John Dowd has summed up one of the key elements of this question of personalization of print in pointing out that the problem with newspapers (dwindling circulation) has nothing to do with platform and everything to do with giving people choice (of content).
Visit http://www.evolvingprint.com to see graphics that go with this text.
The full blogs:
Before leaving the Why Print theme I want to toss out a couple of additional data points that suggest that the widely held wisdom that Print Is Dead is off the mark.
Consider The Economist, my favorite magazine. Though serving higher-income readers with above-average penetration rates of both smart phones (judging by how frequently the iPhone is advertised on the back cover) and broadband internet the magazine has managed to double its print circulation over the last six years. Here’s the chart:
That’s quite remarkable, isn’t it? Across a recession and in spite of the introduction of Facebook, iPhones, YouTube, etc here is a print publication that can’t stop growing!
Oh, and lest you conclude that The Economist has been boosting sales by catering to gray hairs among us, consider that the average age of its readers is 39 years old – younger than that of any other major news magazine (source).
One more interesting data point is worth mentioning. The Radio and Television News Director’s Foundation took the simple approach and just asked people whether they prefer to read in print or online (full report here). Intentionally or not they very usefully (for my purposes) asked the question in a manner that isolates the impact of the media – print vs. online – without clouding the issue by considering the differing content each offers. Here’s what they found:
Notably, the answer from the 18-34 year old cohort was remarkably similar to that of older respondents: 76.5% of the former group preferred print to 77.5% of the latter.
This data suggests that the culprit behind the unambiguous shift from print newspaper reading to online reading (of principally non-newspaper sites) is not the paper on which the newspaper is printed but rather the content which it includes.
The idea that content is king (or culprit) explains why some print (The Economist and college newspapers) continue to thrive while others, despite the reader’s preference for print, do not.
But more on that in a later post.
Why print?
Posted on August 11, 2010 by John Dowd
A blog on print? Really? Wasn’t there a memo…something about online killing print?
Yup, heard all that before. But the truth is print retains a lot vitality, despite the rumors of its impending demise. I hope to share some of that story in this blog, along with my own thoughts on how print ought to evolve so that the rumors remain just that.
Entry #1 on the “why print” ledger comes from what should be ground zero for the death of print – the college campus. ”Ground zero” because college campuses have all the ingredients that are allegedly connected to print’s death at the hands of the internet:
Young people
Free WiFI
Ubiquitous laptops and smart phones
So, what do you get when you mix those nasty ingredients and stir? Well, Alloy Marketing+Media did some research on 550 campuses to find out – their results may surprise you.
That’s right, the printed edition gets more traction in a single day than the online edition gets in a month! (30% read print daily, 20% read online monthly)
Both are free and have identical content. The online edition is probably more available given that students have their laptops and smartphones with them at all times.
Hmmm…so much for the perfect storm, right?
Now don’t get me wrong. Newspapers have a huge problem. In fact, they have two. The first is declining ad sales. Left unresolved this will lead to dramatically lower profits (and under-staffed newsrooms and other follow on effects). The second and larger problem is declining circulation, especially among younger readers. Left unresolved this will lead not to lower profits but rather to oblivion for the industry.
My concern is that the industry is misdiagnosing the first problem and largely ignoring the second (or at least not treating it as the burning platform that it really is).
The problem, however, is not print, as the campus newspaper illustrates. In fact, in a future post I’ll elaborate how – in the parlance of web developers – print is actually a feature, not a bug, of the current model.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Breakthrough
Now here's a press announcement worth remarking: The Chicago Tribune has bought a Kodak digital inkjet press in order to do variable data printing.
Visit: http://newsandtech.com/dateline/article_27a441e8-ca63-11df-a1f2-001cc4c03286.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
From a News and Tech magazine twitter:
The Chicago Tribune’s Tribune Direct Marketing unit put into operation a black-and-white digital press from Kodak for its direct-mail and niche printing, becoming one of a handful of U.S. newspaper publishers to deploy digital printing within their operations. It plans to upgrade the press to a full-color model next year.
