Teacup Journal

In today's article, unlike many others that gained overwhelming support in previous days, I expect nothing but a debate, a rethinking about our media strategy and how we should balance the benefit of Media Mogul Medal gold and media efficiency as one of the biggest populated country in eRepublik.

I was an active subscriber to the Media Mogul Project on Cynic Grim's paper "Cynic's Press For Newbs" before I started my Teacup Journal, I tracked his project update everyday and subscribed almost all the papers listed in those updates, I was content with the feeling of participation and helping others to generate Media Mogul Gold for the good of our country. When that project went silent about a month ago, I was in the early days of starting to become productive and learning ins and outs of this game.

However, these following questions I'm having now, and as the title of this article, came to me in the past few days:

Is the Media Mogul Project really benefiting our nation and/or our individual players? How? What side effects does it bring?

Is there a better system or approach for us to implement in our newspapers for the purpose of supporting our country and making this game more interesting?

The original purpose of Media Mogul Project was to generate Gold for our war effort by creating a pyramid scheme of newspaper listing and subscribing to help as many newspapers as possible to get the next 1,000 subscribers.

Pros:

According to my observation on this day (eRep Day 665), Cynic's Media Mogul Project has 23 newspaper listings, with newspaper name and description (thanks for the hard work), last updated about a month ago; The Allied Media Project has 179 newspaper listings, URL only, newspaper names and description not provided, last updated 16 days ago (not sure); The American Media Mogul Project has 11 newspaper listings, names only, last updated yesterday.

Best case scenario, let's say all the above project participants are getting their Media Mogul Reward, and all the rewards went to the organization as promised and were put into good use, the total amount of gold would be 1065 Gold. Looks like a big amount, but we all know that's not going to happen because some of the newspapers are joining multiple projects and they are not going to get 1,000 new subscribers per project for sure. On the other hand, except for "Cynic's Press For Newbs", neither of the other 2 Media Mogul Project platform newspapers have over 1,000 subscribers, and the vote for the project articles are just low.

As a conclusion to my above observation and analysis, I'd say that Media Mogul Projects are generating a modest amount of Gold, but think about what price are we paying for that Gold?

Cons:

I was having some hard time with my Subscription Box a while ago, when all the Media Mogul Projects subscription were literally flooding my box and pushing some articles I really want out of quota. I ended up spending time unsubscribing those papers I don't like. I don't know if a lot of others are having and had this same problem or just quit looking at the box, but to me, it was a price to pay. I'd like to list out a few chained setbacks that will happen to the Media Mogul Project subscribers:

1. Subscription Box no longer a valuable place for you to get updated with the information you really want, but a product of all the newspapers that you subscribed for Gold generating but not content, especially when the project only shows you the link / name but nothing more about the newspaper;

2. As a consequence, subscribers from Media Mogul Projects are tend to ignore their Subscription Box (big price);

3. As a consequence, ALL newspapers and articles are getting 1 LESS tunnel (maybe the main tunnel) to reach a number of potential readers. Since we have numerous newspapers around, we are competing for very limited tunnels to reach our readers (listed as follows)

(a) Subscription Box;
(b) Shout Box: 3 times a day and the effect depends on numbers of friends you have;
(c) In-game PM: time consuming;
(d) Homepage "Top Rated": very hard to get there to Top 5, and only serious players will click "more news" to see the Top 20;
(e) Homepage "Latest": even harder because that's the second tag and you will be out of 5 latest very quickly.

4. Last but not the least, from a bigger picture: it is limiting our media visibility and influence, not enhancing it.

Finally, I'd like to propose a DMOZ.org style project that could be done to help our newspapers and make Media Moguls, maybe not in a short while, but with accumulated good effect for the long term. It would be even better if our government or one of our major newspapers with over 1K subscribers can do this:

1. Step up a categorized newspaper listing, e.g. News, Military, Business, Politics, Guides, etc. in a mass subscribed newspaper;

2. Make a registration form with Google Docs like many other great projects;

3. When people submit their newspaper to be listed, do a quick review and assessment, put it under the right category with brief description;

4. All newspapers that joined this project are encouraged (but not mandatory) to put a link to the listing at the bottom of every article like "This newspaper is a member of Project Name."

5. Promote this listing with our best effort, even with our national welcoming letter to get people involved and subscribe the newspaper they really want.

I hope the above arguments and ideas sound reasonable to you, and I wish to see a stronger eUSA media brigade in the near future.

Thanks for your time. All comments appreciated.

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Previous articles:
> Teacup Guide: A Guide to Civilian Fighters
> Teacup Special: New Border Connection Maps Released
> Teacup Guide: A Protective Guide to Job Hunting
> Teacup Special: A Month to Remember; A Map to Remember
> Teacup Interview: Teacup Interview: Bill Brasky, Secretary of DoE, a Mentor
> Teacup Interview: General Eugene Harlot, Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Former General of Stuff, Former Commandant of eUSMC

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