Subscription silliness

Updated on Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 8:39 PM by Logan Molen

Updated on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 8:56 PM by Logan Molen

A couple invoices came in the mail that have me questioning two longtime subscriptions to print publications I've read and valued for years.

Newsweek

Newsweek sent me a notice to renew the subscription I've maintained annually since the mid-1980s. Unless you've been in a cave recently, you know that Newsweek is up for sale. Its owners, The Washington Post Co., bluntly said in announcing the sale, "We do not see a path to continuing profitability under our management." Not a good circulation builder.

If Washington Post sees no future for the company, why would I want to renew for one year let alone three, as the invoice suggests to save money? It's sad because I think the magazine provides context to the craziness of our 24-7 news cycle. But I'm not stupid. Sadly, a 35-year relationship is about to come to an end barring some kind of last-minute rescue.

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Changes ahead for our community strategy on bakersfield.com

There's much more to come on this in the coming months, but we're going to be making some major changes to how we engage our readers on bakersfield.com and elsewhere in what we call the Bakosphere ("Where Bakersfield and the Web collide").

Those changes include a next-generation Opinion site to come that will require real names to post and comment, new strategies with our popular bakersfield.com blogs, and more engagement with local people outside of our network of websites.

You can read more in the BdotCOM blog on bakersfield.com, where reaction understandably has has been mixed.

Publish2's News Exchange offers great promise for journalists

I'm happy to be among the beta testers for Publish2's News Exchange, which was formally announced to the world today at TechCrunch Disrupt.

After using News Exchange for a few days -- and quite a bit today -- I can safely say it brings a whole new mindset to how media organizations can share, pursue and purchase content. I've worked with Associated Press content and tools since I was a college student in the 1980s and my first impressions of News Exchange last week were, "Wow, this is a game changer."

News Exchange is a simple but powerful rethinking of traditional content-sharing networks like The Associated PressThe Associated Press ought to be very worried because the News Exchange tools, while rough in spots, have the possibility of being a very powerful yet much less expensive alternative to more traditional services like AP. In short, Publish2 sees News Exchange as a better, livelier and cheaper middleman between media providers and customers.

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