The Tribune’s Prosper 1000 is part of Kodak’s family of digital presses. The line, introduced earlier this year, is driven by the vendor’s Stream Inkjet technology, which uses air deflection and silicon nozzles to produce sharp images at speeds of up to 650 feet per minute, Kodak said.
“We believe the Prosper press will be a game-changer for our industry,” said Lou Tazioli, president of Tribune Direct, in a statement.
In addition to direct mail pieces, Tribune Direct will use the press to produce niche publications and other highly targeted printed materials, Tribune said. It will upgrade the platform to a full-color Prosper 5000XL, capable of producing magazines and inserts as well as direct-mail, next year.
Other U.S. publishers with digital printing presses are Investor’s Business Daily parent O’Neil Data Systems, which last year ramped up an HP Inkjet Web Press at its Los Angeles facility to print direct-mail pieces, and Newsworld, which produces a number of international papers for distribution in the New York region on a Screen Truepress Jet520.
Visit: http://newsandtech.com/dateline/article_27a441e8-ca63-11df-a1f2-001cc4c03286.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
From a News and Tech magazine twitter:
The Chicago Tribune’s Tribune Direct Marketing unit put into operation a black-and-white digital press from Kodak for its direct-mail and niche printing, becoming one of a handful of U.S. newspaper publishers to deploy digital printing within their operations. It plans to upgrade the press to a full-color model next year.
The Tribune’s Prosper 1000 is part of Kodak’s family of digital presses. The line, introduced earlier this year, is driven by the vendor’s Stream Inkjet technology, which uses air deflection and silicon nozzles to produce sharp images at speeds of up to 650 feet per minute, Kodak said.
“We believe the Prosper press will be a game-changer for our industry,” said Lou Tazioli, president of Tribune Direct, in a statement.
In addition to direct mail pieces, Tribune Direct will use the press to produce niche publications and other highly targeted printed materials, Tribune said. It will upgrade the platform to a full-color Prosper 5000XL, capable of producing magazines and inserts as well as direct-mail, next year.
Other U.S. publishers with digital printing presses are Investor’s Business Daily parent O’Neil Data Systems, which last year ramped up an HP Inkjet Web Press at its Los Angeles facility to print direct-mail pieces, and Newsworld, which produces a number of international papers for distribution in the New York region on a Screen Truepress Jet520.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Hear hear
How about hearing your newspaper, instead of reading it? Would that personalize the experience for you. Check it out. It's already happening.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LI24Df04.html
The full text from the Asia Times:
Adventure of the talking newspaper
By Raja Murthy
MUMBAI - As with over two million others in India, I got a shock on Tuesday morning when I opened my daily newspaper and heard a voice from within its pages. I dropped the newspaper in surprise, and the voice stopped. On opening it again, a male voice bleated about German engineering.
It was my eerie moment of history, the era of speaking newspapers had dawned, with no advance warning, and I had become part of all its attendant wonderful and nightmarish possibilities.
Using a small, ingenious, light-sensor activated, voice-recorded device glued to the newspaper page, the Times of India and The Hindu carried an audio advertisement launching a new Volkswagen car model on September 21. The two leading Indian
dailies, both over 100 years old, became the world's first multimedia newspapers of a kind perhaps never imagined by Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press in around 1441.
The talking paper launched the Vento, a premium entry-level sedan and the latest offering from top-selling Volkswagen India Group that markets the Audi, Skoda and Volkswagen brands. Volkswagen India reported growth of 120.7% in its latest sales figures for January to July 2010.
The newspaper audio continued Volkswagen India's reputation for innovative marketing - such as "Roadblocked" last November, when it took over the entire advertising space in all of the 16 Times of India editions across India, for its Polo hatchback model.
Volkswagen releasing the first-ever audio page in print media opened up a Pandora's box of ideas: will the next James Bond movie have newspapers singing out the theme? Will cash-rich political parties be demanding votes through talking newspapers next elections? Worse, imagine sitting inside a train or an aircraft with a babble of audio papers.
