Well, for one little is not the same as none. Ditto for the electrical consumption. Plus what little time Jerry et al spend on this, plus whatever fraction of Ed’s salary can be ascribed to his time here. Plus I think Tuba has some form of stipend for something.
It all adds up to next to nothing in the grand scheme, but rich people are rich precisely because they are good at saving pennies.
It’s clear that the users of the board find it valuable, but what’s the value added for the new overlords?
It boils down to the question of what value (both real and intangible) the Board adds to the Atalaya empire.
Let’s accept as a given that the Straight Dope column is an asset. It’s a popular, unique feature to the papers which draws people to their websites.
But except for the Comments on Cecil’s Columns forum, the rest of the Board is only slightly related to the column itself. Granted, the other fora bring in thousands of people to this site, but how much of that traffic accrues back to the papers?
I’ll say that using this board makes me more likely to pick up one of Atalaya’s papers the next time I’m in Chicago, Atlanta, etc., but I don’t live in any of those cities, and I only go to all of them combined a couple of times per year.
On the other hand, the Board brings in thousands of people who pump up the viewership and make it possible to charge higher online advertising rates, develop different advertising packages, etc. And some portion of the teeming thousands who DO live in Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte, wherever, are probably more loyal to the local papers because of the SDMB.
On the third hand, keeping the Board up and running does require an initial investment and ongoing expenses in hardware, software, Ed’s time, Tuba’s time, Jerry’s time and all sorts of other things I’m overlooking. Given the amount of problems the Board has had over the years, not to mention our constant kvetching, it may be that the cost of hand-holding is more than the extra clicks we bring in.
No one here has access to those numbers, much less access to the thought process of TPTB who will ultimately decide what to do with this tiny part of a much bigger business.
That’s a not-very-clever-witticism with no substance whatsoever behind it. Either argue a point or go away.
Kunilou, I think you make some good points. To me, the value is in the membership and its potential growth. There are some who think this has little to no value; I think they are rather ignorant of the way the Internet works (Lib made some good points about that upthread).
At the end of the day you have a captive audience that has in the past been willing and eager to provide a revenue stream - ads, click-throughs, fees, etc - which the current management has been unable to capitalise on. I hope the new management will be more capable, as the alternative (esp for a VC) doesn’t look very good for us.
Your bona fides are known but your meaning is a bit more cryptic, at least to me. Yes, SDMB is trivial, especially to its new owners. It doesn’t cost much and makes even less. Or so we believe. The question is whether this small line item is cut or let ride or rolled into some broader internet strategy. Are we small enough to be ignored or of enough potential to be invested in? Or juuust big enough to be gotten rid of?
I have to say I’m surprised how little CL ended up going for. USD$5 million? For half a dozen newspapers and a messageboard? That seems… awfully reasonable, for want of a better term.
Obviously I haven’t seen the balance sheets, but I think our learned friend Jonathon Chance has hit the nail on the head in relation to that situation.
I will add my own thoughts and suggest that the “free”/alternative newspapers (such as the ones CL publishes) may increasingly move to a UGC (User-Generated Content) model, as is happening here- the free commuter papers often have a couple of pages of people text messaging their views on subjects or trying to hook up with people they catch the bus with every day or that sort of thing.
Of course, it’s not as easy to write newspaper features and stories as people think, so I don’t see “free” papers going completely UGC-based (not if they want to maintain some semblance of professionalism and still get people to read them), but I don’t think a 35% UGC ratio is an unrealistic eventuality in the next couple of years- you’d have a sub-editor or two to make sure the stuff was style-compliant, a reporter or two to write “relevant” news stories, and pull the rest off the wire service or from a “sister” newspaper.
At any rate, it’ll be interesting to see what happens to Creative Loafing and the Boards here…
I, too, was surprised at the $5MM figure. In the meetings I had in which bidding was discussed (again, it would have been a hoot) it was the estimate of the accounting and valuation guys that it would be significantly higher.
I agree that UGC is one way that will grow, especially with opinion pieces. Example: in one of my papers we did a section on the healthcare debate last month. I even got a former Deputy Director for Health Economics of the Congressional Budget Office to write a piece for it. I had a guy come in the week following asking if she was allowed to write an opinion piece why he couldn’t. No resume, no quals, no nothing but he felt his opinion should be seen and heard on the same level as hers. Oy.
Where UGC really wins is when you get someone with some expertise writing on a topic of general interest. Gardening, Antiques, Entertainment, and so forth are all space on which people will write for little or no compensation and which readers will respond with even more content.
So yes, I think you’re right on that one. I currently run two papers with two editors and a freelancer and one of the editors is also the designer and runs the retail design and print shop for us.
