I wish I was smart enough to deliver a final answer on: Which is better, old media outlets or new media outlets? To the best of my thinking, both are baited by money in completely different ways making the argument about the wrong thing…

A really brief lesson on business models

True statement: There has been no lasting business model for website revenues. In short, website owners have been paid to encourage people to leave their pages. CPM (Clicks per thousand) disambiguation a la WIKI and SmartText Ads have been designed to pay web masters for directing traffic else where. Hence, websites themselves, offer no real value. This has long been something I hope would be solved by the still theoretical Web3

True statement: Traditional media has thrived for hundreds of years by drawing visitors in and advertising that visitors consider products outside that type of media. ABC and NBC readily promote that you soften your clothes with Downy because it’s a sure bet that Downy isn’t what you turn to for the latest news and, hopefully, not your first choice in entertainment. It does smell good though.

The idea (above), all by itself is a giant and crucial difference when considering, “which is better…” Quality websites have nothing tangible to offer; there’s nothing you can put in your pocket and walk away with – television/print media is the tangible offer because to hear about and learn what they endorse, you have to watch. Websites are forced to make money mentioning other websites.

Exceptions (damn things are always there)

Good news! When a website offers something you can take home and use without being connected to their website, you’re looking at what I consider to be the ideal Web3, The Tangible Web: Websites with tangible value. Plenty of sites do it and I don’t mean to exclude them at all. A book, a tee-shirt, a music CD, a periodical running parallel to site content, all brilliant!

Some of my magazines use smart phone readable bar codes to extend discussions on print articles for which there is limited space. Brilliant! “Learn more…“http://reader.kaywa.com/

We’re talking about money and the news though. And the discussion is moving forward thanks to Rupert Murdoch of News, Inc. and giant websites delivering constant streams of information like TechCrunch (about 61+ posts a day!). The two different examples of media fight competitors for money in two ways.

Paul Carr trips New Media on its way to getting somewhere

Source Fort Hood. Tragedy. Paul Carr. Respected and followed TechCrunch writer. It’s a must for topical information websites to quickly assemble an opinion on topical information. Go figure. The final purpose being to invite visitors to click links that go elsewhere. Who figured that?

The more inflamatory, the more outragous, the more sensational, the more visitors. I read those criteria has being, “the less news worthy….” Paul Carr has stunned his audience by stating that Citizen Journalism is worthless. This is a different leg of the question at hand and not what we’re talking about. But, the direct attack on his followers who snap cell phone video, send texts, SMS alerts and Tweets to organizations like his as a head’s up is inflamatory, outragous and sensational. The CPM’s scream and revenue is created. Do the ends justify the means?

Rupert Murdoch stuns the online world by isolating his sites

Source01 Source02 It came out yesterday that websites owned by News, Inc. would be excluded from future Google searches. Bloggers and online media got hung up slightly on the idea that Google and other search engines, are tagging along for a free ride on news broken and delivered by News, Inc. Free rides have been a corner stone of the Internet since day one. Sharing is caring. The Internet cares a whole lot.

Rupert Murdoch is a pretty smart dude. On his whirlwind talk show circuit where he appeared on numerous News, Inc. owned news shows (not a big surprise) brought up his grumpy view of how websites make money. And he’s totally right about the idea of the hit-or-miss nature of advertising online.

His news sites will be so topical and so relevant in search queries that they’re guaranteed to draw big bucks from advertisers. But will the advertisers pawn what’s really relavant to the News, Inc. sites? Probably not! Who wants to capture people to throw them away? CPM is an indication that the online business model of advertising is pretty far off accurate.

Rough numbers and ideas

Handing out flyers comes with a rule of thumb, you hope for a 3% return. That’s three out of a hundred. CPM allows for a teeny .01% return. That’s a lot of advertising to the wrong audience which is unheard of in traditional media. It’s a sin that ends careers; but it’s a model that has made millionaires out of sensationalists online. A well-targetted revenue model is far more trust worthy than what people are calling linkbait.

What is linkbait? It’s a term that applies when a website overstuff’s an article of group of web pages with very topical or sensational buzz words. The words may or may not have the proper meaning to what the visitor is searching for, but, for example, someone searching “sensational” might well end up on this page by mistake. It’s a useless visit! This article cannot benefit from that visit and the visitor is likely to not benefit from this page as a result. But it borders linkbait for the fact that the word keeps coming up. Pawning a recent tragedy or news item or freshly released sex tape for the sake of visits is akin to linkbait. It contributes to overall CPM – the failing revenue model that Rupert Murdoch will hopefully change.

See how Murdoch is narrowing his hits to be more intentional rather than happenstance? The result will be other websites citing his (for which I hope he somehow pays), an improved CPM on his end (CPM’s won’t be washed out with accidental or ‘window browsing’ visits) and did I mention he’s a pretty smart dude?

So if New Media wants to have an argument about which is better, new or traditional media, they first have to change the way in which money baits them. If they depend on volume for a hit-or-miss revenue model, we won’t get news. The New Media writers like Paul Carr ain’t broken, their business models are…