Everyone Wants to Beah Blogger

Disclaimer: this article should be read as much as a question as a suggestion, as I admit to knowing relatively little about the actual application of newspaper business models. I do know that they are in trouble, and I spend a sizable amount of time being simultaneously annoyed by newspapers and feeling really sorry for them. Oh yeah, and don’t forget this disclaimer.

Hey, newspapers: what if you were to cut loose the (rather large) distribution part of your business? In fact, what if you were to get out of all parts of the business that aren’t directly related to the content of your papers? Seems to me that researching and writing content is what newspaper employees — from beat reporters to execs — know best (though, after having subscribed to the NY Times Sunday edition for the past few weeks, I can’t say that there’s not substantial room for improvement there too). And yet what we pay newspaper companies for covers much more than content.

According to World Press Trends, (via an IFRA report) average distribution costs account for 40-45% of a newspaper’s cover price. So it’s no small slice of a newspaper’s business. From an admittedly meagre 10 minutes of online research, it seems that many newspapers (if not all) are already outsourcing their distribution. That’s probably a good start; I imagine that distribution companies like PCF are better at this stuff than the New York Times itself would be. But that’s not what I’m proposing. I’m proposing that newspapers don’t even contract distributors; they would simply make the product (a newspaper) and let another industry develop around determining where the product needs to go and getting it there.

What if home delivery subscribers and retail nodes like newsstands actually chose their distributor? Instead of the Boston Globe contracting a company to handle all of their distribution (or multiple companies to handle distribution in different regions), the customer could chose one of multiple competing distributors who would charge them the cost of the newspaper plus a delivery cost (of course this would not fundamentally create a net increase in the cost of a newspaper because right now distribution costs are baked into the cover price). There would be no need for a transaction between individuals/seller nodes and the newspapers themselves; the distribution companies could buy the papers from the newspaper companies and then effectively sell them at cost + delivery fees to individuals/seller nodes.

This would have a couple of foreseeable (and maybe some less foreseeable) streamlining effects:

1. households, neighborhoods, companies, and seller nodes that subscribed to more than one paper would only require one distribution trip (fictional company, Beah Burger paper Distribution Inc., would be happy to sell you The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Philadelphia Inquirer — and the delivery cost on the second and third paper would be severely discounted since we’re already making the trip).
2. it’s seems to me that it would be cheaper for newspaper companies to manage transactions with 3, 10, 25, even 200 distribution companies than with the thousands (though ever shrinking) of accounts it maintains with individuals and seller nodes. Fewer account requires less customer service, less transaction infrastructure, etc… both things that newspaper companies are likely not as good at as they are at researching and writing content.

More generally, it would likely benefit consumers by opening up a new competitive layer within the newspaper sales life-cycle. Competition would happen at the level of content production and — more directly than before — at the level of distribution (which, remember, accounts for almost half the cover price). The possibilities are endless, but I’ll throw out some quick business ideas for these new, unhinged distributors:

1. If you’re already serving a neighborhood, offer discounts to new customers from that neighborhood (promo codes, perhaps) since you’re already driving out there. If companies want to win new neighborhoods, they will have to compete with these discounts.
2. Maybe offer tiered pricing: by-6am delivery costs more than by-9am delivery (delivery companies already do this).
3. Allow for custom subscriptions (for instance, maybe I only want to subscribe to Tuesday and Thursday editions because those are the days that I have a train commute and the crossword puzzles aren’t impossible).

It’s conceivable that newspaper companies could offer some of the above themselves, but I don’t think they ever will, because business management doesn’t seem to be their strong suite. Creating content is both what they are best at AND — I think — what they really want to spend their time doing.

