The Future of Print

The Times to Begin Chicago Edition on Friday

2009-11-23T17:10:00.000+01:00

The first Chicago edition of The New York Times, with added pages of local and regional news, will be published Friday, The Times announced Thursday, a month after the paper began publishing a similar regional edition in San Francisco.

A new organization, the Chicago News Cooperative, which includes several former Chicago Tribune journalists, will produce two additional pages of coverage, twice a week, for inclusion in copies of The Times distributed in that region.

The editor is James E. O’Shea, a former managing editor of The Tribune and former editor of The Los Angeles Times. Peter Osnos, the founder of PublicAffairs Books, conceived of the cooperative and is chairman of its advisory board. The cooperative is receiving assistance from WTTW, a public television station, and WBEZ, a public radio station.

The Chicago edition is part of a national strategy to win over new readers and advertisers, particularly in markets where the major local papers have contracted. The paper has acknowledged that it is looking into starting editions in other cities - Seattle was seriously considered, but not pursued - but it has not said which ones are candidates.

The additional content in the San Francisco edition is being produced by Times staff members, but the paper hopes to find a local organization, akin to the Chicago cooperative, to take over that work. Talks are underway with a Bay Area start-up involving the University of California, Berkeley, graduate journalism school and KQED, a local public radio station. The Wall Street Journal also recently started a San Francisco edition, and is looking into regional editions in other cities.

Source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/the-chicago-edition-of-the-new-york-times-to-begin-friday/

Harbinger cuts New York Times stake again

2009-11-23T17:09:00.000+01:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners cut its stake again in The New York Times Co, almost two years after it bought a big stake in a bid to shake up the newspaper publisher.

Harbinger owns 14.64 percent of the Times Co's publicly traded shares, according to a filing with theSecurities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. In September, the hedge fund reported a 16.38 percent stake.

Harbinger and fund manager Philip Falcone had spent about a half billion dollars to buy some 20 percent of the Times Co's public shares in late 2007 and early 2008, rivaling the amount of publicly traded shares held by the Sulzberger family that controls the company.

At the Time, Harbinger was paying around $20 a share. Since then, the stock's value has plunged along with those of other U.S. newspaper publishers.

New York Times shares closed on Thursday at $8.84 on the New York Stock Exchange, making Harbinger's stake worth about $186 million. Their 12-month low was $3.44 in February.

Harbinger and investor partner Scott Galloway used their clout to mount a proxy battle against the Times, and eventually got two board seats at the company.

At the time, Galloway argued that the company and the Sulzbergers had become complacent about changes happening in the news and advertising business that were hurting newspapers.

The Times has taken action since then to improve its balance sheet and stave off high debt payments that were threatening its financial health. Earlier this year, it scrapped one of those attempts, giving up plans to sell the money-losing Boston Globe.

Another, larger attempt to shake up the company fizzled. In May, media mogul David Geffen tried to buy a stake in the Times at market prices from Harbinger, but the hedge fund rebuffed the offer after demanding that he pay a premium.

(Reporting by Robert MacMillan; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091119/media_nm/us_newyorktimes_1

With 90 Laid Off, AP Finally Hits Payroll Cut Goal

2009-11-23T17:07:00.001+01:00

We've been following the brutal layoffs at the Associated Press all week, and the news organization has remained mum throughout. Until now.

Last year, CEO Tom Curley told staff that the company needed to cut 10 percent of its payroll costs, and voluntary buyouts, a hiring freeze and layoffs this year have moved the company toward this goal. Today, the AP said in a statement that the 90 people let go across the organization this week have brought them to that point. Said the AP:

"The 90 news department staffers being notified this week, along with earlier reductions in other departments, a voluntary retirement program last summer, a continuing hiring freeze and attrition, bring The Associated Press to its goal of a 10 percent reduction in the news cooperative's global payroll costs in 2009, as outlined by President and CEO Tom Curley last November."

Hopefully this means the bloodshed is over at the AP for now.

Earlier: AP Layoff Update: Four Bureaus Closed, Says Union

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the_revolving_door/with_90_laid_off_ap_finally_hits_payroll_cut_goal_143749.asp

AP layoffs total at least 71

2009-11-23T17:04:00.000+01:00

As reported earlier, the Associated Press has been holding a series of layoffs this week. Though the official totals are still unavailable, there are some numbers coming in. According to the News Media Guild, which represents 1 300 of the AP's 4 000 employees, 71 AP union members have been laid off this week, reports Editor & Publisher.

In addition to the 57 Guild members laid off on Tuesday, 14 union employees reportedly got pink slips yesterday. Thus far those let go include 42 newspersons, 22 editorial assistants, 6 photographer, and an office assistant. The Guild does not have any numbers for the amount of non-Guild members or managerial staff laid off this week.

The New York City office took the brunt of the layoffs having had a reported 20 staff laid off Tuesday. Other affected offices include Washington, D.C.; Syracuse, New York; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Dayton, Ohio; Roanoke, Virginia; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Jacksonville, Florida.

The layoffs are part of the AP's attempt to slash their payroll by 10 percent and follow the buyout of 100 employees earlier this year.

According to a notice put out by the Guild, the layoffs are not over yet: "Guild members, citing managers, have reported that more people may lose their jobs Thursday. The AP has not informed the union about future staff reductions, despite Guild requests for information. AP has not provided any assurance to the union that the company is 'finished' with this current round of staff reductions."

Source: Editor & Publisher (1), Editor & Publisher (2)

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/11/ap_layoffs_total_at_least_71.php

AP Layoff Update: Four Bureaus Closed, Says Union

2009-11-23T17:03:00.000+01:00

Today, the News Media Guild, which represents 1,300Associated Press employees, provided an update on this week's layoffs.

According to the union, 14 more people lost their jobs yesterday, bringing the grand total of unionized AP staffers laid off during this week to 71. Four bureaus are also being closed due to the cuts. Reports the guild:

"The terminations Wednesday involved nine newspersons, three editorial assistants, one photographer, and one office assistant. The notice appears to state that correspondencies in Dayton, Ohio; Roanoke, Va.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; and Jacksonville, Fla., are being closed.In addition, the Guild is aware of layoffs among U.S. managers and overseas staff."

And, it might not be over. More layoffs could come today:

"Guild members, citing managers, have reported that more people may lose their jobs Thursday. The AP has not informed the union about future staff reductions, despite Guild requests for information. AP has not provided any assurance to the union that the company is 'finished' with this current round of staff reductions."

Again, if you know any other news, send us an email or leave a note in the anonymous tip box on the right.

Black Tuesday At AP -- News Media Guild

Earlier: More Info Emerges About AP Layoffs

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the_revolving_door/ap_layoff_update_four_bureaus_closed_says_union_143719.asp

The New York Times Expands Chicago Area Report

2009-11-23T17:00:00.000+01:00

The Times Will Publish Added Pages on Fridays and Sundays, with News Provided by the Chicago News Cooperative

Second in a Series of Local Print and Online Initiatives

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 19, 2009-- The New York Times announced today an expanded Chicago area report, produced in collaboration with the Chicago News Cooperative, with added pages of local content running in The New York Times on Fridays and Sundays in the Chicago area. The report will launch on Friday, Nov. 20. The new pages will complement the national and global coverage that has made The Times a popular news provider in the region.

“This collaboration with the Chicago News Cooperative will allow us to expand our coverage of Chicago, supplementing our own work with sophisticated reporting by local journalists who have deep roots in the community," said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times.

