A week does not seem to go by in which the New York Times does not begrudge the demise of newspapers, with the most recent discussion debating the effect of micopayments on journalism. In the meanwhile, I can not help but notice the new newspapers that are emerging from the woodwork. I can spot at least three different types of new newspaper.

Newspapers That Selling Something
The premise of the Free business model is that when certain types of goods become widely available, you need to start looking at what else there is in the offering that becomes scarce and chargeable. ClearAdmit and similar admissions consultants show how publishing MBA news markets their MBA admissions consulting services. ClearAdmit maintains a blog updated at least once a day. The blog covers news from the MBA schools - sometimes from the schools' own press releases, but also from direct sources, such as interviews with schools admissions staff. For ClearAdmit, and other similar consultants, maintaining such a blog attracts regular visitors to their site more effectively than an informational website would. The blog also allows ClearAdmit to demonstrate a level of credibility for the admissions consulting services that they sell. ClearAdmit is not unique in publishing news to sell other things. The blogs at harvardbusiness.org are intended to attract readers to long form articles in the printed Harvard Business Review and even longer form text in the form of Harvard Business School Publishing's books. Tescos Magazine consists of lifesyle articles with suggestions in side panels of related products that can be bought.

Hyper-local new sites that feature user contributed stories.
TribLocal and MyCape are hyper-local sites that allow local residents to submit their own stories. The promise of sites such as these is substanitally low overheads - there is no need for a print edition or even paid journalists. Even the New York Times seems to agree that there could be promise in this model: on Monday 2nd March they are launching their own hyperlocal blogs with contributions open to local residents. An obvious revenue generator for such hyper-local publications is hyper-local advertising. If you are the biggest grocery store in Brooklyn, you are not going to advertise on the internet using Google Adwords (the monoploy internet advertising platform). If you were to do so, your ad would be displayed to any person randomly searching for Brooklyn or grocery related subjects on the internet. The conversion rate for ads displayed to actual goods sold would be low. However, on a web site where the vast number of readers are from Brooklyn, such as a hyper-local news site, the grocery store can be sure that an ad's coversion rate is as high as it can be. Hyper-local news sites open up internet advertising to small to medium sized location based businesses. [Update: CUNY's involvement in NY Time's hyperlocal blogs].

Free Printed Newspapers
With the availability of free news on the Internet, London has seen the arrival of free printed publications. Metro started in 1999, but in recent years has been joined by The London Paper, London Lite and Sport, an infrequent sports magazine. As though from a Clayton Christensen case study, this "free newspaper" disruption even has a different distribution mechanism to the incumbant paid-for newspapers: these papers are typically handed out at London Underground train stations. The rise of free newspapers has been phenomenal and not a local phenomenon. In Madrid, free newspapers are more popular than paid newspapers. The Guardian describes the financials for a mainstream newspaper to go free, and indeed even suggests that most mainstream newspapers should go free so that they can drive traffic to the newspaper's online site and fully embrace the internet phenomenon. A study into free newspapers describes the differences between distribution driven (i.e. free) newspapers and content driven (i.e. paid) newspapers. The study suggests that free "distribution driven" papers are targetting the specific needs of the people in the distribution channel, i.e. the needs of commuters - typically a younger audience in search of short articles to be read on the go. These free newspapers are successful in running off a predominantly advertising only revenue model.

In conclusion, traditional newspapers may be dying, but journalism is thriving. New kinds of newspapers are emerging to more closely meet our needs than that which the traditional newspaper, sold from a newspaper shop or stand, has typically served.

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In the distant past, all television in the UK came through a terrestrial TV receiver. The big competition was between the BBC, iTV and Channel 4 – the big TV channel operators. Yet now, in this day and age, these same broadcasters are forming tight-knit partnerships that mean they will share resources ranging from technology to news reporting facilities. These same broadcasters are also the major partners that constitute Freeview, the venture that owns the digital terrestrial television platform. Has the basis for competition shifted? Rather competing TV channels, are we entering a world of competing TV platforms?

Two big pillars have emerged in the UK broadcasting landscape over the last 20 years. Struggling as independent satellite television operators, in November 1990 Rupert Murdoch's Sky Television and the BSB merged to form BSkyB. By February 2007, a series of mergers of numerous independent cable television companies starting as far back as in 1997 led to the formation of a single cable television operator, Virgin Media.