Much of this logic could probably be applied to other parts of the business; distribution is only one auxiliary piece of the newspaper business that could conceivably be shed off, but it seems like a good place to start because it is such a big piece. Also, apparently other have already written about outsourcing printing (I couldn’t find the original article) and likely other auxiliary tasks. But I’m not going to dive too deep here because, as I disclaimed, this is as much a question as a suggestion, and I’m not aspiring to become an expert in the field today. Given that, I welcome any comments, critical and otherwise, from those who do know more than I; just don’t beat up on my ideas to violently — I do retain comment moderation authority. Also, I realize I’m probably not the first person to make this question/suggestion, but a quick search on the topic didn’t turn up anything quite so specific or non-theoretical as I intended my post to be, so I felt it would be worth submitting. OK, I think I’ve protected myself enough… sorry, sorry…. I’m done.

A couple of weeks ago, I unwittingly stumbled across a serious contender for coolest Google product feature: GoogleLookup. GoogleLookup is a Google Spreadsheets function that attempts to return the value of any attribute for any entity that you specify. Here’s the syntax: =GoogleLookup(”entity”, “attribute”).

For those of you not familiar with functions in Google Spreadsheets (the function-savvy may skip to paragraph 3), here’s a really simple example of a more conventional function: sum. In any spreadsheet cell, if I enter =SUM(3+5) and hit the “return” button, the content of the cell will display 8. Functions can also refer to values already in your spreadsheet, which is what makes them particularly useful. For instance, the function =SUM(A2:A20) will instantly sum all of the values in column A, rows 2 through 20. If you want to try this yourself, go to http://docs.google.com/ and open a new spreadsheet. You can also learn more about functions in the Google Docs Help Center.

So what makes GoogleLookup really cool is that it references data not just from your spreadsheet (as with functions like =SUM(A2:A20)), but searches that incredibly expansive body of published information: the world wide web. By performing a targeted websearch, GoogleLookup attempts to return some fact about the entity you specify. City populations are a nice example. Entering =GoogleLookup(”Philadelphia”, “population”) in any spreadsheet cell…

screenshot: GoogleLookup function

screenshot: GoogleLookUp loading

returns the value 1,449,634, which is in fact accurate. This may sound like magic, but go ahead and try it in a spreadsheet of your own. Now try swapping out “Philadelphia” for other city names: New York, Boston, San Francisco, Bangkok, London…

Radical, no? Perhaps you are saying to yourself, “this seemingly magical feature is indeed rad, but what real world scenario would actually warrant use of this function? How can GoogleLookup help me?” Let’s look at one example.

My good friend Caroline recently asked me and Dan to recommend some awesome dance songs for her upcoming wedding. Needless to say, Dan and I had lots of suggestions. Rather than rattle them off while she took notes on a scrap of paper, I told Caroline that I would send her a spreadsheet. When I got home, I opened a new spreadsheet and typed out 26 dancable song titles. But I wanted to give Caroline a little more information — I wanted to include the artist of each song. I didn’t know the artists for some of the songs on the list (especially for some of the more questionable tracks, all suggested by Dan) but I could have looked each one up and then typed out the artists name. This might have taken 20 minutes. Instead, I used GoogleLookup to automate that process.

Take a look at the spreadsheet. In cell B2 (under “artist”) I typed =GoogleLookup($A2, “artist”). (ignore the $ symbol; it just means that I want the function to use column A even if I copy the formula into another column). I then copied this function into all of the cells in column B (just drag the lower right-hand corner and drop). Within moments, all of those cells were populated with likely values for the attribute “artist” given the entity in column A, the song title.

Now, as you will observe, the values are not perfect. Gloria Trevi is NOT the artist I had in mind when I suggested the classic rock tune, “Gloria.” And while UB40 did do a version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You,” I would urge Caroline to stick with the Elvis original. But there were also a lot of accurate values. And one cool subfeature of GoogleLookup is that clicking into the cell will trigger a pop-up citing the source (url) of the value and offering a “more options…” link.

screenshot: click into cell for more info

Clicking “More options…” will give you up to three alternative values (and the sources from which these values come).

screenshot: more options for GoogleLookup

You can easily change the displayed value by selecting one of these alternatives.