The Chicago News Cooperative, comprising a group of Chicago journalists committed to public service journalism, launched onOct. 22. Its editor and co-founder, James O’Shea, former editor of the Los Angeles Times and former managing editor of theChicago Tribune, said: “We are delighted that America’s premier newspaper has enough faith in our ideas to partner with us in producing quality political, educational and cultural coverage for readers in Chicago. We share The Times’s commitment to serve its Chicago audience with reliable, substantive journalism as we work to address the problems facing all media.” WTTW, Chicago’s public television station, is a founding partner in CNC, which is also collaborating with WBEZ, Chicago’s public radio station.

The regional report, to run in The Times and on NYTimes.com, is devoted to local news, policy, sports and culture and will focus on issues of importance to the Chicago community. James Warren, a former Tribune managing editor and television commentator, will write a regular column for CNC that will appear in The New York Times Chicago pages.

Other journalists recently hired by the CNC are Jessica Reaves and Bill Parker, former Tribune reporters, and David Greising, former Tribune business columnist. Veteran photojournalist José M. Moré, a Tribune photographer for 28 years, will lead CNC's photographic efforts.

Dan Mihalopoulous, who has covered City Hall for the Tribune since 2003, will head up CNC's coverage of city government.Katie Fretland, formerly a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald, will join Mihalopoulous on the city beat.

The CNC’s advisory board is chaired by co-founder Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs books, who has a background in journalism, publishing and social entrepreneurship. Other members of the advisory board are: James O’Shea; Dan Schmidt, president and CEO of WTTW; Newton Minow, senior counsel at Sidley & Austin; Martin Koldyke, former chairman of WTTW and founder of the Golden Apple Foundation; Ann Marie Lipinski, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former editor of the Chicago Tribune and vice president of Civic Engagement at the University of Chicago; Michael Davies, president and CEO of AlphaZeta Interactive;Bruce Sagan, owner and publisher of the Hyde Park Herald; Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of consulting firm Denuo; and Dawn Sinclair Shapiro, Director of Woodlawn Avenue Productions.

The Chicago pages will feature enterprise reporting and will expand on the work of The Times’s Chicago news bureau and its already extensive coverage of the Chicago area. The online component will consist of news from the CNC, regional Times content and timely up-to-the-minute news feeds throughout the day. The added pages and online components will be supported by local advertising.

The Times launched added pages and an online blog called “The Bay Area” in the San Francisco Bay Area in October.

“Our intent is to roll out these expanded reports in several key markets around the country, working with local journalists and news organizations in a collaborative way,” said Scott Heekin-Canedy, president and general manager of The Times. “This approach is a service to our readers and will strengthen our subscriber retention.”

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a major funding source for the CNC’s initial operations; other support has come from The Chicago Community Trust, Winston & Strawn LLP and civic leaders interested in funding substantive journalism for a democratic society. The New York Times will pay CNC for its journalism as it does other news services whose work appears in the pages of the newspaper and on NYTimes.com.

Source: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=105317&p=irol-pressArticle&ID=1357441&highlight=

NYT Phases Out Times Extra; Looking For Other Ways To Aggregate

2009-11-23T16:58:00.000+01:00

The NYTimes.com will close the curtain on its homepage aggregation tool,Times Extra, on Dec. 1, a year after it began beta testing the feature. Although Times Extra is still being promoted on the main homepage, the alternate home page has a note telling users that they’ll still be able to find outside news articles through Blogrunner, acquired by the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) in 2006.

Over the past year, NYTCo executives have strongly embraced aggregation, emphasizing that one of the company’s goals is to be a one-stop shop for news curation. The company insists that the decision to eliminate Times Extra doesn’t reflect any change in that direction. A spokeswoman said executives are aware that users’ want links to third-party content but instead of situating aggregated articles on one point on the home page, the editors will continue to explore ways of presenting outside news coverage at other places throughout the site, with Blogrunner perhaps playing a more prominent role.

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-nyt-phases-out-times-extra-looking-for-other-ways-to-aggregate/

Layoffs Begin at The Associated Press

2009-11-23T16:51:00.000+01:00

Layoffs began today at The Associated Press, according to employees there, as the company follows through on a commitment made a year ago to lower its payroll costs by 10 percent by the end of 2009.

Much of the reduction was achieved through voluntary buyouts and attrition brought about by a hiring freeze, so it is not clear how far The A.P. is from its target, or how many people are being dismissed. The company declined to confirm that the layoffs were beginning or to comment on the number, though officials said that estimates in the low hundreds were too high. The A.P. also would not say how many of the layoffs would be in the United States and how many abroad.

The A.P., a nonprofit corporation controlled by United States newspapers, said it had about 4,000 employees worldwide a year ago. It reported labor expenses of $418.8 million in 2008, or 58 percent of total operating costs.

All of the employees interviewed on the layoffs spoke on condition of anonymity, because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

Source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/layoffs-begin-at-associated-press/

British Times To Also Charge For Online Content

2009-11-23T16:47:00.001+01:00

At first we thought this may have been news about The New York Times and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. planning to build a pay wall for his newspaper's Web site, but apparently they are catching pay wall fever across the sea, too. The Times, owned by News International, is planning on charging for online access as well, as editor James Harding announced today.

Says Harding:

"From spring of next year we will start charging for the digital edition of the Times. We're working on the exact pricing model, but we'd charge for a day's paper, for a 24-hour sign-up to the Times. We'll also establish a subscription price as well."

This is marginally different from how U.S. papers like The Wall Street Journaland Newsday have approached the pay wall issue, but offering users a small fee for a daily price (even if it costs more in the long run) might lure readers into pulling out their credit cards. In addition, there was that recent study that The New York Times quotes saying that other countries' citizens in the Western Worldwere more likely to pay for online content than Americans.

Times editor James Harding outlines plans for online charging --The Guardian

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/new_media/british_times_to_also_charge_for_online_content_143428.asp

Study finds people prefer micropayments

2009-11-23T16:39:00.000+01:00

A study carried out by Continental Research has found that the best way to get consumers to pay for online news is via single article micropayments.
The survey of 500 readers of newspapers and magazines found that only five per cent would be prepared to pay for a monthly or yearly subscription, finding them too pricy.

On the other hand, whilst a majority of 63 per cent said they would refuse to pay anything at all and choose to not read their favourite articles online, 21 per cent said they would be happy to pay a small individual fee for each article they wanted to read, with 11 per cent willing to pay slightly more to get access to the whole publication.

Whilst the news seems hopeful, there is a catch- when asked exactly how much they would pay, the figures are dismal. Thirty-five per cent of respondents said they would pay 2 pence per article, but that number drops to just seven per cent if the price is increased to 20p. Given one of the cheapest daily papers on the market, The Sun, costs 30p to buy, the figures are disappointing.

Nevertheless, Continental's head of research James Myring says some paid content is better than none: "The amounts may sound small, but it is better to get a lot of people making small one-off payments than virtually no one paying a higher subscription."
Myring compared the system to that of mobile text messaging, where phone companies make large profits out of small payments for individual messages. But is 2 pence per article enough to launch into a paid content business model?

Perhaps, if the attitude toward news articles was the same as the attitude toward sending text messages. When sending a SMS, it is understood that a service is being used, and it is expected and accepted that this service will have to be paid for. Online news, whilst undoubtedly a service, has gone down the erroneous path of unconsciously declaring itself a service without monetary value. Trying to force people to pay for something they have grown accustomed to as being free could be a little like pulling teeth.

Leader in the battle to monetize online content, News Corp CEO, Rupert Murdoch, undeniably has an argument, tellingSky News Australia in an interview: "It costs us a lot of money to put together good newspapers and good content. They're very happy to pay for it when they buy a newspaper, and I think when they read it elsewhere they're going to have to pay."

But the situation is more complex than this and goes right to the heart of conceptions over what should be paid for and what should be free. When people go to a newsagent they'll fork out their 30p or more for the morning paper. When they go to Google News, even the sight of a registration form is a deterrent, let alone a pay wall.

