We’ve been looking carefully at the Syntagma network over the early summer, thanks to Gerry Reynolds, a business consultant specializing in the retail sector. Like all such exercises, much of what emerged was already known to me from the experiences of the past two years, but two thoughts in particular were illuminating.

Gerry’s first insight, which I was aware of, is that the online content business is a small margin trade — unless you’re prepared to invest heavily ($20m). By that he means that there are few big payouts for individual sales — i.e. of ad space. Big bucks have to be accumulated over time from small sum payments.

Drawing on his retail knowledge, he likened the business to little corner shops, which make margins of around 2 percent. To make that sort of business pay it has to be run almost around the clock. Most small shops are owned by immigrant groups and open between 8am and 10pm. Moreover, they are family run, with the kids roped in for shelf stacking after they’ve returned from school. Teenagers and grandparents also take turns behind the counter.

The owner may also import exotic foods from Asia or elsewhere and wholesale them to other outlets. Other shops may be opened in different parts of town. Everything is optimized to lift that slim margin to an impressive return.

Similarly, a digital (blog) network needs quantity and variety to make the business pay. For example, some of our sites do well on text link ads, selling out in a couple of months. A few are Adsense magnets drawing clicks from heavy, regular traffic. Others attract different types of advertising, while one or two specialize in affiliate sales. Often you simply can’t tell until you try.

The attraction of multi-domain networks is that they can contain a variety of advertising magnets, which allow many fingers in different pies.

All sites need time to mature, of course — around 18 months — before they reach their potential and start contributing to the pot.

Rarely will one site make a living salary for its owner. It does happen, of course, usually for quirky, semi-commercial blogs which catch on for reasons known only to visitors, or sites using below the radar techniques for hoovering up Adsense clicks.

By accumulating sufficient inventory in the right niches, and optimizing it for profitable trading, network owners can make a good living from the business. In some isolated cases, they can even sell off the company for seven or eight figure sums, but that should not be taken as read for the vast majority.

So, that’s one of Gerry’s insights : the need, like corner shops, to work with low margins through quantity, while not compromising on quality. A hard call, and only for the determined. But does anyone think it’s easy winning a gold medal in the Olympic Games?

Another aspect of the business our consultant stared hard at was the use of branding. He looked at our basic brands and assessed their worth.

On his advice we closed down our Allusionz network magazine last month as it was going nowhere. The brand last in, Moneyizor, has already overtaken LifeTimes, but is slightly behind Phi still. It could end up in front of both.

However, one brand stood head and shoulders above the remaining three, and it’s not hard to guess what it is : Syntagma. The whole network should be pulled together more tightly like a drawstring, he suggested, to emphasize the Syntagma brand, while retaining the three subsidiary brands as “sections” of one online publication — with their own portals as now — instead of separate “magazines”.

It makes a lot of sense, and marks a retreat from the long-list method of presenting a network, which we partially moved away from with the network magazine concept. It’s simply the logical next step along the same path.

We’ll be working on this project over the rest of the summer.

There are other profitable elements in this package too, but those are confidential and for my eyes only.

The rain has partially abated giving us a brief glimpse of that big, yellow ball in the sky, whose name temporarily escapes me. Time for Photowalking again.

You know it’s summer in East Devon when the Red Indians arrive. That’s right, Red Indians. Or should I say “Native Americans”? Nah, when I hear John Wayne say it instead of “Injuns”, I’ll follow suit. Promise.

Before you say they’re really Sid and Bert from Clapham, just look at that rawhide skin. You don’t get a tan like that in South London.

You also know it’s summer in Exeter, when this :

… sprouts this :

The mobile Northcott Theatre arrives like clockwork every July. I notice they’ve covered it up this year. Given the liquidity of this year’s warm patch, that could be a very good idea.

So, what goodies have they got lined up for us?

Yes, Macbeth … sorry, “the Scottish play” — there’s a curse on the name, apparently. And Cider with Rosie, that old favourite of lecherous topers everywhere.

I’ll give the Mac… Scottish play … a miss, I think, after a trauma I received when young watching Laurence Olivier in a production at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh. At a crucial moment, the great man stumbled and almost fell flat on his face. Well, it was the Scottish play!

A quick look at Princesshay, our state of the art shopping centre, set to open in October. Looking good, Princess!

So there you have it, Devon after the Deluge. Normal photowalking resumes next week.

I’ve long been writing here at Syntagma about the “wide” version of blog networks developing into a “deeper” model more in tune with print newspapers and magazines.

This has been the basis of our “network magazine” structure over the past six months. However, I’ve not yet had the time to develop this concept as I originally set out to do. That is still to come.

We now have three broad niche “magazines” with the next stage pulling them together into one online publication, albeit distributed between multi-domains and topic verticals.

I’ve just read Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0 — writing from the opposite direction — in which he puts the case for print newspapers converting their online presence into multi-blog networks and it certainly rings a bell with me. This convergence is undoubtedly the way forward.

A single “brand” umbrella title, with print credibility, utilizing the flair and flexibility of weblog software by employing a range of contributors, amateur and pro, while maintaining the standards, professionalism and sense of mission of the best newspapers, is clearly the future of news journalism and commentary, especially for local content.

Quote : “What’s becoming clear is that blogs are now the organizing principle for newspapers’ original online content. And these are ‘real’ blogs, i.e. driven by one or two individual bloggers, with (often active) comments, RSS feeds, the whole nine yards.”

In other words, the weblog software platform is capable of far more than we normally expect from “blogging”. It’s capable of a full range of journalistic output, linked through the tools used by the top blog networks and the quality and depth associated with the best print newspapers and magazines.