Remember, it’s not a matter of just direct costs. If there’s ANY amount of time and thought going towards it then the powers that be would be justified in thinking it’s too much if it’s never projected to make a significant return.
Or, to boil this down: “To a for-profit enterprise a break-even or small-profit division is considered a loser. It takes away resources from something that could be generating a significant profit. Opportunity cost can not be ignored.”
On your question about being ignored or such I couldn’t answer. We lack several key factors to make that judgment. Among them are true accounting numbers, whether Atalaya or the board has an overall Internet strategy, and so forth. Anything we do here is baseless speculation. Wait and see is the name of the game.
Okay, just a few things from me and then back to you Brainiacs who are obviously more quailified to speak of this from a business standpoint than me.
As someone who, of late, has come to depend on this site and its membership for companionship and the opportunity to express myself with the written word because the spoken one fails me a lot these days, it is my fervent wish that the SDMB would continue on with the ideals set in 1973 by Cecil.
I realize that many of our membership are no longer with us, for whatever reason, but I hope they’ll lurk and watch while SDMB re-invents (yeah - I know: it’s trite, right? ;)) itself to what it was when I joined in 2000.
I’m not exaggerating when I say I would feel stranded if this site no longer existed.
So much good has been/is being done here!
To me, it isn’t Christmas without the gift exchange!
In addition to being my favorite time of year, it’s also a time that allows us a bit more personal contact with each other.
Not to mention how we pull together for each other in troubled times with prayers, good thoughts and, when needed, money.
And yeah, I know there are other “mirror” sites, but SDMB has been my home for going on 9 years - even though my arrogance kept me away much of the time. And yeah, I know I also post on the other site, but that’s because so many of my friends are there, and I hate losing contact with them.
So if it comes down to it, and we have to fight to keep SDMB online, then let’s remember the good that is being done here, and how many people benefit from it, and how many of us would miss out if it didn’t exist.
In conclusion, and because y’all know I’m a bit of a “smart-ass”, I can’t resist making a comment on the phrase “money losing asset”.
Loosely speaking, isn’t that a bit like “mandatory option” or (as in my former job)
“conscious sedation”?
I really love y’all.
Thanks
Quasimodem
Yes, I would think that was almost obvious to us ignorant of the business. It’s also at odds with Tuba’s comment
which seems to imply that the SDMB makes up the whole of their internet presence. Looking at http://www.creativeloafing.com/ shows that not to be true.
Do any of the Creative Loafing papers have columnists that are “big names”? Like a Dan Savage or maybe someone writing on national politics?
For what it is worth, Tuba’s comment, “This includes the digital media section that is the Straight Dope” should not be read as “This includes the digital media section, which is the Straight Dope and nothing else.” She was saying that the Straight Dope was A digital media section of CL, not the only one.
It’s been covered before as to why CL might just pull the plug one day for no readily apparent reason (edited highlights: Messageboard being considered more trouble than it’s worth, and not actively “Growing the brand”).
On the other hand, nothing may happen. But what I will say is that this is not a good time for the media in the US, and a messageboard that is (tangentially) about a column that isn’t all that widely published is unlikely to be on the “assets” side of the ledger.
The media is undergoing a massive upheaval everywhere at the moment- Murdoch wants to charge for access to news and his son James is having a QQ because the Beeb are “too dominant” (and legally obligated to provide news and current affairs for free, as are Australia’s ABC) which is throwing a massive spanner in the works.
I don’t think anyone really knows how it’s going to turn out though, which is what makes it all so interesting from an observational point of view…
I doubt that they’d shut it down without trying to sell it first. Many people here have offered to buy the place and run it the way that they see fit. Why pull the plug when you could get five or six grand for it. They’d be wise to get rid of the Ed/Cecil specific forums first because you don’t necessarily want to be associated with some random nutbag with some spare cash and a dream. In any event, this will take some time to sort out so we don’t have to worry for a while.
I know that starting a post “with all due respect” is now an insult, but I really do respect you Una. So I’m sad to say that this post is sheer blinkered nonsense.
I bought the first Straight Dope book when it come out. And then the sequels. I found the message found almost as soon as it moved out of AOL. I lurked for as long as I could stand it because I knew how much time I would be spending on the board if I started participating.
You can therefore say that Cecil’s columns brought me here. But they sure don’t keep me here. Ed writes one crappy column a week that I often don’t bother clicking to. Over the course of that week I have my choice of hundreds of threads to participate in, many of them with better subject experts than Ed will ever be. Even if only a few dummies and idiots are in the thread, the chance to participate in a dialog is what keeps me coming back. That’s, of course, the heart of any message board. Ed ignores his readers with a huge wall built between him and them. To say that he’s a draw for the SDMB is sheer insanity.