Murdoch will have to introduce more than a pay wall if he is to succeed in his plans to charge for online news, he'll have to set the course for an entire cultural shift in the way people consume content over the internet.

Source: paidContent, Continental Research

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2009/11/study_finds_people_prefer_micropayments.php

Subsidising the French press: is it working?

2009-11-23T16:37:00.000+01:00

Frédéric Filloux, editor for Schibsted and co-author of the weekly media newsletter Monday Note, has criticised the way the French government is subsidising the newspaper industry, at a time when the new body representing online news publishers, Syndicat de la Presse Indépendante en Ligne, is currently debating whether or not to accept subsidies.

Filloux suggests that much unnecessary expenditure - travel, or expensive technology upgrades, for example - is justified by the fact that it is state money, and points out that a total of €1.2bn of aid was given to the press in 2008, which amounts to 12% of the sector's revenue. The value of French subsidies rose by 71% between 2003 and 2007, compared to 21% in Sweden, while Swedish readership is three times higher than in France.

He discusses the French free newspaper scheme for young people, under which 18 to 24 year-olds are being offered a free copy daily newspaper of their choice, once a week. This scheme, which was announced in January and launched last month, involves the participation of 59 newspapers, which will provide the free copies, with the government paying for distribution.

This attempt to restore newspaper readership among the young is flawed from the start, according to Filloux. For a start, the scheme was only available to the first 200.000 to sign up, which Filloux described as a "speed-based form of Darwinism," pointing out that this amounts to only about 2% of that age group. And one can imagine that those 200,000 who snapped up the offer in the first few days it was available were already newspaper readers.

Providing a newspaper once a week is also not enough to promote loyalty, believes Filloux. "It would have been smarter to set up one full week subscription at a given moment of the year," he suggests, "the experience of continuity is key to understanding a newspaper's true value, its diversity of views and the depth of its coverage (plus it would make more sense from a logistics standpoint)."

Filloux points to the success of the Ouest-France scheme: the paper gives away free subscriptions to the young for a year and has seen a 12% conversion rate to paid ones. However, the paper coupled this offer with special content targeted at these younger readers. He also highlighted the achievements of Brazil's Zero Hora, winner of the WAN-IFRA World Young Reader's prize, whose Total Youth Think approach has given it impressively high penetration among the under-30s.

Today's young people have grown up with more choices than ever before on how they want to obtain information, and for newspapers to retain their relevance in society in years to come, it is necessary to capture the attention of this digital generation. Looking at the content of papers, as well as subsidising the price, is clearly an essential step.

Source: Monday Note

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/11/subsidising_the_french_press_is_it_worki.php

New Yorkers Less Willing To Pay For Content Than Rest of Country

2009-11-23T16:36:00.000+01:00

The New York Times posted an article yesterday on the hesitancy of Americans, compared to other countries' citizens, to pay for news they read online. This has been an issue we've seen come up a lot recently with the explosion of pay walls, and a study done by the Boston Consulting Group shows that in America, where only half the residents polled said they'd be willing to pay for content, the issue is more pressing than it is other Western countries. But where have we seen numbers like this before?

Ah yes, in Friday's New York Magazine poll of 100 SoHo residents, where 65 of those polled said putting The Times behind a pay wall would make the company less successful, and 63 also said that on a scale of $2 a day to $100 a year, they'd pay "nothing."

We can see why The Times would rather quote the BCG's study: They had a much larger polling selection (5,000 people altogether), and they even came to a more optimistic conclusion:

"...charging for online access to news would not greatly increase a newspaperâ€™s revenue, but since the cost of reaching Internet readers was very low, it could significantly increase profit."

We can hear Rupert Murdoch and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. rubbing their hands from here.

About Half in U.S. Would Pay For Online News, Study Finds --New York Times

Previously: New York Magazine Poll: Newspapers and New Media Neck and Neck, But No One Willing To Pay

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/markets_media/new_yorkers_less_willing_to_pay_for_content_than_rest_of_country_143241.asp

Times Cutting Pension Contributions, More Staff

2009-11-23T16:30:00.000+01:00

There was more bad news for New York Times staffers this week. The paper, which is already planning to cut 100 newsroom jobs by the end of the year, told nonunion staffers this week that it would stop paying into their pension plans at the end of the year, instead choosing to contribute 3 percent of their salaries to 401(k) plans.

What's more, the Times' News Service, which edits Times stories for the wire, announced that it plans to lay off at least 25 employees next year as it moves the service to the Florida paper owned by The New York Times Co., The Gainesville Sun. The staff at the Sun are unionized and their salaries are cheaper, the Times reported, making it cheaper to run the service out of the Florida paper's offices.

The News Service layoffs were not included in the 100 staffers to be cut by year's end, who will be made up in part by voluntary buyouts. The Times management offered buyouts to its staff last month and said that if they did not get enough they would turn to layoffs. The buyout deadline is fast approaching, so we'll keep you posted as the story develops in the next few weeks.

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/newspapers/times_cutting_pension_contributions_more_staff_143155.asp

The Boston Globe Launches "GlobeReader" Digital Newspaper

2009-11-23T16:27:00.000+01:00

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 13, 2009-- The Boston Globe announced today the formal launch of GlobeReader, a digital version of The Boston Globe newspaper that can be read offline or online. GlobeReader replaces the preview edition that had been available since this summer to all Boston Globe subscribers at no charge.

Through GlobeReader the content of the Globe is downloaded daily to a user’s desktop, laptop or netbook, in a format designed to resemble the look and feel of the print version of The Boston Globe. Enhancements to the preview edition include the addition of comics, sports scores, weather and the daily crossword puzzle. Various product and design improvements have also been incorporated.

“Reader response to the preview edition of the GlobeReader has been very encouraging. Now we’re pleased to offer GlobeReader to the public at large,” said Chris Mayer, senior vice president, circulation and operations, The Boston Globe. “It is important for our business to offer Globe news and information on a variety of platforms that appeal to a variety of market segments.”

GlobeReader is available at a fee of $4.98 per week. A bundle including home delivery in the Boston metro area of the Sunday Globe plus 7-day access to the GlobeReader is offered at the same price. For the Globe’s seven-day newspaper subscribers, it is included at no additional cost.

Designed for people who enjoy reading the news, GlobeReader combines the familiarity of The Boston Globe newspaper format with the convenience of a digital product.

Articles are set in the same type font as the paper, and the page design is understated and clean.
The navigation is easy and clear.
Scanning for stories or photos is fast.
Readability features include adjustable type size and screen size.

The Globe’s new digital newspaper was built with Adobe Flex and Adobe® AIR®, key components of the Adobe Flash® Platform, which runs on Windows, Macintosh and Linux. While online, GlobeReader users can search Boston.com for expanded features such as slide shows, videos, interactive graphics and more.

“Using Adobe Flash Platform technologies, The Boston Globe and Adobe development teams were able to create an expressive digital reading experience with the layout and design of The Boston Globe newspaper, that can reach virtually anyone anywhere.” said Bryant Macy, director of product marketing, Platform Business Unit at Adobe.

Please visit bostonglobe.com/globereader to see a full demonstration of GlobeReader and to download the application to your laptop, desktop or netbook. For advertising information, please contact Jane Bowman, sales development director at 617-929-8434, email – jbowman@globe.com.

Source: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=105317&p=irol-pressArticle&ID=1355296&highlight=

Spot.us article featured in New York Times

2009-11-23T16:10:00.000+01:00

An article in Tuesday's edition of the New York Times did more than just raise awareness of the pollution islands in the Pacific Ocean, it involved a revolutionary form of journalism. Lindsay Hoshaw was able to write the article thanks in part to funding provided by Spot.us, a San Francisco based site which solicits donations from the public to fund stories on local issues of interest. The site collected $10 000 from more than 100 donors to sponsor Hoshaw's research for the story, during which she spent a month aboard the boat featured in the article, the Alguita. During her month on the boat, Hoshaw collected research for her story about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the effect the growing levels of toxins that the patch produces is having on the local marine life.