Given the responses the next day, on September 22, there may be a hundred other duplicate ideas of yakkety-yak magazines and newspapers. But now that it is known that paper can be made to speak, that first pristine moment of utter astonishment has passed. Memorable, though, is the inaugural experience of what I had never thought of before: a newspaper talking.
For a few seconds, I had rarely been more bewildered than on hearing a voice coming from the newspaper in the early morning. My first confused thought was that somehow a cell phone had found its way into the pages by mistake - but then, even cell phones can't start talking by themselves, and I don't own a cell phone. When I saw what the voice was, I couldn't help smiling: a full-page car advertisement on a back page, with a two-inch black rectangular box glued to it doing the talking.
The astonishment was more because there were no advance warnings or teaser advertisements in days leading up to the caper. The edition with the voice carried a small note to "Our Readers: The Times of India and Volkswagen have created four pages of content as a sort of a special media innovation. Don't miss reading and listening to this 'speaking newspaper'!"
But I found this message only after looking for it.
"Best in class German engineering is here," announces the male voice. "The new Volkswagen Vento. Built with great care and highly innovative features, perhaps that's why it breaks the hearts of our engineers to watch it drive away. The new Volkswagen Vento, crafted with so much passion, it's hard to let it go. Volkswagen. Das Auto."
The message repeats itself, until the news page is folded sufficiently to block the pinhole-sized perforation on the black audio box through which lights travels to sensor to trigger the recorded disk.
Varied, colorful responses were reported across India to opening a newspaper and hearing it talk. They ranged from frightened children to a Mumbai police bomb squad rushing to investigate suspicious noises coming from a litter-bin near S L Raheja Hospital in suburban Mahim - some irritated reader had chucked away the black chatterbox, which can continue talking for nearly two-and-a-half hours.
A startled housemaid reportedly picked up the talking newspaper and screamed "ghost", an understandable reaction given the stories I heard as a kid about ghosts violently slapping people opening the front door at dawn - probably as grouchy farewell before the spooks vanish at sunrise.
Hundreds of messages about the morning newspaper experience flooded social networking sites like Twitter. "The Volkswagen talking ad in today's TOI [Times of India] scared the hell out of me!" tweeted one. "It's both funny and weird."
More proof of how the astonished mind can produce any thought came with one startled reader revealing he had thought the wall behind his newspaper was talking.
Not everyone was startled or impressed. Bangalore resident Rani Venugopal scolded the Times of India for creating an environmental problem with all the plastic that will be thrown away with the newspaper.
The bearded, bear-like Prahlad Kakkar, a prominent Mumbai-based advertising filmmaker, complained of an intrusive, unwelcome advertisement before breakfast. "When a man gets up in the morning, he wakes up with the newspaper and this is the only time of peace and solace in the day," Kakkar told a Times of India reporter. "The voice box intruded into this space and I did not know how to stop it."
Even so, I bought an extra copy to relish again the childhood habit of dismantling fascinating toys to explore the innards. The two-inch, featherweight, hollow rectangular "voice box" contained two button cells wired into a disc about an inch wide that produces the repetitive message.
I thought it was lighter pressure of fingers or of folded newspaper pages that activated the voice - but the Times of India declared the next day that a light-sensitive device worked the moment the pages were even half open.
The iPod-sized gizmos with the speaker, chip and batteries are made at a Volkswagen factory in China. Mumbai resident and Volkswagen India manager Lutz Kothe said his 14-year-old niece, Beatrix Madersbacher, gave him the idea during a business trip to Munich.
Beatrix may have had a brainwave or seen the idea on the Internet. In early 2009, Lalit Pahwa, director of a small Mumbai-based publisher, Pioneer Book Co, had talked about a pre-recorded audio chip embedded in a newspaper or magazine page. It would start playing when the reader opened the page and stop when page was turned. But Pahwa could not implement the idea for the two women's magazines he publishes.