Currently iTV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, the commercial terrestrial television broadcasters in the UK, are starved of advertising revenue and struggling in stay afloat. The BBC is funded by a compulsory television license fee that the British public pay. Already a small portion of this license fee goes to the commercial terrestrial broadcasters. Facing bankruptcy, these broadcasters are now asking for a larger slice of the license fee. In response, the BBC has instead proposed a Public Service Broadcasting partnership between the terrestrial broadcasters. This partnership is designed to exploit the BBC's vast scale, providing the other broadcasters with some of its technology, television making facilities and other resources. However, is this the first step in the eventual merger between all the terrestrial television broadcasters?

In the same way that the UK has a dominant satellite television operator in BSkyB and a dominant cable television operator in Virgin Media, are we now seeing the emergence of a single dominant terrestrial television operator? The groundwork for such a merger is already in place. Following analogue switchoff, the terrestrial television platform will be entirely digital and entirely dominated by Freeview. The Freeview partnership consists of the BBC, iTV, Channel 4 as well as Sky and Crown Castle. Already the BBC, iTV and BT are working on developing the Freeview platform to exploit integration with the internet. This integration will make the Freeview platform competitive with BSkyB's satellite platform and Virgin Media's cable plaform.

The next five years promise to be interesting for the television landscape in the UK. Long gone are the days of competition on the single terrestrial platform between the BBC, iTV and Channel 4. The value chain for television broadcasting is changing. The competitive pressure in the chain is moving from the channels to the television platforms.

Updated, 2nd March: 

• A useful link: Bonfire Of The Broadcasters: ITV, Five Cuts Expected; C4/BT Vision Merger Mooted [paidcontent.co.uk]
  

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I've been reflecting on my recent trip to the US, and in particular the lifestyle differences between Europe and the States. Really, I'm comparing London to Chicago and New York, but generalizing to Europe versus America makes for a more dramatic blog post. Many MBA guides and experts will compare European and American programs, but few will consider the lifestyle issues. So today, I've decided I should highlight these for anyone considering programs across both sides of the pond...

(1) Food in the US has more calories than that in Europe. In the US, it is difficult to find a sandwich with less than 500 calories. In the UK, most sandwiches will have less than 500 calories. Portions in the US are big. You could eat your entire daily caloric intake at a cheap oriental place serving Chicken Teriyaki. And whereas in most places the Teriyaki will have been just grilled, you can be sure the Teriyaki you happen to be eating has been deep fried first before grilling - to ensure you get all those extra calories for your buck that the dollar provides. Serves me right for going to a cheap oriental place.

(2) In Europe, things are spelled a little funny. It's true. Why would you spell centre with a 'r' before the 'e'. Surely center makes more sense? It gets worse: In some parts of Europe "hello" is spelled "guten tag".

(3) In the US, weird units are pervasive. At zero degrees Celsius, water turns to ice. At 100 degrees Celsius, water boils and turns to steam. Zero and 100 - simple and intuitive numbers to help anchor cold and hot. What is Fahrenheit anchored in? We're only just getting started, because there is pounds, rather than kilos and a host of others...

(4) Particularly outside London, life is just not as advanced in some parts of Europe as in the States. There are large swathes of Europe that are still struggling to get an Internet connection, let alone broadband. Whereas "Free Wifi!" is a way to attract consumers in bars and cafes in US towns such as Evanston, free wifi is just unheard in many parts of Europe. It doesn't help that the French pronounce Wifi as "wiffy", as in "something smells a bit wiffy here".

So there you have it; four points of consideration when you weigh up the likes of INSEAD, IMD and LBS against Wharton, HBS and Kellogg.

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I was fortunate enough to attend the Kellogg 2009 Private Equity and Venture Capital Conference. The conference's keynote was given by Tim Draper, a founder member of the prestigious venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

What I found most interesting in Tim's presentation was the three things that he looked for in companies that he invests in:

1. Zeros a typical cost in the business model. e.g. Hotmail removed cost of delivering post, Amazon removed cost of inventory.
   