Last year, Spot Us won the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Knight News Challenge which gave Spot.us founder David Cohn a $340 000 two-year grant. Cohn sought to use the models of the campaigns of Barack Obama andHoward Dean, which raised small amounts of money from a large number of people, to help the journalism industry. This idea has come to be known as crowdfunding.

The site was set up to encourage community funded-journalism, along the lines of the new trend of non-profit publishing that includes ProPublica and the recently lunched Texas Tribune. Readers and citizens submit tips to the site on subjects they would like to see stories about. Journalists then go through the tips or use their own tips to create pitches for stories. It is then up to the public to fund the proposals that they think would make good stories. If a proposal does not receive the required funding, it does not become a story. Once complete funding has been received by a proposal, the journalist uses the funds to research and produce the story. Completed stories are then available to anyone who wishes to republish them- though if a news organization wants exclusive rights to a story, it must donate at least 50% of the funding for the story. The replaced funding then goes back to the original public funders to allow them to re-invest it in another story.

Thus far, the site has funded more than 35 projects using donations from over 900 people. To counter sponsors with agendas, the site only allows a single donor to fund up to 20% of any given story. All donations are tax deductable.

Though Hoshaw's article was the first from Spot.us to be featured in the New York Times, it is likely not the last. As the internet alters the face of reporting, changes must be made to account for the public's growing dependence on electronic news sources. Says Knight Foundation president and CEO Alberto Ibargüen, "the Web demands engagement; traditional journalism has not. Spot.us invites the audience to participate in the decision-making process. Technology and innovation are changing journalism. Having the country's leading news organization accept a Spot.us story is a milestone in the evolution of American journalism." Spot.us, with its democratically chosen, publicly funded stories, is a new way to engage readers. Since they have had a direct say in which articles get produced, the public is guaranteed to be interested in reading the produced stories. The process also increases the knowledge of what goes into a news story, further increasing appreciation of journalism.

Sources: Spot.us, Knight Foundation, New York TImes

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2009/11/spotus_article_featured_in_new_york_time.php

Video advertising on the rise

2009-11-23T16:08:00.000+01:00

At a time when ad pages and profits are taking a plunge, there is a news media that is seeing an increase in traffic and revenue- video advertising. While more dependence is already being placed on Internet advertising, many news organizations have also begun to lean more heavily on video reportage on their web sites, reports the New York Times, and this has created an outlet for more advertisements. Advertisers are becoming more willing to buy space on videos rather than just on static pages because of the increase in traffic as well as the ability to use dynamic advertising. Having a news organization run a ten second spot in front of a video report a couple minutes in length is becoming more desirable for more and more advertisers.

This change in advertising follows a change in readership as well. Readers have started to show that they are much more likely to press play on a video than they are to read an entire article on a web site. Thus, both advertisers and news organizations are beginning to take advantage of this.

To keep up with the demand for space for video advertising, sites have begun to post more video footage than they previously were. Sites that are run by cable news channels, particularly MSNBC.com and CNN.com- the two most streamed news sites on the web right now, are taking the most advantage of video reporting. Because producing video can be so expensive, these sites have a large advantage because they have so much previously shot video available to them. They can post a clip from an earlier television broadcast from their channel onto their web site and get additional advertising revenue from the clip.

In addition to recycled video, many sites also produce new footage daily for their web sites. The Wall Street Journal has a Webcast called "The News Hub" which is broadcast live from their newsroom twice daily at 8:30 am and 4:00 pm onWSJ.com. When aired live, the video has a sponsorship mention and a companion display ad. When it is replayed throughout the day, the video contains a pre-roll ad. The rate for a pre-roll has gone up 50% over the past year- from a $50 cost-per-thousand, or CPM, last fall to a current $75 CPM. Overall, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, digital video advertising has increased to $477 million in the first half of 2009- up by 38% since this time last year.

This increase could be because of the increase in public acceptance for the pre-roll. As they have been used more, viewers have become more tolerant of them. According to the New York Times article, web executives believe that many clients also think of video reporting on the web as an extension of TV- thus, they are more accepting of advertisements being present on them. Web videos also have the added bonus of available social networking: if a viewer likes the video, he is able instantly to tweet the link, post the URL onto his Facebook, and embed the video into his blog. This sharing instantly creates more viewers- and more ad revenue.

However, there is still controversy over "autoplay," videos that begin playing automatically as soon as the web page has loaded. This means that a viewer did not press play and is not necessarily watching the video. This tallies up totals of video streaming without legitimacy.

Video advertising is expected to continue to grow. According to the New York Times, the research firm eMarketerexpects a 35-45% growth for each of the next five year. eMarketer projects a possible total of $5.2billion in revenue by 2014.

Source: New York Times

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/multimedia/2009/11/video_advertising_on_the_rise.php

News Corp.'s Carey: Consistency For Pay Walls Is Key

2009-11-19T18:13:00.000+01:00

When Chase Carey speaks, the media world listens. And rightfully so. As Rupert Murdoch's number two,News Corp.'s COO's opinions do have a certain amount of clout.

This morning, at the Media and Money Conference, hosted by Nielsen andDow Jones, Carey spoke about a number of topics -- from Comcastseeking majority ownership of NBC Universal to the future of network television to pay walls for online journalism.

Carey said he thought the NBCU deal "makes sense for Comcast," adding that it is a "pretty smartly structured deal" for the company. He also seemed pretty excited about the fact that the deal would test the regulatory waters under the new administration, perhaps setting the stage for or heading off other deals in the future. "These are uncharted waters with major issues with two big companies," he said.

Carey seemed positive that the major players involved would be left with "regulatory baggage" after the deal was completed, although he doubted any assets would have to be sold.

As for pay walls, which News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal has excelled at and Murdoch has pushed to extend across all his brands, Carey emphasized consistency. He said he was interested in "creating a great experience around content itself," adding that people will pay for value and a good experience. "Quality journalism has value," he said.

Later, when a reporter quizzed him about Murdoch's plans to take his sites off Google and the Journal's leaky wall, Carey said he wanted the pay wall to remain consistent -- if only subscribers can access certain content on WSJ.com, then others shouldn't get it for free. But, there is some content you can get for free on the site, Carey pointed out. He didn't outline any plans for creating the consistency he championed.

More from the Media and Money Conference, after the jump

From left: Alan Patricof, founder and managing director of Greycroft; Herb Scannell, co-founder Next New Networks; Time Inc.'s Kirk McDonald; Starcom's Lisa Donohue; Steven Brill of Journalism Online and moderator David Faber

Before Carey took the stage, the conference hosted a panel on the future of the media. Moderated by CNBC's David Faber, the panel tackled a common theme facing media companies today: "Where do we go from here?"

While Journalism Online co-founder Steven Brill was optimistic about the future of print, he admitted that newspapers now have the burden of creating content that is distinctive enough to charge their readers more for, and then advertising dollars will follow.

Kirk McDonald, president of Digital at Time Inc., made a distinction between "lean forward" content -- search enabled content that can include news and sports -- and "lean back" content found in magazines and longer investigative pieces. "Lean back" content requires "a certain amount of access to get," he said, adding that readers will be willing to pay for that access. "We have to prove the audience is there."

"As a consumer, brands are still important to us," said Lisa Donohue, CEO of Starcom USA. "That's not changing." What will change? How content providers use their brand to reach consumers.

We've been to lots of these panels, where statements are made but no plans for how to fix the broken business model are brought up. Brill had a few. What about paying aggregators -- the sites that Murdoch calls "parasites" -- and turning them into sales agents? We're not sure exactly how that would work, and who would benefit most, but it's an idea. "If you have something that is good, it can be seen by many more people," Brill said.

