“PAFET” Items

PAFET Operating Committee, April 1996

PAFET Operating Committee meeting and agenda. Held in Phoenix, AZ. Includes documents about “Elect to Connect,” a project involving Newspapers in Education.

The NIE Project was initially established as an experiment in conducting joint development within PAFET. This area was selected in part based on the existing relationships (and history of collaboration) among PAFET NIE representatives. After several discussions, the group decided to focus the project on jointly developing curriculum to support the 1996 Elections. The curriculum would contain both a print and “new media” component (e.g. online/Internet, diskette, and/or CD-ROM).

Founding Memos for PAFET

The technology consortium was the brainchild of James Rosse, chief executive officer of Freedom Newspapers, which owned the Orange County Register. His idea, which he pitched to fellow CEOs, was to gather similar sized organizations to discuss and share information about the technology that was affecting the newspaper industry. The first meeting of this yet-to-be-named organization was on Nov. 8, 1993 at Freedom Newspapers’ office in Irvine, CA.

Here’s how Rosse saw some of ways the various companies could work together:

List of Possible Forms  of Collaboration
This list has been prepared by Jim Rosse solely to stimulate discussion and is not intended to represent a proposal for joint action. The items are ranked roughly from those requiring the least to those requiring the most collaboration.

  • Comparing notes on technologies in which we are individually involved or interested.
  • Creating a technology newsletter internal to the Consortium with production costs shared among members.
  • Hiring a specialist (consultant? more than one?) to work for the Consortium whose job it would be to scan emerging technologies, collect information about them, and report it succinctly to us according to our individual needs
  • Negotiating a Consortium membership in the MIT Media Lab or similar group or participating in the Knight-Ridder effort in Colorado.
  • Representing Consortium members in dealing with third parties regarding Consortium interests in new ventures
  • Facilitating joint ventures in new technology projects among two or more Consortium members.
  • Creating an entity to carry out investment  activity  in new technologies on behalf of the Consortium.

Eventually the consortium would do most of what Rosse envisioned.

In this file are follow-up memos, including a discussion about the group’s name:

I am writing to let you know what has been going on to take Pafeot to its next stage of development. I have talked with several of you, but time has not permitted nor did I think the matters justified extensive consultation. It seemed less important that we dot all of the i’s and cross all of the t’s than it is just to get started with something we can shape as we go along.

You will be pleased to know that the acronym “Pafeot” now has an alternative interpretation – Primarily Affiliated For (the) Exploration Of Technology. Now if we can just think of an easy way to explain its pronunciation (“paf” with the a spoken as in “hat”, and “fet” for feat with the e spoken as in “set;” in combination, “pafet.”).

Eventually the word Primarily would become Partners

 

1995 Online Service Research Study

In early 1995, PAFET conducted a consumer online market research survey to establish baseline information in order to measure the development of the consumer online market. This document summarizes the goals, approach and results of that study.

[PAFET stands for Partners Affiliated for the Exploration of Technology. In 1994 six media companies [mostly a bunch of newspaper companies] created this research consortium to learn about and evaluate technology that could impact media and support the creation of new businesses and services.]

Some of the highlights of the study:

• The level of familiarity with online services among PC owners and online subscribers is lower than expected. Despite online services’ aggressive subscriber acquisition efforts and heavy media attention given to these services, almost 1 of 4 PC owners considers themselves to be “not at all familiar” with online services.
• Current online users still represent a niche market, that can be characterized as young, affluent, highly educated, and predominantly male. However, improved presentation of online content (via graphical and multimedia technology), faster transmission speeds, better content and lower prices are attracting more mainstream consumers.
• The demographic profile of online subscribers using the Internet and those who do not is very similar.
• Accessing or subscribing to multiple online services is not uncommon among current online service users. One of four online service users reported regularly accessing at least two online services.
• “News and information” remain the top reason non-online users subscribe to a service. The research results showed that, among current online users, the primary reason they chose their current service was for “news and information.” Among those who canceled a subscription within the past six months, “lack of use” and “lack of information” were cited most often as the reasons for the cancellations.

The study’s questionnaire and research methodology were designed by Maritz Research (Los Angeles, CA), PAFET Operating Committee members, and market research directors and managers at each of the newspapers included in the study.

Also included with this post is the presentation made by Maritz Marketing.

Looking at the Local Marketplace Providers, 1996

The PAFET group [see item about its founding] commissioned the technology consulting group, the Yankee Group, to look at competitors in local markets. In other words, look at who could compete against newspapers for viewers and advertisers. Here’s a touch of the overview:

PAFET has asked the Yankee Group to research the variety of institutions providing localized, Web-based consumer information services.  The firms were researched from two perspectives: investment opportunities and partnership opportunities.

  • Local content/city-based
  • Enhanced Yellow Pages
  • Other (combination of both camps/directory services)

On-line services such as AOL’s Digital Cities and Microsoft’s Sidewalk were not covered in this effort. 

We evaluated these companies on a series of criteria which were in turn weighted according to strategic importance. These criteria included positioning in four main categories:

1. brand/marketing/sales,

2. corporate and competitive,

3. content and services, and

4. technical

 

The report gives a snapshot to the time when newspaper companies knew there was danger ahead. How much they were willing to act is another matter.

PAFET Review of Media Landscape, 1994

The PAFET Operating Committee had several tasks. The most important was to keep the Strategic Committee, i.e. the Big Bosses, abreast of technology and changes in the media landscape. One of the tools we used was a report [monthly at times] that could be distributed across various “C Suites” and lower in an organization.  Here’s what I wrote about the first edition:

The purpose of the Pafet Review is to keep you abreast of the changing alliances and their potential impact on the media industry. The report is prepared by the Yankee Group under the direction of the Operating Committee.

In the future, the committee plans to add more analysis. This analysis will not only include broad implications, but also the impact of the changing landscape upon Pafet’s mission.

Media Companies Launch Consortium

This is the official launch of PAFET, Partners Affiliated for Exploring Technology. It was a consortium that hoped that by exploring technology together, these companies would benefit from shared knowledge in the creation of new businesses and/or services.

“Our purpose is to maintain and strengthen our competence in collecting, packaging and marketing information, making use of the best of evolving technologies available. As a group we can invest in research on new information technology that larger companies are pursuing,” states James N. Rosse, president and chief executive officer of Freedom Communications, Inc., who will be the first chairman of the PAFET management committee