I, like many other media-folk, nodded quietly to myself while reading the book The Long Tail.  Just to recap: the basic premise of the book is that in the pre-Internet world there was only so much shelf space, so many media outlets, and only so many genres.  With the Internet making “store size” limitless, so are the products.  Therefore, you can find that obscure record you always wanted on eBay, but never in Walmart.

In terms of media, the Web was also supposed to put the barriers of entry so low that any kind of publication or media outlet could be conceived, thus creating an unlimited capacity for niches.  Beyond the surface level I don’t think this is true. There is only one real niche on the Web.  I suppose what I really mean, is that there is only one profitable niche: Nerds.

With only a few exceptions, the only demographic that can generate substantial traffic on the Web is nerd.  Gadget loving, Web 2.0 nerds.   Let’s look at the head of The Long Tail.

As of July 10th, the first 50 of the Technorati Top 100 currently looks like this:

*Numbers may be wacky because I was a journalism major.

The top blogs at Bloglines and Google Reader (older, but still indicative) have a similar outlook. I would venture a guess that all of these blogs are profitable or could be profitable (blogs like Post Secret have no ads on purpose).

When one shifts away from the written word and to video the results are the same.  How many IPTV networks can you name?  I can only name Revision 3, which caters to the “Internet, on-demand generation.”  The most successful audio podcast network after NPR is most likely the TWIT network which features an all tech-related lineup.

The top podcasts in iTunes are nearly all mainstream media outlets.  The iTunes store has no way of looking past the first 100, but it shows how hard it is for the everyman to have a widely dispersed podcast (Also, I believe the top 100 podcasts section only measures a few weeks of activity and not overall subscription levels – so this is a hard barometer to believe).

Now, this theory has a very obvious bias: I fall into said nerd demographic.  But I associate myself with, you know, non-techie people.  I don’t know many people that are watching non-man-gets-hit-in-the-nuts quality YouTube videos or downloading independent podcasts.  My mom doesn’t subscribe to RSS feeds, and less than a small handful of my friends use Web 2.0 services like Twitter.

This makes it particularly hard for nich online-only media.  Just by cracking open my Writer’s Market I see trade publications like The Fruit Growers News, The Cruise Industry News, and Reunions Magazine (covering reunions of all types!).  Are farmers subscribing to RSS feeds?  Is a cruise ship captain perusing blogs?  I’d guess no, yet they all have there own trade publications with highly targeted advertising.

In the blog world most people automate their advertising via AdSense, text links, and other ad services.  While these services offering contextual ads, the premium is not comparable to “old media”.  Take the fruit growers publication for instance.  With a circulation of 16,000 they charge over $2000 for a 1/3 page four color ad (media kit).  If I started a blog on fruit growing do you think I’m making 2k a month with AdSense?  I’m well aware with that expenses for a print publication are higher, but do you think I would have the same profit margin?

Despite what we would like to think, the online medium is not nearly as ubiquitous as we would all like it to be.  This, of course, puts newspapers in a precarious state.  They can’t maintain serving the shrinking non-wired generation with high production costs forever.  Nor can they devote gobs of money to an online market that is still catching up in advertising.

The point is that while the barriers to create content are lower, the perceptions of advertisers and the general public is lagging behind.  Until this gap is closed, those residing in the long tail of ad-supported content driven sites will be only scraping by.  Or worse, they won’t have sufficient money to remain open very long.

I posit this theroy not because I want it to be true, I share this because I want someone to prove me wrong.  Please do.

Love it or hate it, “shovelware” is a big part of any print publication’s online presence. Shovelware being content that was originally supposed to appear in print being converted for the Web.

Many have argued against this concept of repackaging material for the Web, with the general tenet that the industry is not doing anything new, and is simply repackaging old content. While I agree somewhat, the biggest problem is that the process is not automated.

Workflow matters. With the right flows in place the amount of work that goes into posting content on Web can be minimal. Just look at products such as Tumblr. Now most news outlets need a more sophisticated model than Tumbler, but the idea is the same. If you make the delivery of the content painless, there is more room for innovation and more time to improve the quality of that content.

Currently, I’d bet that most newspapers have a chain reaction goes something like this:

1. A Web editor must spend hours repackaging, tagging, uploading content.
2. Stuff goes wrong with said process.
3. Web editor plays clean up
4. Web editor doesn’t have much time for anything else.
5. Time for the next issue.

Too often the Web department is comprised of talented programmers and journalists who have to spend more time maintaining the Web presence instead of improving on it. This creates the illusion that Web departments are understaffed, when in reality their processes just suck. It is for this reason we see job ads for computer jesus types. Instead of trying to innovate the flow of information, most companies are just throwing more bodies at the problem hoping for the best.  This also hurts in hiring “wired” journalists who spend more time maintaining content than creating it.

There are a few new technologies such as XML tagging that shoot to make the InDesign/Quark copy-and-paste-fest a little less arduous. But the company who first can offer a news agency a seamless way to quickly transfer all of there print content will rake it in.

The Web is meant to streamline the delivery of content. That is why a group of guys can cover the tech industry better than whole corporations. But most print media seem to satisfied with sticking a few people in the back room and have them deal with the problem instead of addressing the core issue: until we build a solid foundation on which to innovate on, we’ll never do anything exciting. Until that all changes, the little guys will forever have the advantage, and will continue to eat your lunch.

One would think that with young people flocking from their medium, newspapers and other mainstream media outlets would at least take a second to look at how they cover their hemorrhaging demographic. But instead, we see the same recycled stories with no real depth. Allow me to save them the trouble of thinking of “new” story ideas by presenting every story ever written about young people:

1. LOL! they use text speak in paperz! Imagine the horror! Slang and abbreviations are creeping their way into more “formal” ways of writing. While I would agree that this is happening, do we really need to hear about it all the freakin’ time? Or if we are going to hear about it, can we get past the traditional format:

Step 1: Mention how this generation is “different”
Step 2: Quote some teacher/boss/position of authority giving an anecdote: “I couldn’t believe it, they actually wrote LOL”
Step 3: Mention something about cell phones, and instant messaging
Step 4: Write “Generation Y” for the 8th time
Step 5: Drink some prune juice and take a nap

2. Aw, look at the cute kids, they are voting now. With global warming activism increasing, as well as the phenomena of political campaigns like Barack Obama’s, younger people are getting more credit than ever for getting involved.

3. We worship at the alter of Jon Stewart. Most people I know that watch the Daily Show are well informed before they begin watching. Also there is something to be said for the way Stewart and company cut through a lot of the fluff of broadcast news. I wanted to applaud when he looked John McCain in the eye and called him out for pandering (at about 5:40).

4. We are a bunch of pampered babies. This is especially a favorite of business magazines. Apparently my generation doesn’t see work as the end-all, and likes to wear flip flops. To live up to the stereotype for a moment, I don’t think its fair to toss a generation problems like global warming, debt, lack of pensions, and social security and then call them spoiled.

Which leads me to why I don’t get my news from traditional outlets in first place. I’m constantly disgusted by some of the stories I see and read. Stories like “8 reasons why this is the dumbest generation“, or constant coverage of stories like the Jeremiah Wright speech. It seems that neary every interview on any cable news network is two journalists talking to each other. Or, even worse, fake pundits. As a good man once said, maybe its the journalism that has gotten media in trouble up to this point.