No matter what the future brings, Brill said "the jig is up" on the idea that online revenue could sustain papers and replace what they once made in print ad revenues. So the question still remains: where do we go from here?

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/media_events/news_corps_carey_consistency_for_pay_walls_is_key_143012.asp

Guardian News & Media Cutting More Than 100 Jobs

2009-11-19T18:08:00.000+01:00

Guardian News & Media, publisher of The Guardian newspaper and Guardian.co.uk, will cut more than 100 of its 1,700 editorial and commercial jobs as the company moves to reverse “unsustainable” losses, it told staff in a series of briefings at the company’s Kings Place HQ in Wednesday. No timetable has been set for the reduction, part of a long-running cost-cutting review, and no specific areas were mentioned, but the news comes just 24 hours after Observer staff were told their paper is to be slimmed down to four sections a week in the new year.

Carolyn McCall, CEO of parent Guardian Media Group, told assembled staff that she was “confident about the long-term prospects of our portfolio of businesses and investments,” and assured them that GNM will not “cut journalism that is fundamental to our core purpose and values”. But she repeated comments she made earlier this year that GNM would be a smaller organisation even after the recession.

GNM will reopen its offer of voluntary buy-outs (it made staff asimilar offer back in May), and hopes to reach the 100-plus person target that way. Compulsory cuts, which the National Union of Journalists has already warned would result in industrial action, will be avoided where possible, but have not been ruled out, GNM said.

Like all publishers, GNM has struggled in the downturn as advertising revenues plummet and the costs of publishing stay high. Highlighting the need for action now, execs said on Wednesday that GNM would lose more in the current financial year than its £36.8 million loss in 2008-9 ($61.6 million), with the benefits of cost savings deferred until 2010-11. The business has so far saved £25 million, largely through staff cuts, but now GNM is admitting: it’s not enough.

The cuts won’t mean a retreat from digital investment, the company said: Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, also editor-in-chief of GNM, told staff he “completely believes” in the value of print, but added: “For me, the question is not ‘are we putting too much energy, focus or resource into digital?’ It is ‘are we doing enough?’” GNM MD Tim Brooks said that some Guardian.co.uk revenue streams, such as recruitment ads, were more resilient than others and are expected to return to growth soon; digital display revenue is showing year-on-year growth this fall, he said.

As for GMG overall, McCall said she was confident of the company’s future and pointed out the business is debt free, unlike many rivals. She also argued that GMG’s joint ownership of B2B publisher Emap and Trader Media Group are sound long-term investments: Emap made first-half profits of £40 million ($66.9 million), she said, down just three percent on H108, while TMG made about £55 million ($92 million).

Disclosure: paidContent’s parent company ContentNext is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Guardian News & Media.

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-guardian-news-media-cutting-more-than-100-jobs1/

Hearst Plans To Use $1 Billion War Chest For Acquisitions

2009-11-19T18:06:00.000+01:00

Hearst Corp., which has been fairly quiet on the M&A front recently, may have decided that now is the time to dive in. Citing unidentified sources, the NYP’s Keith Kelly says that Hearst has $1 billion saved up for possible purchases. No word about any targets or deals in the works, however, the speculation is rising since Hearst named former investment banker Mitchell Scherzer as CFO. He succeeds Ronald Doerfler, ~~who is retiring~~,who will remain as SVP of finance and administration and serve as a trustee and board member. Hearst doesn’t seem to be hurting as much as other mag publishers, like Time Inc. and Conde Nast, which are in the midst of waves of layoffs. Kelly’s sources say that not only is Hearst debt-free, it also can boast about $7 billion in revenues, though it’s not clear how that compares to last year.

It’s not likely that Hearst will be looking for any big editorial properties to buy. The company has been concentrating more to trying to look forward on the technology front, by spending at least six figures on Esquire’s augmented reality issue that brought a degree of interactivity to its December print issue. It has also invested in e-reader by incubating a Kindle-like e-book reader with FirstPaper and investing in E-Ink.

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-hearst-plans-to-use-1-billion-war-chest-for-acquisitions/

Online Ads Are Booming, if They’re Attached to a Video

2009-11-19T18:03:00.000+01:00

News Web sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like television.

Enlarge This Image

MSNBC.COM

MSNBC's Web site streams a report from “Nightly News,” NBC's evening newscast. featuring the anchor Brian Williams.

CNN.com and ESPN.com are featuring video much more prominently on their home pages, often prompting visitors to press play before they begin to read. Even The Wall Street Journal has moved its video player front and center with a twice-a-day live newscast on WSJ.com.

A major reason is commercial. At a time when other categories of advertising dollars are shrinking, video ads are booming. News sites are adding more video inventory to keep pace with the demands of advertisers, and benefiting from the higher cost-per-thousands, or C.P.M.’s, that ads on those videos command.

The attention to video mirrors changes in how consumers are experiencing news. Major events — be it the presidential election or the death of Michael Jackson — bring a surge in video stream viewings by new users, and each time some of them stick around.

“Every watershed event leaves video more popular than before,” said Charles W. Tillinghast, the president of MSNBC.com, a joint venture between NBC Universal andMicrosoft.

K. C. Estenson, the general manager of CNN.com, a unit of Time Warner, said that “people are using the Internet in a different way now.” He added, “With broadband penetration becoming ubiquitous and more and more sites having this easy capability, people are expecting video to be there.”

Media companies typically do not break out figures for video advertising, and certainly the video revenue pales next to search and display advertising. But the growth has spurred investment and interest in video production.

Among Web sites operated by newspapers, The New York Times, Gannett and Tribune each reach more than a million viewers a month with video streams, comScore says. The home page of The Times sometimes streams live video of events; it carried a news conference Friday about the shootings Thursday at Fort Hood, Tex.

But video can be costly to produce, hindering some sites’ efforts to expand and leading people like Mr. Tillinghast to predict that access to television film (like a bounty of NBC News video) is an advantage.

Beyond news sites, video is now the fastest-growing segment of the Internet advertising market. Digital video amounted to $477 million in revenue in the first half of 2009, up 38 percent from the same time period in 2008, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

With an estimated $5 billion in revenue in the first half of 2009, search remains the dominant segment of online advertising, but it is expected to grow only marginally this year.

Augmenting the increase in video spending is the growing acceptance of pre-roll — the once-derided ads that appear before a video plays.

“It actually works really well,” said Brian Quinn, the vice president and general manager of digital ad sales for The Journal’s digital network. A 15-second pre-roll “followed by two to five minutes of high-quality content is a fair-value exchange,” Mr. Quinn said.

•

Analysts say they expect the flow of online advertising dollars to video to continue. The research firm eMarketer projects 35 to 45 percent growth for the segment for each of the next five years, topping out at $5.2 billion in 2014. (Even then, it would hardly rival search advertising, which is projected to be a $16 billion business.)

In the five-year outlook it released last month, eMarketer said that video ads would be the “main channel” for major advertisers seeking to increase their online spending. Already, ads for companies like Johnson & Johnson and Unilever pop up often on sites likeMSNBC.com.

“More and more advertisers are starting to play in the online video space,” said Jeremy Steinberg, the vice president of digital sales and business development for the Fox News Channel.

News sites account for only a small portion of the 25 billion video streams counted by comScore on an average month. The firm reported almost 500 million video streams in its news and information category in September — still a substantial figure. Most of the streams occurred on MSNBC.com (162 million, according to comScore) and CNN.com (148 million).

Advertising dollars have not always kept pace with the growing view counts, but Mr. Quinn said video was currently the strongest ad format for WSJ.com.

“I wish we had more, since we’re sold out,” Mr. Quinn said.