Maybe there are three tiers of journalists at these blog network “newspapers”:

1. Full-time reporters and editors, who ensure breadth of coverage, quality and standards, and public mission
2. Paid freelancers who write on a regular basis, but not full-time — these can be stay-at-home parents looking for supplemental income, retirees looking for extra income or to keep busy, college students, etc.
3. “Witness” reporters (avoiding “citizen journalist” on purpose), who contribute to the reporting effort when they witness news in some form.

As I wrote here recently, “The medium isn’t the message, the quality and form of the writing, or broadcasting is. Good reportage is just that, wherever it appears. So is commentary. So is any other form of expression. We’ve been confusing the medium with the message for too long — since Marshall McLuhan in fact.

For example, some newspapers incorporate an occasional poetry spot, where decent poets can publish their verses. Does that make the poet a journalist? If writers use blog platforms to publish the kind of article that could easily appear in a broadsheet paper or specialist magazine, does that make them bloggers?”

What is certain is that this convergence is moving fast — look at any of the online newspapers as example. Print titles are crossing over between platforms to give their audience a richer, and more updated, service than ever before.

Will the print format disappear eventually? Only when the online experience matches the depth and utility of a major print publication.

I suspect print will be with us for quite a time yet.

I knew we were in for it when I looked out of the window this morning and saw the swallows flying at almost roof level.

Low flying swallows signify low pressure, and that means rain and storms.

Sure enough, when I turned on the radio the forecast warned of two month’s rainfall in 24 hours for southern England — that’s 4 inches emptying onto already sodden ground.

It seems we are getting masses of wet air from France where the heat is lifting moisture from the soggy countryside. Either that, or it’s Napoleon’s revenge.

Severe weather warnings and flood alerts are in place all over the country, but especially for the Cotswolds which will take a really big hit. Pity the tots’ Gymkhanas tomorrow and various Vicars’ annual fetes on Sunday.

Golf fans will not be reassured by the news that this unusual wodge of rain is heading north to Scotland, where Carnoustie’s Open Golf Championship is likely to be hit on the final day. Tiger Woods, dig out a canoe from somewhere!

Most of us are battening down the hatches for The Deluge, and an indoor weekend. No photowalking yet again.

The swallows have spoken.

Many of us have been saying it for years : “The BBC is not what it used to be.”

The reasons are many but one stands out. As London has gradually separated off from the views and values of the rest of the nation, so the Beeb has followed suit.

The once proud Corporation is now generally seen as run by a cadre of “metrosexual Guardianistas” — after the clunkingly leftist newspaper. The joke is that they are all balding 39-year-olds called Tristram. Not true, of course, but it strikes a real chord.

In fact, the Beeb is the biggest pensioner in the land, receiving around $6 billion (£3bn) in benefits every year in the form of the licence fee. This licence is levied on everyone in the country who watches television of any sort — even if they never sample the dubious delights of the BBC itself.

The Corporation is now so bloated and privileged — think of the International Olympics Committee where the President is addressed as Your Excellency — that it’s almost impossible to manage or control, especially by the small-beer programme-makers drafted in to do the job.

Today, we hear that the police may be called in to investigate alleged widespread fraud and misrepresentation.

The last Chairman, Michael Grade, a man of some stature in broadcasting, left suddenly to head up ITV, the Beeb’s main rival. Did he sense the disaster waiting to happen?

The previous top management was effectively decapitated by a rogue Government spin doctor for telling the truth about Iraq intelligence. So the Beeb is penalized both for telling the truth and for falsifying it. The lesson is that Government makes a poor bedfellow for any media organization priding itself on its integrity.

After the fiasco over the false allegations about the Queen, in which footage of a photoshoot with American photographer, Annie Leibovitz, was shown in the wrong order to make it look as if the Queen was storming out of the session when, in fact, she was coming in, the BBC has all but collapsed.

Its shaky amalgam of internal bureaucrats and outside production companies has been shown to be grossly inadequate. The once rigorous ethos and in-house training regimes have been largely abandoned in favour of roving freelance operatives who work on short-term contracts for every other broadcaster.

The oddly named BBC Trust has ordered an immediate suspension of all phone-in and interactive competitions after an internal investigation uncovered a string of editorial breaches. They include the flagship charity shows, Children In Need, Comic Relief and Sports Relief.

BBC Director General Mark Thompson (pictured) presented the findings of an internal audit to the Trust yesterday.

The Trust said it was “deeply concerned that significant failures of control and compliance within the BBC, and in some cases by its suppliers, have compromised the BBC’s values of accuracy and honesty.

“The Director General’s interim report to the Trust about additional editorial failings shows further deeply disappointing evidence of insufficient understanding amongst certain staff of the standards of accuracy and honesty expected, and inadequate editorial controls to ensure compliance with those standards.”

The recent debacle over the trailer for a documentary series about the Queen was just one example of many editorial breaches. It has also emerged that RDF Media, which made the series, used the same footage at a festival in Cannes, France, earlier in the year.

It’s now known that the BBC put fake winners on air during phone-in competitions for Children In Need, Comic Relief, Sport Relief and other programmes. It was fined $100,000 (£50,000) only last week for a similar event on the once much-loved children’s show, Blue Peter.

No word yet, though on sackings or resignations of senior BBC personnel, but after this catalogue of woes, it seems almost inevitable. At the least, Mark Thompson, the DG, and Peter Fincham, Controller of BBC1, should be participants in the head-rolling reality show.

Let’s hope they don’t have a phone-in competition for that.