The German connection though was appropriate in enabling the world's first speaking newspapers. Apart from Gutenberg, another German, Johann Carolus (1575-1634), published the first-ever generally acknowledged newspaper - his "Relation", or Relation aller Furnemmen und gedenckwurdigen Historien (Collection of all distinguished and commemorable news) was published from 1605.
It took nearly six months of working logistics for the September 21 edition of the Times of India and The Hindu to carry the talking page - 2.5 million copies of the edition were selectively distributed in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.
The copies had become collectors' items in Mumbai by the next morning, the concluding day of the city's biggest annual festival of Ganesha, the charismatic god of enterprise and adventure.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LI24Df04.html
The full text from the Asia Times:
Adventure of the talking newspaper
By Raja Murthy
MUMBAI - As with over two million others in India, I got a shock on Tuesday morning when I opened my daily newspaper and heard a voice from within its pages. I dropped the newspaper in surprise, and the voice stopped. On opening it again, a male voice bleated about German engineering.
It was my eerie moment of history, the era of speaking newspapers had dawned, with no advance warning, and I had become part of all its attendant wonderful and nightmarish possibilities.
Using a small, ingenious, light-sensor activated, voice-recorded device glued to the newspaper page, the Times of India and The Hindu carried an audio advertisement launching a new Volkswagen car model on September 21. The two leading Indian
dailies, both over 100 years old, became the world's first multimedia newspapers of a kind perhaps never imagined by Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press in around 1441.
The talking paper launched the Vento, a premium entry-level sedan and the latest offering from top-selling Volkswagen India Group that markets the Audi, Skoda and Volkswagen brands. Volkswagen India reported growth of 120.7% in its latest sales figures for January to July 2010.
The newspaper audio continued Volkswagen India's reputation for innovative marketing - such as "Roadblocked" last November, when it took over the entire advertising space in all of the 16 Times of India editions across India, for its Polo hatchback model.
Volkswagen releasing the first-ever audio page in print media opened up a Pandora's box of ideas: will the next James Bond movie have newspapers singing out the theme? Will cash-rich political parties be demanding votes through talking newspapers next elections? Worse, imagine sitting inside a train or an aircraft with a babble of audio papers.
Given the responses the next day, on September 22, there may be a hundred other duplicate ideas of yakkety-yak magazines and newspapers. But now that it is known that paper can be made to speak, that first pristine moment of utter astonishment has passed. Memorable, though, is the inaugural experience of what I had never thought of before: a newspaper talking.
For a few seconds, I had rarely been more bewildered than on hearing a voice coming from the newspaper in the early morning. My first confused thought was that somehow a cell phone had found its way into the pages by mistake - but then, even cell phones can't start talking by themselves, and I don't own a cell phone. When I saw what the voice was, I couldn't help smiling: a full-page car advertisement on a back page, with a two-inch black rectangular box glued to it doing the talking.
The astonishment was more because there were no advance warnings or teaser advertisements in days leading up to the caper. The edition with the voice carried a small note to "Our Readers: The Times of India and Volkswagen have created four pages of content as a sort of a special media innovation. Don't miss reading and listening to this 'speaking newspaper'!"
But I found this message only after looking for it.
"Best in class German engineering is here," announces the male voice. "The new Volkswagen Vento. Built with great care and highly innovative features, perhaps that's why it breaks the hearts of our engineers to watch it drive away. The new Volkswagen Vento, crafted with so much passion, it's hard to let it go. Volkswagen. Das Auto."
The message repeats itself, until the news page is folded sufficiently to block the pinhole-sized perforation on the black audio box through which lights travels to sensor to trigger the recorded disk.
Varied, colorful responses were reported across India to opening a newspaper and hearing it talk. They ranged from frightened children to a Mumbai police bomb squad rushing to investigate suspicious noises coming from a litter-bin near S L Raheja Hospital in suburban Mahim - some irritated reader had chucked away the black chatterbox, which can continue talking for nearly two-and-a-half hours.
A startled housemaid reportedly picked up the talking newspaper and screamed "ghost", an understandable reaction given the stories I heard as a kid about ghosts violently slapping people opening the front door at dawn - probably as grouchy farewell before the spooks vanish at sunrise.