In September the site introduced “The News Hub,” a live Webcast from The Journal’s newsroom at 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. each weekday. When “Hub” is shown live on the WSJ.com home page, it includes a sponsorship mention and a companion display ad. When it is replayed, it includes a pre-roll ad. Sponsorships are sold monthly, with Charles Schwab being the current one.

The rate card for WSJ.com lists pre-rolls for a $75 C.P.M. before advertiser discounts. Mr. Quinn said the C.P.M. was around $50 last fall.

FoxNews.com, which like WSJ.com is a unit of the News Corporation, now sells sponsorships of its daytime Web show, “Strategy Room.”

When the show had its debut in its current form earlier this year, it included only an occasional remnant pre-roll ad. This month, as viewership increased, the show started to include TV-style commercial breaks and advertiser logos in the corner of the video screen. Fox says the 9 a.m.-to-5 p.m. show gets an average of 35,000 streams per weekday.

•

Web executives say some clients think of online video as an extension of TV, and others think of it as an enhancement — one that allows for interactive messages and instant feedback from viewers. They acknowledge that the medium is still in many ways immature. Sites continue to disagree about the legitimacy of “autoplay,” a setting that starts videos automatically when a Web page loads, increasing the number of streams without necessarily knowing that the Web user is watching.

Web executives say that ads next to dispatches from Afghanistan normally cannot draw the same C.P.M.’s as lighter fare. MSNBC.com has found success with lifestyle segments that are sold as a package between TV and the Web. Last month it introduced TodayMoms, a section for mothers sponsored by Wal-Mart with a TV connection on the “Today” show.

“The Web is fulfilling this promise of being a medium where you can enjoy video as much as you can see it on TV,” Mr. Tillinghast said. “The difference online is, if you want to do something with it — share it, stick it on a blog, post it on a Facebook page, or mark it and save it — you can do all that. And that was never possible before.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/business/media/11adco.html

Hearst may have $1B pot of money to spend

2009-11-19T18:01:00.000+01:00

Hearst Corp., is sitting on a $1 billion war chest, insiders say -- one reason it has tapped an investment banker as its new chief financial officer.

Mitchell Scherzer, it was announced Monday, will replace Ronald Doerfler, who will stay on as senior vice president of finance and administration

The move is seen to signal a more aggressive acquisition strategy by company Chairman and CEO Frank Bennack, who wants to fulfill the Hearst family mandate to find new revenue streams in digital and non-traditional media. While its newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, have had near-death experiences over the past year, Hearst's magazine wing has not been hit as hard as Time Inc. and Condé Nast.

FREELANCE

While profits are believed to be off, Hearst is said to have revenues over $7 billion and to be profitable -- as well as debt-free.

Hearst's most profitable magazine, Cosmopolitan, was down "only" 17 percent through the November issue. O, the Oprah Magazine, was off 28.9 percent but still holding sway as the second-most profitable magazine in the empire. The sturdy Good Housekeeping, while down 12.8 percent, was still churning out around $20 million in profit.

Flagship magazines at other companies are down 30 percent-plus.

"It's is absolutely not about cutting costs," said Reed Phillips, a partner at the boutique investment banking firm of DeSilva & Phillips, of the new appointment.

One former executive said that ex-Hearst CEO Victor Ganzi was pushed out in June 2006 because he was unable to develop a digital acquisition strategy.

Scherzer was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs from 1989 to 2002. At JPMorgan he became the head of the US media investment banking business; more recently he headed the media practice at Silverfern Group.

WARNing

Lawyers are said to be circling some of Condé Nast's displaced workers.

Condé CEO Charles Townsend, extolled his top executives that "it's time to get our swagger back" at a recent publishers' meet ing.

But there may be a few more bumps in the road after the firings of more than 460 peo ple this year.

About 340 were laid off in the period that began with the shuttering of four magazines, including Gour met and Cookie, in early October.

But so far, less than half have been compensated in accordance with New York State's WARN Act, which gives employees 13 weeks' notice or the equivalent pay if a company closes a plant or fires more than 250 employees.

Some staffers been in contact with law firm Liddle & Robinson, which specializes in employment law. At least one ex-Condé Nastie is said to be actively considering a suit.

A source said Townsend and Glamour Publishing Director Bill Wackerman met with Condé Nast attorneys to discuss ways to avoid WARN payments.

One source said that since all employees are paid from the same Advance Publications account, it could be considered a single entity under WARN -- and the company would have to give full- and part- time employees advance notice if 250 were to be fired. If each magazine is considered a separate profit center, the company may be able to avoid the payments.

Paying extra money to certain employees has incensed the have-nots -- even those who agreed to take the standard two weeks of severance pay per year of work.

"Condé Nast has literally cheated every employee fired after Oct. 5 out of their 90 days," said one ex-employee. "They have played with the law, disrespected employees who worked for them and basically given a big 'FU' for their hard work."

A spokesman for the New York State Department of Labor had not returned a call by press time. A Condé Nast spokeswoman declined to comment.

Going South

Time Inc. continued to lay off staffers at its Southern Progress unit in Birmingham, Ala., headed by Executive Vice President Sylvia Auton.

Southern Progress looks like it will have cuts in the neighborhood of 12 to 13 percent, double the 6 percent being shaved from the rest of the 9,000-employee company.

The corporate library in Birmingham will be shut down, and the remaining 500 to 600 employees will occupy less of Southern Progress' campus-like setting, a spokeswoman confirmed.

"The goal is to get the staff together, which will im prove the work environ ment," she said.

Local Web site Mediaof birmingham, pegged the cuts to be "dozens." It could be as high as 70 people, according to one estimate. The company would not confirm the size of the layoffs.

More than 500 people are expected to be let go from Time Inc.

keith.kelly@nypost.com

Source:

Can Virtual Currencies Help Bridge The Gap Between Free And Paid Content?

2009-11-19T17:56:00.000+01:00

Virtual goods and micro-transactions have been driving the billion-dollar online games industry across Asia for years. And deals like EA’s $400 million buyout of social gamer Playfish, and Activision’s new virtual pets addition to World of Warcraft, show that virtual currencies have now evolved into a viable business model for big gaming companies here in the U.S.

But virtual currencies aren’t just helping game companies make money—social networks like Facebook and Hi5 have developedtheir own virtual goods businesses, in an effort to monetize their millions of users in a way that display ads just haven’t been able to.

The widespread adoption has also created a real market for tech companies like LiveGamer that can power all these transactions, and even get kids in on the action by offering payment options that don’t require a credit card (or parental consent). So if virtual goods can help social networks make money—what about online publishers? paidContent talked to a group of investors and startups currently in the space, to figure out whether virtual currencies can help support the U.S. online publishing market overall.

—The right economic climate: Though some ad forecasts,earnings reports and statements from execs are pointing to an online ad market rebound, investors like Warren Gouk, managing director of Cascadia Capital, and Rick Heitzmann, managing director of Firstmark Capital, say that the ad model for online publishers has changed—permanently. “The economic environment we’re coming out of had a negative and profound effect on the way publishers generate revenue,” Gouk said. “They lived and died based on display ads; now they’re being forced to diversify.”

As we’ve reported, diversification means testing out things paid iPhone apps or trying to raise subscription pay-walls. Heitzmann says subscriptions aren’t the most viable option—simply because a majority of people still don’t place a high enough value on the content they consume online—but also because many are concerned about job stability. “People want to pay a dollar for a chunk of content when they want it, not sign up to pay $10 per month for the next 12 months,” Heitzmann said. “That makes the case for a micro-payments or pay-as-you-go plan.”