2. Revolutionises some existing business. e.g. Hotmail revolutionised postal mail, Amazon revolutionised bookshops.
3. Solves a problem.

While the second and third points are not extraordinary, I did think the first point to be fascinating. The reason that the Internet has become the powerful force that it has is because it is zeroing costs found elsewhere. You no longer need to have physical copies of music in the form of CDs etc. The same is true for newspapers, the contents of which can easily be read online. In the meanwhile, Facebook zeros the cost of keeping in touch with people - you no longer need to email or phone someone to see what they have been up to; they update their profile and you can respond as and when you want. eBay zeros the cost of the finding someone to buy your goods. Wikipedia zeros the cost of assimilating vast amounts of information on any topic.

It makes you wonder: how can you take any traditional business and zero its cost in the new media world?

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Kellogg's admit weekend, DAK, was pretty intense. What struck me most about the event was the scale - for the 250 or so admits at the event, a large workforce of upwards of 200 current students must have been involved to make it all work: career panels, club fairs, KWEST trip fair, "section time" leaders and much, much more.

Some of the highlights for me were as follows...

• I turned up at the Prairie Moon bar on Thursday 5th February for the DAK welcome drinks. With lots of brown wood and dim lighting, it seemed just like the small town bar I imagined it to be. The admits attending DAK were split into six sections of 30 or so people. My section, the Jugheads, were having welcome drinks in this bar. I was assured by one of the other admits, "yeah - the section names we have now are the junior version of the real section names... the equivalent real section name for Jugheads is Bigjugs". Unfortunately, he was wrong - they're called Bucketheads. We had six or seven current first year students acting as section leaders. Confident, talkative and upbeat, I found the section leaders to be really great stewards for that evening and the rest of DAK - a huge contrast to the sometimes nervous looking admits wondering who to talk to.
• Admissions Director, Beth Flye kicked off the Opening Ceremony on Friday. She welcomed the admits. "I don't know what kind of vitamins you're taking", she said, citing the admits' average GMAT of 719, average GPA of 3.6-something and a host of startling admission essay extracts. These extracts included people who had started voluntary organizations, released music records, achieved significant athletic success, hosted weekly cable tv shows and more besides.
• Professor round-table lunches featured members of the faculty talking through what their programs covered. I attended those for Media Management and Entrepreneurship. Michael Smith talked about how the Media Management program sought to answer questions about varying forms of media - professional and user-generated, proprietary distribution and open distribution - and the challenges businesses faced in order to develop business models that generate revenues in the current advertising (and wider economic) downturn. Scott Whitaker surveyed the entrepreneurship offerings available at Kellogg. I was surprised not only by how many admits were interested in entrepreneurship, but how serious they were - asking really deep questions, such as how they could get a head start on doing something entrepreneurial at Kellogg.
• Marketing Mini Class: I found this to be thought provoking and entertaining. The class started with the professor asking "what is marketing?" and taking responses from the audience. He then delved into the importance of customer insight based marketing versus marketing that lacked customer insight. For example, Marmite customers take pride in that some people hate the taste marmite. Consequently, Marmite used this insight to develop the successful "Marmite: you love it or hate it" series of commercials.
• Strategy Mini Class: After we had read a mini-case, the professor asked us to identify why Costco was so successful and how they would fair in the current economic climate. The session was mostly done through eliciting responses from the audience. I had thought the session would go in a particular direction relating to supplier power, but was impressed when it went on a tangent about membership fees that also seemed appropriate.
• Careers Service Overview. The center seeks to train students in the life skill of finding jobs, rather than just providing them with jobs. They have staff that work with you through the entire process of determining what you want to do to mock interviews to celebrating the success of getting offers. A testimonial by a student, where she described her story and the doubts she faced, was particularly effective in describing the process.
• Scavenger Hunt, games and other "section time". These were kooky, just as our sections leaders described them, but they were actually a lot of fun. I thought they helped the admits get to know each other somewhat and lowered inhibitions. Our scavenger hunt included piggy back races and dizzy bat.
• Welcome address by Dean Jain.
• Dean Jain told the story of how he had joined Kellogg. His supervisor had told him that there was no future in math and that he should join the top marketing school, Kellogg. He wondered why the top marketing school would take him, the worst marketing person. Despite this, he had an interview with Kotler and others. He presented some math which perhaps no one on the panel understood. Kotler asked, "this is marketing?"; Dean Jain replied "this is the future of marketing". 
• He described how Kellogg had risen to become a top 5 school:
• Focusing on developing students' collaborative working skills, interviewing all students that apply so as to evaluate their soft skills and focusing the MBA on developing soft skills such as teamwork.
• Through recruiting exemplary faculty in basic disciplines rather than competing for typical business school faculty. This is in turn helped Kellogg produce unique research.
• Through initiatives throughout the 70s and 80s, such as the Executive MBA program, spreading the quality of the program by word of mouth. "For word of mouth marketing to work, there needs to be many mouths".
  