Hundreds of messages about the morning newspaper experience flooded social networking sites like Twitter. "The Volkswagen talking ad in today's TOI [Times of India] scared the hell out of me!" tweeted one. "It's both funny and weird."
More proof of how the astonished mind can produce any thought came with one startled reader revealing he had thought the wall behind his newspaper was talking.
Not everyone was startled or impressed. Bangalore resident Rani Venugopal scolded the Times of India for creating an environmental problem with all the plastic that will be thrown away with the newspaper.
The bearded, bear-like Prahlad Kakkar, a prominent Mumbai-based advertising filmmaker, complained of an intrusive, unwelcome advertisement before breakfast. "When a man gets up in the morning, he wakes up with the newspaper and this is the only time of peace and solace in the day," Kakkar told a Times of India reporter. "The voice box intruded into this space and I did not know how to stop it."
Even so, I bought an extra copy to relish again the childhood habit of dismantling fascinating toys to explore the innards. The two-inch, featherweight, hollow rectangular "voice box" contained two button cells wired into a disc about an inch wide that produces the repetitive message.
I thought it was lighter pressure of fingers or of folded newspaper pages that activated the voice - but the Times of India declared the next day that a light-sensitive device worked the moment the pages were even half open.
The iPod-sized gizmos with the speaker, chip and batteries are made at a Volkswagen factory in China. Mumbai resident and Volkswagen India manager Lutz Kothe said his 14-year-old niece, Beatrix Madersbacher, gave him the idea during a business trip to Munich.
Beatrix may have had a brainwave or seen the idea on the Internet. In early 2009, Lalit Pahwa, director of a small Mumbai-based publisher, Pioneer Book Co, had talked about a pre-recorded audio chip embedded in a newspaper or magazine page. It would start playing when the reader opened the page and stop when page was turned. But Pahwa could not implement the idea for the two women's magazines he publishes.
The German connection though was appropriate in enabling the world's first speaking newspapers. Apart from Gutenberg, another German, Johann Carolus (1575-1634), published the first-ever generally acknowledged newspaper - his "Relation", or Relation aller Furnemmen und gedenckwurdigen Historien (Collection of all distinguished and commemorable news) was published from 1605.
It took nearly six months of working logistics for the September 21 edition of the Times of India and The Hindu to carry the talking page - 2.5 million copies of the edition were selectively distributed in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.
The copies had become collectors' items in Mumbai by the next morning, the concluding day of the city's biggest annual festival of Ganesha, the charismatic god of enterprise and adventure.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Defining content
In many ways the difference between print and online is not a platform difference but an ecosystem difference.
Print content is content in context.
Online content is content in network.
In other words with print whether it's actually printed or digital, the material is in an atmosphere that is not related to an outside world.
With online content the material is related and draws its secret sauce from links to the outside world.
Print content is content in context.
Online content is content in network.
In other words with print whether it's actually printed or digital, the material is in an atmosphere that is not related to an outside world.
With online content the material is related and draws its secret sauce from links to the outside world.
Even in death
Personalization is showing up in medicine, in athletic gear and now in death. Yes the Catholic Church has recognized personalization in modern incarnations of wakes and other mortuary traditions of the church.
Check this out: http://catholickey.org/index.php3?gif=news.gif&mode=view&issue=20100917&article_id=6420
The full story:
Catholics have new options to honor loved ones
By Marty Denzer
Catholic Key Reporter
KANSAS CITY — When a loved one dies, it is left to the living to honor their memory and the memories shared through the years. Through the centuries, Catholics have devised many ways of doing this before the funeral Mass and after.
The vigil kept by the family before the Mass, whether the evening before or in the hours leading up to the liturgy, is as much a celebration of this life as the Mass is a celebration of eternal life in heaven. This may be one reason why the Catholic Church prefers the sharing of memories — eulogies — be a part of the visitation or wake.