—Getting people to pay in increments is easier than you’d think: Second Life is not the media darling it once was, but the virtual world remains the prime example of a successful virtual currency here in the U.S. In Q3, parent company Linden Lab said it processed $150 million worth of peer-to-peer transactions, up 54 percent year-over-year. IM and chat-based virtual world IMVU said it doubled its revenue this year—from just under $3 million in Q308 to over $6 million in Q309—and achieved profitability, mostly through “increasing the sale of virtual currency,” said CEO Cary Rosenzweig.

But virtual currencies—which, broadly defined, are online payment systems that let people trade real money for intangible items—don’t have to be tied to an immersive world. Gouk notes that TV fan community Buddy TV recently added a virtual goods platform, letting its visitors send TV show-related gifts, like a rose from The Bachelor, or a kiss from Meredith on Grey’s Anatomy; that’s in addition to its main revenue stream of display and video ads.

—Readily adaptable payment platforms already exist: Spending money to promote, set up and manage a virtual payment system is not something that most online publishers want to do, so it helps that there are a slew of white-label payment platforms available. eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) just launched PayPal X, an open-source e-commerce platform that lets developers build multiple payment options into their apps.

A publisher could partner with a startup like Cash.io or Spare Change to add a PayPal X app to their site, and start charging for specific articles, reports or videos. The PayPal connection means that readers wouldn’t have to enter credit or bank account info; publishers could let them make a one-time payment for a bulk amount of virtual currency, then buy content at their leisure. “You’re starting to see these virtual payments capabilities show up on sites from traditional publishers like Hearst, Conde Nast and Scripps,” Gouk said. “It’s exposing this niche way of paying for things to a mainstream audience.”

The success of the Kindle has shown that people will pay for content that conveniently comes to them, so offering pay-as-you-go mobile access via branded currency is another option. Companies like Zong, Nokia-backed Obopay ~~and oneTXT~~ have platforms that let people pay for, then download content to their phones. “None of these companies really has the scale yet to make this attractive to a major online publisher,” Heitzmann said. “But I suspect that Apple is already working on a mobile payments platform that goes beyond i-Tunes.” Amazon too, as itrecently partnered with mobile content provider Handmark, to let people buy mobile games and apps through their Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) accounts.

—Future acquisitions and investments: Both Gouk and Heitzmann said they expect to see increased M&A activity in the virtual payments space. Gouk suggests that we’ll see deals likeAdKnowledge’s buyout of KITN Media, parent company of SuperRewards. “There is a push to create a broader sort of ad network that can collect intelligence on actual purchase behavior, then use that to serve more targeted ads,” he said.

Heitzmann is more bullish on the gaming side—look at Hearst Interactive’s investments in casual games site VoxPop and China’s I Got Games (per ISG), for example—as he says that online publishers want to see the virtual goods model pay off incrementally before launching a site-wide platform.

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-can-virtual-currencies-help-bridge-the-gap-between-free-and-paid-conten/

New Spanish-language paper launched amidst advertising decline

2009-11-19T17:52:00.000+01:00

A new Spanish language newspaper was launched by a group of Latino journalists last week in Boston.

El Tiempo de Boston, a free weekly, began publishing last week in response to what founding director, Maximo Torresbelieves is a lack of focus on issues affecting Latino communities, despite the existence of seven other Spanish language publications in the area.

"We saw that there was little coverage and information in other media and we wanted to respond to the needs of the Latino community,'' said Torres, 60, formerly the city editor of El Mundo in Boston.

The paper plans to rely entirely on advertising, a risky move in an overcrowded Spanish news environment. The market has that already steep drops in advertising revenue with Alberto Vasallo, publisher of El Mundo confirming a 15% drop in advertising sales over the last year in his publication.

Torres claims, however, that for he and his 12 contributors, El Tiempo is not about generating a great profit: They work as unpaid volunteers out of their homes and offices and each have invested money for a total of $5,000, which helped pay initial printing costs of about $3,500.

June Carolyn Erlick, publications director at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University said: "It seems to me that the present weeklies have enough challenges in terms of distribution and advertising that you wouldn't want to put one more into the mix.''

According to the Newspaper Association of America advertising is down 28 per cent for newspapers for the first half of the year, and a new Neilsen Co. study of mulicultural advertising has similarly found a decline in ad spending for Spanish-language media,- a drop of 6 per cent from July 2008 to July 2009.

"It wasn't the best moment to come out in light of the current economy,'' admits Torres, "but it was the best time for this community to have another option.'' Torres hopes that eventually the paper will at least generate enough revenue to pay contributors.

Nevertheless, despite the skepticism, the region's Hispanic population is growing with some 437,000 in Massachusetts, according to the 2000 Census.

Smaller publications and nieche news are also expected to have better chances of weathering the rough advertising climate, having the advantage of being able to offer their clients a more targetted audience.

Source: Boston.com, Editor & Publisher

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/11/new_spanish-language_paper_launched_amid.php

Google Responds To Murdoch's Threats: Bring It

2009-11-19T17:50:00.001+01:00

Yesterday, Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch complained that News Corp.'s content was being "stolen" by search engines like Google and Ask.com, and hinted that as soon as all his publications go behind a pay wall, he would force Google to remove them from their site's directory.

And even though it makes little to no sense to take links to your pubs off of Google, today the giant corporation is playing along, telling Murdoch he is free to leave whenever he wants.

Google's statement, from AFP:

"Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found, so very few choose not to include their material in Google News and web search. But if they tell us not to include it, we don't...If publishers want their content to be removed from Google News specifically all they need to do it tell us."

Google said its news listings service and web searches were a "tremendous source of promotion" for news organizations, sending them "about 100,000 clicks every minute."

We do see Murdoch's point though. Although The Wall Street Journalcurrently exists behind a pay wall, readers have been bypassing it by typing the first sentence or headline of a WSJ article into a search engine and clicking on the link. No one wants to lose those 100,000 page views, so the content that you'd normally have to pay for can be accessed through a search engine in that way. That's not the same as "stealing" content however, and Google's response is a challenge issued: If you don't like our services, feel free to leave at any time.

Google says Murdoch stories can be taken off --AFP

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/media_companies/google_responds_to_murdochs_threats_bring_it_142726.asp

Public Poll: No One Wants to Pay For Pay Walls

2009-11-19T17:48:00.000+01:00

Our sister site BayNewser led the charge and all of mediabistro.com's blogs asked, "Do you think pay walls will save newspapers?"

The poll received over 1,500 responses, and the results were in: 65 percent of readers believed that pay walls would just make readers flee to sites with free content, while another 20 percent allowed that some revenue could be made by charging for access to a site, but that the money wouldn't be enough to buoy the costs of traditional journalism.

The people have spoken! Now let's just see if anyone can come up with a better idea for publishers to somehow make money off their content on the web.

Earlier: Poll: Will Pay Walls Save Newspapers?

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/new_media/public_poll_no_one_wants_to_pay_for_pay_walls_142769.asp

Murdoch hints he will sue BBC and Google

2009-11-19T17:41:00.001+01:00

Rupert Murdoch indicated on Monday that News Corporation would sue the BBC over breach of copyright for “stealing” material from his newspapers round the world.

Mr Murdoch, interviewed on Sky News Australia, was asked how he would be able to instigate his proposal to charge for newspaper websites such as The Times in the UK or The Australian when the BBC and ABC produced free news content on their sites.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Google acquires mobile ad network - Nov-09

FT series: Media challenge - Aug-31

Murdoch to charge for online news - May-07

BBC challenges critics over licence fee - Sep-09

News Corp says MySpace Google deal at risk - Nov-05

“But we are better,” said Mr Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. “And anyway, if you look at them, most of their stuff is stolen from the newspapers now, and we’ll be suing them for copyright.

“They will have to spend a lot more money on a lot more reporters to cover the world when they can’t steal from newspapers.”

But he added that he didn’t think it would be necessary to go to court.

