The 10 myths of on-line publishing
HERSHEY, Pa. -- In his New Media World presentation, Eric Meyer pointed to 10 bits of so-called conventional wisdom that he hears regularly but does not accept as true. Here are the claims and Meyer's replies:
Bandwidth will increase while costs decrease. High-bandwidth access for consumers has been slow to catch on and availability has been slow to spread.
The prime audience is an untapped generation of non-newspaper readers. Site demographics don't match this.
On-line readers demand a rich audio/visual presence. In fact, they favor information that can be retrieved quickly, with minimal waiting.
We have to live with banner ads at the top of pages. Not so, Meyer says. In fact, ads in that position tend to be ignored.
Search engines and portals will steal all the advertising. These sites draw plenty of traffic, but from people who are looking for other sites. Thus, the portals' ad rates are among the lowest anywhere on the Web.
It's tough to audit hits, impressions, clicks and users. Many very good tools exist for this purpose.
The more hits the better. Not if you don't know anything about where, or from whom, those hits came.
Readers want to interact with information providers. Some don't; they want just a quick bit of information. Some do, but they also want to interact with each other.
Building community builds loyalty. Not when so much of newspapers' Web traffic comes from outside their community.
Web publishing demands greater technical skills than print publishing. Have you looked at how hard it is to put out a newspaper?
-- J.S.
From THE COLE PAPERS, May 2000, Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved.
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