Deacon Ralph Wehner, diocesan director of the Office of Worship, said, “The funeral liturgy is the central celebration of the Christian community for the deceased. At the funeral Mass, the community gathers with the family and friends of the deceased to give praise and thanks to God for Christ’s victory over sin and death, to commend the deceased to God’s tender mercy and compassion and to seek strength in the proclamation of the paschal mystery.”
Catholic funeral directors are beginning to suggest ways of personalizing the visitation, to make it unique and memorable. Steve Pierce, president of Muehlebach Funeral Home, said that as baby boomers age and find themselves having to plan funerals for loved ones and even themselves, “they are making funeral choices based on values that are different than in previous generations. Baby boomers see the visitation and funeral as part of the grieving process and are seeking ways to make them meaningful. In fact 64 percent of those surveyed said they wanted visitation and funeral services to be unique and personalized.”
If the person has written down his or her wishes for the visitation, funeral Mass and burial services, it can make it easier for surviving family members and make the services more personal. Often though, it is left to the family to plan the services.
The funeral service consumers of the 21st century are planning services that are as unique as the person who died, Pierce said. “The idea of personalization has resulted in an explosion of unique visitation services that reflect the hobbies, passions and interests of the person who died.”
Photographs and videos of the person, items relating to the person’s job, hobbies or interests, and blank journals where visitors can jot down their own memories of the person are some of the suggestions for personalization, he said.
Funeral liturgies are also personalized. Family members work with the parish priest or counselor to plan the readings from Sacred Scripture, the liturgical music and the intentions. The Order of Christian Funerals forbids eulogies during the Mass, but some information about the person is often worked into the celebrant’s homily. According to Diocesan policy, a brief homily should dwell on God’s compassionate love and on the Paschal Mystery of the Lord, how this mystery was present in the life and death of the deceased and that this mystery is active in the lives of those present as well.
The planners also can designate who will do the readings, who will bring up the gifts at the Offertory and any extraordinary ministers of communion. Working with the parish ensures that a Catholic funeral Mass will stay within diocesan guidelines.
Pierce also said that sometimes pallbearers and readers are asked to wear clothing reflecting the deceased’s personality. For example, pink was the person’s favorite color. So at the funeral Mass, the pallbearers and readers might be asked to wear pink shirts or blouses.
The personalizing can continue to the cemetery. After the committal services are concluded, Pierce suggested that balloons could be released to represent both the soul’s flight to heaven and the joys the person felt in life.
Family planners work with cemetery staff to select a headstone or marker, or the marker preselected by the deceased. The inscription, engravings and medallions containing photographs or religious, cultural or occupational symbolism on the headstone or marker may say as much or as little about the deceased as is desired.
Pierce said another option for Catholics is an online obituary. To enhance their obituary offerings, in the last month Muehlebach Funeral Home has partnered with Tribute.com., an online resource for local and national obituaries. “Families served by Muehlebach will now be able to create beautiful online multimedia tributes that honor their loved ones’ lives with photos, videos, music and more to create a permanent record on our website www.muehlebachchapel.com and on Tributes.com,” he said. “This establishes a special place where family and friends can go to celebrate a loved one, leave a condolence or share a memory or a photo at any time of the day, no matter where they live.
“Through personalization,” Pierce said, “funeral services can be more meaningful. Funeral directors can offer ideas on how families can personalize their loved one’s funeral and are open to suggestions and creativity. The National Funeral Directors Association encourages funeral service consumers to discuss their ideas with their funeral director to ensure an individualized ceremony befitting the person who died.”
Check this out: http://catholickey.org/index.php3?gif=news.gif&mode=view&issue=20100917&article_id=6420
The full story:
Catholics have new options to honor loved ones
By Marty Denzer
Catholic Key Reporter
KANSAS CITY — When a loved one dies, it is left to the living to honor their memory and the memories shared through the years. Through the centuries, Catholics have devised many ways of doing this before the funeral Mass and after.
The vigil kept by the family before the Mass, whether the evening before or in the hours leading up to the liturgy, is as much a celebration of this life as the Mass is a celebration of eternal life in heaven. This may be one reason why the Catholic Church prefers the sharing of memories — eulogies — be a part of the visitation or wake.
