead of picking teams and inputing them into the grid based on who you think will win, there’s a series of sliders along the top that fills out the grid based on 8 variables that you adjust.

What struck me about this was the thin line between a soda company doing this vs. a news company producing the same sort of thing and selling advertising around it. The Bracket-o-matic would feel OK as an editorial online feature. Again, it provides utility as well as fun. Why did an advertiser do it and not a media company? Coca-Cola had the money to pay CPB to create it; most news companies don’t have the technical chops to pull something like this off.

More take-aways later. … Off to a meeting now…

A new, and very large, Barnes & Noble bookstore opened here in Boulder, Colorado, recently, replacing a smaller store half a block away. I’ve wondered since construction started how the giant bookstore chain could justify a larger store when more and more we’ll be seeing people buying and reading books on digital tablets like Amazon’s Kindle. Wouldn’t smaller bookstores be in our future, not bigger ones?

With the announcement of B&N’s Nook e-reader device to compete with the Kindle, now I understand. The Nook digital strategy supports the brick-and-mortar business — the physical stores — of B&N.

I think the Nook business model is freaking brilliant! Here’s what it looks like:

• The Nook is priced about the same as a Kindle, but advances e-reader technology a bit. It features an E-Ink screen (no color) for reading, but also has a color navigation screen below the reading area.
• It adds a lend-a-book feature; it’s limited, but a great idea — and Amazon is sure to follow with something similar.
• You can preview and buy books anywhere you have a AT&T 3G signal or a wi-fi connection.
• And the best part: B&N says it “soon” will allow Nook owners to take their devices into any B&N physical store and read any e-book for free while in the store using the free wi-fi there!

I’m in awe of whoever thought up that last item. It’s a brilliant strategy to get more people into B&N bookstores. Nook owners will come in to read more than just the samples available to them outside the stores’ wi-fi range. They’ll buy coffee and perhaps other physical merchandise. They’ll read maybe a few chapters into a new book while lounging in a comfy chair in the store, then probably decide to buy the full e-book to finish at home later.

Sure, there might be a few freeloaders who spend time inside the stores reading entire books for free on their Nooks without actually buying the e-books. But so what?! I suspect that the increased coffee shop sales and the number of people who do buy the full e-books will far outweigh the freeloading. And the physical stores will be more crowded, sending the social signal the B&N stores are the place to be.

I had expected bookstores to eventually die off in larger numbers, and for chains like B&N to have fewer stores in the future. But this Nook strategy, as I see it, ensures a bright future for its brick-and-mortar stores. It gives the Nook a big advantage over the Kindle, since Amazon doesn’t have physical stores.

As for independent bookstores, if e-readers like the Nook, Kindle, et al truly take off, I’m not sure how they’ll stay healthy over the long run. But at least they probably have a longer lifespan than printed newspapers; I sense more people willing to say goodbye to the printed newspaper than the comfy printed book.

We had a power outage in parts of Boulder County yesterday, and the Boulder Daily Camera covered it in a news story (if a bit late, since the Sunday crew apparently hasn’t been trained in web publishing). The very first user comment about the story appears to be from a sly marketer for a company that makes backup generators:

“Disasters, Hurricanes, Tornados, Wind Storms. We’ve all seen the after-effects, entire communities without power. I’ve read that on average 3.5 million people lose their power in the US each week! We just bought a generator from [company name removed] that now will ensure our family has the power needed when faced with these unexpected outages. With back-up power, our home now stays well lighted, secure, keeping our food cold and fresh and our air conditioning working. Our generator will also keep our sump pump working to protected the basement from flooding.”

Good grief. The wording is so obviously from the company’s marketing department. (No, I haven’t confirmed that. But it seems obvious, and at least one other commenter came to the same conclusion.) Traditional marketers are struggling with how to engage in online conversations and get a grasp on “social marketing.” This is so clearly NOT the way to do that. (They’d have done better by being honest about it. The wording above is embarrassing.)

While the advice on this website most often is restricted to online tips, here’s one to help the print edition of your newspaper. You’ll accomplish it with an online program.

Here’s what you do: Set up an affiliate program that other website owners and bloggers can sign up for, where they market your print subscriptions on their sites in exchange for a decent commission when a sale is made. They’ll post ready-made banner ads on their sites, and you’ll gain some new print subscribers.

Now affiliate programs have been around for a long time, but you don’t often see them offered by newspaper websites. I’m not sure why that is, but they’re useful tools for bringing in new print subscribers at low cost.

Of course, if your website has any paid services, you can use the affiliate program to promote sales of those, too.

Count this as one of the least innovative bits of advice presented here. But affiliate programs have a long record of success. News companies have mostly missed out. Perhaps it’s time they take a more serious look.