• Dean Jain ended the session by looking to the future, developing the school's brand, global perspective and a number of other things I can't remember right now.
  
• An alumni panel of three Kellogg graduates offered their advice. They all agreed that the Kellogg alum network is close-knit and there is an implicit understanding that Kellogg alumni will help each other when called upon. They urged admits to use the opportunity of business school to develop their networking skills.
  
• Keynote Speaker: Scott Smith '76, former President of the Chicago Tribune. His main message was that perceiving the situation is often under-rated compared to taking action. The compared this to the current economic situation, where a lot of action had been taking, but has the situation been correctly perceived to choose the right action?
• The Closing Ceremony took place in Chicago itself, with buses carry the admits to the River East Art Center for dinner, followed drinks and partying in Martini Park. By this point, many of us had got to know each other quite well and the evening was an opportunity to develop those friendships further over buffet lunch in the exquisite surroundings of River East, as well as dancing and joviality at Martini Park, which seemed to be full of beautiful people. I thought it was great night of gossip and final ultimatems between admits, "have you decided on Kellogg yet?".
  

There were a number of other activities beyond the above. I won't go into these into detail, though they were useful. These included information sessions and events such as Financial Aid, day-in-the-life diary of a student, a session on academics, "Continental breakfast" of bagels and pastries every morning, a fair for the various KWEST trips at matriculation, a fair showing the different clubs at Kellogg, dinner at a "genuine" Chicago Pizza resturant, career panels where second year students offered advice on pursing particular careers, a night out at the Keg bar - which seemed just like my undergrad binge drinking days and a tour of various accommodation options on Sunday morning. It was a packed schedule.

I met some awesome people over the weekend. I thought I would be able to get along with most of the admits, and really become tight-knit with some of them too. Three of of the Kellogg admits who have been following my blog managed to identify me :-O. It was good meeting to you guys. This article tip is a good one, French girl - thanks.

Updated, 7th Mar '09

• Orlando's photo/videos via his blog

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As I briefly mentioned in my last post, I met my Kellogg interviewer and a few other alumni for drinks. They gave me their top tips.

1. Be prepared for American weirdness. Kellogg students like to sing Bon Jovi's Living On a Prayer. They like to sing it a lot. This is because the chorus "oooh, oh - we're half way there" has particular resonance apparently: half way through the MBA? half way through life? half way through the jug of beer ?... you get the idea.
2. Go on KWEST, the service trip before starting at Kellogg. Some of your very best friends after Kellogg will be people you met on this first trip. Each of the trips attracts a different type of crowd. In fact, on each trip you go on while at Kellogg - you develop a close set of friends (though none as close as those on your KWEST trip). So, also go on the Ski trip. In the past it has been highly subsidized by the banks. A large number of students in the class go. It's a great party.
3. Internship hiring will start quickly. Be prepared for it: CVs, etc. Most people think they have the first term to figure out what they want to do over the summer. They are wrong.
4. Waive as many courses as possible. You want to get on to do the advanced courses, which is where the really interesting stuff is.
5. Network, network, network. There are opportunities to meet a lot of people from a great many companies. Some people start keeping spreadsheets detailing each who they've met, their contact details and some memorable details to remind them of that person.

Another interesting thing that became apparent: most US students go on international KWEST trips, whereas the international students go around the US. Secondly, McManus halls is also mainly international students, wheras US students prefer to get apartments.

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