Now I’ve never seen a copy of the Chicago Reader. Never read The Straight Dope in any other newspaper. I have no idea what either means to Chicago or its readers or its fans or to the people who work there. You apparently do. That puts you into a tiny minority. Readers get to this page via the Internet, not the Reader or the print column. They are your audience. In the future, they’re very likely your only audience.
Can you keep this audience and, more importantly, grow this audience with Ed hiding behind that wall? Not likely. People want to interact directly with the star. Dan Savage does this well. So does Dave Barry. They have dialogs, and arguments, and personal presences, all the things that “Cecil” refuses to do.
Cecil is a huge asset, a marketable commodity with name recognition, a pre-made personality, and a shtick. I’ve never been able to understand why the Reader never could exploit Cecil properly in the past. I think I know why now. Ed won’t interact with his audience. That’s fatal. He can do so, he can be replaced, or he can watch the Dope slowly die. Somebody has to make that choice. I don’t think it will be Ed. Or you. But somebody will.
In the meantime, he’s the forgotten crazy aunt in the attic. Why should anybody care? That’s not a rhetorical question. It’s the absolute heart of the matter. Why should anybody care?
This is way too cryptic for me. If you’re trying to say something, you should probably say it. If it’s something you can’t say, you should probably, you know, not say it.
That’s pretty much how I feel, except I stopped reading Cecil’s columns altogether just after a flurry of active participation by Ed. I had already noticed that I could find more accurate and complete answers to the questions on my own, and the humorous asides were declining in quality and quantity (or perhaps just wearing thin). But Ed’s imperious and condescending posts under his own name pretty much destroyed the pleasant fiction of an avuncular “Perfect Master.” Without that, there really was no reason to continue. I (briefly, I admit) about giving up on the SDMB altogether, but I realized it’s not about Ed/Cecil or any one person, and it hasn’t been for a long time. If that’s sad, so be it, but it’s the reason I’m still here.
When I lived in Chicago in the 90s the Reader was always around. A large, thick paper filled mostly with advertising, it was the first place to go when one was looking for theatre/movie/event listings. Very useful for that. It also had several very good writers who wrote in an amusing and clever manner.
This was just before the advent of the Internet. Nowadays I’m guessing people in Chicago (and elsewhere) simply Google where and when for events and such. And funny, clever writers are also only a click away.
It’s a shame, because the Reader was a fine publication, despite the many, many pages of “escorts” in the back.
I didn’t make it crystal clear because I guess that I wasn’t sure how it made me feel, just not good about the situation. I suppose a large part of it is along the lines of the intent of something Exapno is relating in his post, which had not really gelled until I read his post, which to summarize into one half-sentence is dismay that for whatever cause or reason, there is not the very strong tie between the message board and the column which there once was.
I guess that’s it, that it’s sad and also just an unfortunate evolution to a situation where we have people on the Straight Dope message board who say they don’t care about the Straight Dope. Given that I honestly enjoy helping out with the Straight Dope when I can and honestly appreciate the educational value of the Straight Dope, I place it higher than the message board in its current state of existence.
Thanks for clarifying. I can certainly understand your feeling that way.
I think it’s probably a question of perspective. I would imagine that for many people (including myself) the Straight Dope was something they stumbled across when searching for an answer to a question. Then they discovered this message board and started posting.
For most (again, just my speculation) the interaction people have in this place is of more value than the column, because it involves them. For you, who has direct involvement with the column, it’s understandable that you have a greater interest.
Wait, when did that happen?
I agree with all your post until you get to
Which I understand in the abstract but strongly object in the particular. Going by Ed’s previous appearances, it is more interactions that would be fatal. He is fine in the attic. Dialog and participations require an entertainer and crowd mover. Ed is neither. Some might argue that he is a fine editor, I have no opinion about that but an entertainer he is not. If it is dialog that will save the SD brand, then we need someone who lives for it, not someone we force to.
I understand what you are saying and how your personal level of involvement makes you feel about this, but you must realize that your experience is not typical. Just as I am sure there are tons of SD readers who haven’t even clicked on the link to the SDMB (or clicked and ran away in a panic), there are many SDMB readers and contributors that don’t read the SD. The only SD columns I have read are the ones that have been linked from threads here. My opinion of it is that they are often low in content, which is to be expected considering the space limitations. The SD and the SDMB are simply attractive to different audiences. One for pop science and trivia fans, one for people who like the back and forth of message boards.
ETA: As leander just pointed out, many of us don’t feel part of the SD. It is not answering our current question and we have no way to have an effect on the answers it gives. You, on the other hand, are a part of it and thus feel more strongly about it.