There are plenty of companies offering affiliate programs; the largest is Commission Junction. Here’s a list of them.

Today’s tip is, perhaps, a bit bizarre. But don’t dismiss it out of hand! There’s some serious logic to why newspapers and local news organizations might want to open up coffee shops. Seriously.

Credit for this idea goes to Greg Harmon, a media consultant with Belden Associates. He’s pushing the idea to some of his newspaper clients that they should turn some unused space in their buildings into Internet cafes open to the public, as a way to connect with readers more directly and openly. Harmon explains:

“I think it would be easy enough to lease out and open areas to Starbucks or even better, invite some cool local coffee shop to locate there, put in a couple of big screen TVs like we have at airports, install a number of computers/displays with Internet access, sell or give away newspapers there and invite the public into our space.

“Editors and writers could simply wander in and talk to the public! Imagine! The space could be used some evenings for invitation-only focus groups! Imagine! Circulation people could walk in and talk to people about their use of the paper! The Publisher could talk to people who read the paper! … And remember the coffee at nearly all newspapers except the big ones is REALLY terrible!”

Yeah, it sounds a bit crazy at first blush, but actually this fits really well with current media trends. Experts have been preaching to newspapers for years to open up the conversation and interact with audiences, moving to two-way or interactive relationships with readers. This could be a great, albeit small, way to move more in that direction.

As traditional news brands’ influence and power declines, I think it makes sense to try to bolster the brand name. A co-branded newspaper-Starbucks (or Pete’s or whatever) Internet cafe could play up the traditional brand, as well as other newspaper-related brands (such as youth-oriented websites that are separate from the legacy brand).

Beyond a public Internet cafe in a newspaper or TV news office building, how about airports? I’d love to see some co-branded coffee shops there. I’m not sure Starbucks would want to dilute their branding in airports, but perhaps a No. 2 chain like Seattle’s Best would partner with media companies in order to better distinguish themselves from the Starbucks giant.

Harmon says he hasn’t convinced any clients to try this bold idea yet, but he’s hopeful.

What do you think? Good idea? Or has Harmon had too much caffeine?

I’m getting requests to include more marketing advice on this site, and I’m happy to oblige. Here’s a marketing technique that people in traditional marketing and traditional media often overlook: Establish and work on having a relationship with your audience. Ask them to talk about themselves, and stop talking so much about you.

Let’s face it, it’s human nature for most folks to want to talk about themselves. Journalists may be in the business of talking mostly about what they know, but the opportunity with the Internet is to get the audience talking too. So to build and grow the modern audience, you need to give them — at every reasonable opportunity — the ability to talk about themselves, share what they think, and ask you questions.

If you study the Internet marketing world (as I have been lately), you’ll see this advice coming from lots of consultants’ and experts’ mouths. It comes down to this core truth: When you shut up and listen, you learn what your customers want. By soliciting their feedback and suggestions, you can create the product that they want to buy.

The same principles can be applied to news media. Here are a few ideas that will strengthen relationships with members of your online audience, who then will be motivated to get their friends involved. Ergo, better loyalty from existing users of your site, and audience growth.

• Ask questions, often! Most news websites allow user comments at the end of stories now. (And if you don’t by now, for goodness sake, add them and join the 2000s.) Reporters can encourage comments by closing out stories with a p.s., which can be a question. They can ask questions within a story, linking down the page to the comment area.
• Ask for reader input and advice in stories. This is especially good technique when a story will have follow-up coverage, or is the start of an ongoing series. Ask readers what else they want to know, so they can help guide you.
• Do more polls, surveys and quizzes. Would this fit with a story you’re publishing? Then include it as an additional story element. (I’ll put in a pitch here for trying out the survey service and site sponsor SurveyGizmo, which I’ve been using lately and which is seriously cool for enhancing your interactive capabilities with your audience.)
• When appropriate, write with more “you’s” in your stories than “I’s.” Include more question marks in your content, which brings “you” into the story more often.
• Talk about the interactions you have with users. By writing about it when users interact with you, you not only acknowledge the importance of outside opinion, but model the behavior of user interaction. More people will join the conversation when they see evidence that other people are doing it.
• Interject your personality; downgrade the corporate persona. If you want to establish a relationship with online users, then you need to show your humaness. Drop the corporate persona and be more personal.

Some of those ideas are just common sense. But I should acknowledge Internet marketing guru Jeff Walker, since some of the ideas above are his. (Though, frankly, there are a bunch of Internet marketing gurus offering similar advice.) His training program has helped me understand that the current thinking in the Internet marketing world can and should be applied to online news media.

What do you think?

(Yes, I think I will start following my own advice and ask more questions of you on this website.)