Deacon Ralph Wehner, diocesan director of the Office of Worship, said, “The funeral liturgy is the central celebration of the Christian community for the deceased. At the funeral Mass, the community gathers with the family and friends of the deceased to give praise and thanks to God for Christ’s victory over sin and death, to commend the deceased to God’s tender mercy and compassion and to seek strength in the proclamation of the paschal mystery.”
Catholic funeral directors are beginning to suggest ways of personalizing the visitation, to make it unique and memorable. Steve Pierce, president of Muehlebach Funeral Home, said that as baby boomers age and find themselves having to plan funerals for loved ones and even themselves, “they are making funeral choices based on values that are different than in previous generations. Baby boomers see the visitation and funeral as part of the grieving process and are seeking ways to make them meaningful. In fact 64 percent of those surveyed said they wanted visitation and funeral services to be unique and personalized.”
If the person has written down his or her wishes for the visitation, funeral Mass and burial services, it can make it easier for surviving family members and make the services more personal. Often though, it is left to the family to plan the services.
The funeral service consumers of the 21st century are planning services that are as unique as the person who died, Pierce said. “The idea of personalization has resulted in an explosion of unique visitation services that reflect the hobbies, passions and interests of the person who died.”
Photographs and videos of the person, items relating to the person’s job, hobbies or interests, and blank journals where visitors can jot down their own memories of the person are some of the suggestions for personalization, he said.
Funeral liturgies are also personalized. Family members work with the parish priest or counselor to plan the readings from Sacred Scripture, the liturgical music and the intentions. The Order of Christian Funerals forbids eulogies during the Mass, but some information about the person is often worked into the celebrant’s homily. According to Diocesan policy, a brief homily should dwell on God’s compassionate love and on the Paschal Mystery of the Lord, how this mystery was present in the life and death of the deceased and that this mystery is active in the lives of those present as well.
The planners also can designate who will do the readings, who will bring up the gifts at the Offertory and any extraordinary ministers of communion. Working with the parish ensures that a Catholic funeral Mass will stay within diocesan guidelines.
Pierce also said that sometimes pallbearers and readers are asked to wear clothing reflecting the deceased’s personality. For example, pink was the person’s favorite color. So at the funeral Mass, the pallbearers and readers might be asked to wear pink shirts or blouses.
The personalizing can continue to the cemetery. After the committal services are concluded, Pierce suggested that balloons could be released to represent both the soul’s flight to heaven and the joys the person felt in life.
Family planners work with cemetery staff to select a headstone or marker, or the marker preselected by the deceased. The inscription, engravings and medallions containing photographs or religious, cultural or occupational symbolism on the headstone or marker may say as much or as little about the deceased as is desired.
Pierce said another option for Catholics is an online obituary. To enhance their obituary offerings, in the last month Muehlebach Funeral Home has partnered with Tribute.com., an online resource for local and national obituaries. “Families served by Muehlebach will now be able to create beautiful online multimedia tributes that honor their loved ones’ lives with photos, videos, music and more to create a permanent record on our website www.muehlebachchapel.com and on Tributes.com,” he said. “This establishes a special place where family and friends can go to celebrate a loved one, leave a condolence or share a memory or a photo at any time of the day, no matter where they live.
“Through personalization,” Pierce said, “funeral services can be more meaningful. Funeral directors can offer ideas on how families can personalize their loved one’s funeral and are open to suggestions and creativity. The National Funeral Directors Association encourages funeral service consumers to discuss their ideas with their funeral director to ensure an individualized ceremony befitting the person who died.”
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Long time coming
It's been a long time coming. But it's here. The first local website to become a local print publication that I've heard about. Why has this been so hard to see? Targeted print publications have always had the same DNA as websites, so why hasn't this happened many times before. Why have the creation of websites from print publications come in droves, in millions, in billions, in zillions, before a local print publication from a website. It should have been a two-way street from the beginning, but I guess the construction crews arbitrarily -- or rather the culture police arbitrarily -- decided it was a one way street.