As you can see on my Good Dance Songs spreadsheet, I used GoogleLookup to populate two more columns: album and year, both of which will be helpful to Caroline and her DJ (the functions, respectively: =GoogleLookup($A2, “album”), =GoogleLookup($A2, “year”)).

So next time your boss hands you a list of US states and asks you to fill in the capital of each state by EOD; or a list of years for which she would like the Academy Award winner for “Best Film”; or a 200 row list of NBA players, each of which needs a “height”… don’t fret, use GoogleLookup to quickly get the data you need.

(Also, if you haven’t already, now may be a good time to read my disclaimer)

Last night I had the following dream. For unexplained reasons, I was hanging out behind the scenes of a SNL rehearsal. I don’t think I was familiar with most of the cast members since it was primarily the current generation, and I don’t really watch the show these days. Despite this, Tina Fey was there; I know this because I remember engaged her in a fascinating discussion about Pennsylvania. In this dream, Wysz was also a cast member. I wonder if that means I think Wysz is funny, or if it means that I think he’s specifically not funny, since I no longer find the show compelling enough to watch. I spent the first 10 minutes of my morning pondering this question.

Not sure I have material for a good full 25 things yet, so we’ll start with 5.

1. Strangers and passersby regularly remark on what a good-looking dog he is. Just today, someone said that, “he is the most beautiful dog [they] have EVER seen.”

2. While he regularly smells my face, he has licked it precisely 4 times since we adopted him (2 weeks ago). Dan snapped a shot of the most recent incident:

3. Jake’s favorite foods are pieces of fatty, salty rotisserie chicken, cheese and bacon — needless to say, we get along real well.

4. Jake has doggie dreams — probably nightmares — that prompt him to wiggle around and bite at the air while he sleeps. Poor guy; I wonder what he’s dreaming about.

5. Jake had his left hip joint removed due to a chronically dislocated hip, the legacy of his previous (abusive/neglectful) home or his time as a stray. He limps occasionally but can run crazy fast.

I think I just adopted the best dog in the whole world.

I’ve been thinking about adding a dog to my life for… years. But I’ve been seriously pursuing it ever since I moved out of the city last December. As my friends and family already know, over the New Year we fostered a wonderful Australian Cattle Dog puppy named Tilly. While we initially intended to adopt Tilly at the end of her foster period, after two weeks of getting to know her we decided that she would be happier at a house with property or a yard where the wild dingo-dog could run hard. Because she was not yet old/immunized enough to go to a dogpark, her exercise was limited to leash walks and runs. I think she needed more freedom than that.

After making the tough decision not to adopt Tilly, I started researching other rescue dogs that needed a nice home. After much research — and traveling to meet doggies in Mountain View, Santa Cruz, and Madera, CA — Dan and I found our dog: Jake.

Jake showed up at a fairly grim shelter about 6 months ago. Luckily, Border Collie Rescue of Northern California came to the rescue before Jake was euthanized. Carla — who fosters for BCRNC — arrived at the shelter to find a dog covered in bugs, his coat matted, lying down in his kennel while two frantic pitbulls used him as a stepping stool. Jake’s left hip was chronically dislocated (apparently his previous owner didn’t care to fix it when it was still fixable) and required FHO surgery. The wonderful Carla nursed Jake back to health, both physically and mentally.

Jake has been living with me and Dan for a week now and we have already fallen deeply in love with him. The emotional and psychological scars of his previous life are still very apparent — he is exceptionally timid and submissive — but he has already started investing some trust in me and Dan and and can be quite affectionate, in his subtle way. The other day he even briefly kissed my face — just one short lick. Immediately afterwards, he was so embarrassed that he hid his head by stuffing it between my back and the couch.

I’m not entirely certain that Jake is a dog. He is so human-like, even more so than most Border Collies. He does not chew, does not beg, does not bark, does not chase balls, is not a food glutton, and doesn’t really understand why people he doesn’t even know want to touch him all the time. He is also human-like in his love of weekends. And he’s got beautiful brown eyes, filled with seriousness, that seem to make any dog-inclined person just melt. Dogs are amazing.

Check out my hot new favicon — it’s Burger Time! Nelson both created the file and told me how to get it on my site. He sure loves favicons.

A couple of weeks ago I packed up and left the hussle and bustle of the city and relocated to quiet Mountain View, California, a convenient 6 minute drive from my place of employment. So what do I think? In the spirit of my previous San Francisco v. Philadelphia proc/con series (short-lived), I will share some initial Mountain View impressions in pro/con form.

PROS:

- extremely close to work

- my apartment is quiet and dark at night, which makes sleeping a lot easier

- I can adopt a dog and give it the attention and excercise that it needs (would have been tough in the city; especially with the commute

- if I want to hang out with my co-worker (who double as my friends, even though most of them are from California), I don’t have to drive 45 minutes down 101

- I save $300 on rent

- I look at my window and see living, green things

- I can ride my bike or go for a jog without having to confront a zillion stoplights and a zillion California-drivers

CONS:

- Range (the restaurant) is not in walking distance

- Arizmendi is not within biking distance

- Dan has to commute to the city every day

You know what, forget “con” #1 — Range isn’t an everyday type place; it’s a place you go for special dinners out, which is easily worth the 35 minute drive. And, now that I think of it, let’s drop “con” #2 as well; it was a crappy bikeride and one we were rarely willing to make. Hm… and, looking at “con” #3, I realize that this isn’t really my problem. Good luck, Dan! Yeah, I guess life in Mountain View is pretty sweet.

I’d like to call your attention to the most recent comment on my blog, authored by none other than mrfunkypants, about whom I wrote a blog post in September. While this post was not intended as an attack on mrfunkypants’ character (more of a celebration of his contribution to the internet, really) I did mention that he appeared to be “be a bit of a violence-prone misogynist.” In the spirit of editorialism, I feel compelled to surface his somewhat corrective comment, in which he actually promises that he is not violent. Consequently, I’d like to ammend my description of mrfunkypants; he simply seems to be a bit of a misogynist.

Thanks for speaking up, mrfunkypants!

There’s truly no explanation for why I’m posting these Big Sur Half Marathon photos more than 3 weeks after the race. But I’m pretty sure that Libby and Buzz will enjoy them, so my other readers (Nelson, Wysz? Angry guy from Santa Barbara?) will just have to hold tight. I promise my next post will be substantially more exciting. Possibly even puppyrific. Or doggietacular.

All photos courtesy of Natasha.

Official results just in: I finished the Big Sur Half Marathon in 2:29:53. This may sound like an excruciatingly slow time to some of you. You might be saying to yourself, “don’t olympic runners complete FULL marathons in a significantly less time than that?” or “Are not there 80 year old men who can speed walk a half marathon is less time?” The answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes. However, I was quite pleased as my finish time was precisely 7 second under my stretch goal or 2.5 hours.

I trained and premised my race strategy almost entirely on Jeff Galloway’s fantastic book, “Galloway’s Book on Running.” Because I have become a full-blown devotee of his running philosophy and his pacing rules, I forced restraint for the first 10 miles, keeping an even 12 min pace. But after mile 10 Dan, Jenn, and I were able to pick up the pace by a full 3 minutes — finishing at a 9 minute pace. It felt good to turn up the heat at that point. I’m fairly sure that not a single person passed us in those last 3 miles.

I could have shaved at least 2 minutes off that time (which would have REALLY made me a contender) if I had not needed to stop around mile 3 to fish something sharp out of my left shoe. I never found the offending object. Good thing I’m phenomenally tough.

Within our group of approximately 12 runners, David Fischer posted the fastest time and Chade took the glory in the women’s division. I can only assume that my targeted cheering and high fives as they passed me on their way back substantially contributed to their success.

My legs are a touch sore, but I don’t actually feel that bad — thanks, Jeff Galloway!