To see the full story visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/sep/16/hyperlocal-blog-hu17-beverley-paul-smith-print
Or here it is:
Hyperlocal blogger expands into print publishing
Website publisher launches full colour weekly
A hyperlocal news site owner has launched into print with a low cost advertising weekly for Beverley.
Paul Smith is known to many bloggers for campaigning to clear his name after the Hull Daily Mail accused him of activity in the porn industry and questioned his fitness to run the website HU17.net in high-profile coverage in the area.
But several stressful months on – and with a partially upheld PCC complaint against the paper behind him – Smith has stepped up his local publishing venture by launching in their backyard.
He told me how the new venture was progressing:
"The first edition was just sport with no other editorial, it was more as a promotional idea though has evolved since then. Now it is 28 pages in full colour on A4 pages.
"It is for everyone in the town though it seems to appeal to those who are out and about – ie who use the shops, bars and or play sport in the area".
Competition
The newspaper competes for its readers, and advertisers, with the Johnston Press's Beverley Guardian as well as the Hull Daily Mail's own Beverley Advertiser.
Cover Photograph: Paul Smith/guardian.co.uk
What Smith calls his "magic formula'' is a mixture of pictures capturing local events under the strapline 'it's all about Beverley' and low cost advertising - £5 per week for a good sized advert.
"I am told people like to see who is in it, I think it also helps that the content is exclusive and very niche. Having an established web site has helped, people know the brand too."
The print version hits the streets each Tuesday and is distributed to drop off places in Beverley such as bars, barbers and social clubs.
"Local shops have been very supportive with many signing up to advertising package that is realistic and very affordable, something that was certainly needed in the area.
"We still only make a limited number up to 100 copies but each one gets seen by lots of people."
HU17 can also be accessed online at HU17.net and on Facebook.
To see the full story visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/sep/16/hyperlocal-blog-hu17-beverley-paul-smith-print
Or here it is:
Hyperlocal blogger expands into print publishing
Website publisher launches full colour weekly
A hyperlocal news site owner has launched into print with a low cost advertising weekly for Beverley.
Paul Smith is known to many bloggers for campaigning to clear his name after the Hull Daily Mail accused him of activity in the porn industry and questioned his fitness to run the website HU17.net in high-profile coverage in the area.
But several stressful months on – and with a partially upheld PCC complaint against the paper behind him – Smith has stepped up his local publishing venture by launching in their backyard.
He told me how the new venture was progressing:
"The first edition was just sport with no other editorial, it was more as a promotional idea though has evolved since then. Now it is 28 pages in full colour on A4 pages.
"It is for everyone in the town though it seems to appeal to those who are out and about – ie who use the shops, bars and or play sport in the area".
Competition
The newspaper competes for its readers, and advertisers, with the Johnston Press's Beverley Guardian as well as the Hull Daily Mail's own Beverley Advertiser.
Cover Photograph: Paul Smith/guardian.co.uk
What Smith calls his "magic formula'' is a mixture of pictures capturing local events under the strapline 'it's all about Beverley' and low cost advertising - £5 per week for a good sized advert.
"I am told people like to see who is in it, I think it also helps that the content is exclusive and very niche. Having an established web site has helped, people know the brand too."
The print version hits the streets each Tuesday and is distributed to drop off places in Beverley such as bars, barbers and social clubs.
"Local shops have been very supportive with many signing up to advertising package that is realistic and very affordable, something that was certainly needed in the area.
"We still only make a limited number up to 100 copies but each one gets seen by lots of people."
HU17 can also be accessed online at HU17.net and on Facebook.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
E-ink Forever
If you haven't seen this video of a hacker challenged to destroy the cover of the famous Esquire Magazine 75th anniversity issue -- with blinking E-ink screen: "The 21st Century begins now," check it out.
http://gizmodo.com/5054022/esquire-e+ink-cover-hacked-to-death-with-knives-and-fire
http://gizmodo.com/5054022/esquire-e+ink-cover-hacked-to-death-with-knives-and-fire
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