“They know the law. They will adapt.”

There was no immediate response from the BBC.

Mr Murdoch also indicated that he would use legal methods to prevent Google and other search engine “news aggregators” from taking his newspapers’ material.

Asked how he reacted to the challenge of Google and others for newspaperssuch as his to remove their newspapers from search results, Mr Murdoch said that once they had in place the means to charge for news, “I think we will”.

He also challenged the idea that Google and others could take just the headlines and opening lines from his papers’ stories, indicating that he would not tolerate even that.

“[They use] a doctrine called fair use, which we believe can be challenged in the courts and will bar it altogether,” he said.

But he added that News Corp papers currently benefited to some extent from the advertising around its freely available internet content so “we will take that slowly”.

In a wide ranging interview, the 78-year-old media magnate also said that President Barack Obama was “going badly” at present and defended the reporting standards of his Fox News network.

He also described the BBC’s conduct as “a scandal”.

Asked why, Mr Murdoch said: “Everybody with a TV set [in the UK] is compelled to pay approximately £150 a year, they [the BBC] have £4.6bn revenue and will go into any commercial enterprise where they see an opening.

“I think public broadcasting should be of the highest quality providing programmes and services where commercial broadcasting can’t afford to; where there is a hole. I think that’s fine. I don’t mind some taxpayer support for that.”

In August, Mr Murdoch’ son James, who is chief executive of News Corp in Europe and Asia, attacked the BBC for its “chilling” overreach into the commercial sector and suggested that its huge internet organisation should be “dealt with”.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ab874200-cd28-11de-a748-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Ailing Condé looks to China for growth

2009-11-18T23:50:00.000+01:00

Enter the Beijing Apple.

With the gloss off the US ad scene, mag giant Condé Nast is looking to China, hoping to drum up business in the fast-growing nation.

The push to the East is happening at a time when cuts are digging deep at Condé -- from the closure of Gourmet and parent mag Cookie to double-digit job losses at its Midtown offices.

"In emerging markets like China . . . the magazine business and magazine development continue to go very strong," Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Condé's international arm, said in China over the weekend.

Newhouse -- who is the cousin of Conde Nast's legendary octogenarian publisher Si Newhouse -- spoke to a small group of reporters in Beijing to mark the launch last month of the mainland China edition of GQ magazine.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Newhouse said the success of Condé Nast's magazines in China, which include Vogue, Self and Modern Bride in addition to GQ, has boosted the company's global circulation over the past five years.

Still, Newhouse warned the pace of the expansion will likely be slowed by the need for approval from China's central government for each title it adds.

"I know at least one magazine which was forced by the government to stop publishing," he said. "Some publishers are not strictly meeting these requirements. They are, in my opinion, at risk to run into legal problems."

So far, though, there's not a lot of money to be made. "We are looking at five to 10 years down the road" before becoming profitable, said Cao Wei Ming, managing director of Condé Nast China.

Publishers aren't the only US-based companies who are stalking Chinese consumers in a bid to offset the stagnation at home. Retail chains fromWal-Mart to Best Buy to Calvin Klein have opened hundreds of stores on the mainland, chasing the country's freer-spending middle class.

Source: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/ailing_conde_looks_to_china_for_9U0NOApD3mu2eeEtLNeBeO

Murdoch could block Google searches entirely

2009-11-18T23:48:00.000+01:00

Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google's search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.

In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire – including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal – would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.

In recent months, Murdoch his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of "kleptomania" and acting as a "parasite" for including News Corp content in its Google News pages. But asked why News Corp executives had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google's search indexes – a simple technical operation – Murdoch said just such a move was on the cards.

"I think we will, but that's when we start charging," he said. "We have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it's not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story - but if you're not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com all you get is a paragraph and a subscription form."

The 78-year-old mogul's assertion, however, is not actually correct: users who click through to screened WSJ.com articles from Google searches are usually offered the full text of the story without any subscription block. It is only users who find their way to the story through the Wall Street Journal's website who are told they must subscribe before they can read further.

Murdoch added that he did not agree with the idea that search enginesfell under "fair use" rules - an argument many aggregator websites use as part of their legal justification for reproducing excerpts of news stories online.

"There's a doctrine called fair use, which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether... but we'll take that slowly."

Murdoch's attitude towards the internet - which appeared to have thawed when he bought social networking site MySpace for $580m in 2005 - has stiffened more recently.

Over the summer, Murdoch had announced that he planned to introduce website charges by next year - but last week it emerged that his controversial plans had been delayed, saying that "I wouldn't promise that we're going to meet that date".

Additionally, it emerged that MySpace, which has struggled in the face of competition from Facebook in recent years, was due to fall short of its targets in a lucrative search deal with Google – a slip that could cost the site more than $100m in payments from the internet advertising giant.

In the Sky News Australia interview, Murdoch underlined his feelings towards those companies by listing a litany of names of those that he felt were overstepping the boundaries.

"The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories - they just take them," he said. "That's Google, that's Microsoft, that's Ask.com, a whole lot of people ... they shouldn't have had it free all the time, and I think we've been asleep."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/09/murdoch-google

NYT’s Denise Warren: Things Are Looking Up—But Ask Again Next Week

2009-11-18T16:57:00.000+01:00

The New York Times continued to struggle with display in Q3, as revenues from those ads were down about 18 percent. But NYTimes.com GM Denise Warren says she is seeing some nascent signs of a turnaround there. As the crucial holiday season approaches, she says auto, healthcare and luxury marketers are telling her that they are ready to begin spending again.

“Absolutely, there are signs that things are looking up,” Warren, also SVP and chief advertising officer at the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) Media Group, told paidContent. “But I just got a news alert about the latest jobless figures (10.2 percent) and you have to be careful. So you can say things are looking a little better, but then you see another number like this and you have to wonder what that is going to mean. It could paralyze the consumer. But we don’t know. It’s still hard to have any real visibility.”

While the company examines plans for erecting a pay wall, executives are trying to figure out how advertising will be affected. In a conversation with paidContent, Warren wouldn’t get specific about the decision—“when we’re ready, you’ll know it”—but she did provide some insight into the thought process, the potential for a hyperlocal play, and a birds-eye view of the current ad market.

paidContent: As the company looks at structuring a pay wall, how does managing the advertising side factor in to the discussions?

Denise Warren: Putting up a pay wall or metering or whatever it is companies are considering in that area is naturally going to decrease your traffic, which will have an impact on advertising. We do very well with advertising revenues.If we move in this direction, we want to make sure that we’re not dipping into the advertising bucket to get money out of the subscriber bucket. It’s kind of hard to know, because we don’t know where the ad market is going to go. We are seeing some signs of a rebound, but I don’t know what that means in terms of the overall number. And if advertising was still going to grow at a 30 percent rate, you’d still want to have all your eggs in the ad bucket. If it’s going to grow less, it simply makes sense to diversify. Still, no one has a crystal ball, so the decision will have to reflect a great deal of nuance.

So you feel that it’s important to take take time on exploring the pay wall issue.

This was an interesting year to have this conversation. You could sort of get lost in the idea that this is a difficult economic time and feel as if there were no light at the end of the tunnel. You don’t want to make a short-term decision. At the end of the day, this has to make sense for the long term. I understand everyone wants to know when we’re going to do this, and all I can say is, when we’re ready, you’ll know it. There is no reason to rush into this.

Some observers have suggested that, historically speaking, newspaper readers’ subscription and newsstand dollars never really supported the content – it was always mostly advertising that carried publishers.

That’s just wrong. People pay $800 a year for the New York Times—it’s a rather large revenue stream inside our organization. The growth in revenue this past quarter came from subscribers, who, in this economy, are still willing to spend money on getting the paper. Yes, most newspapers haven’t had the kind of pricing power that we’ve had with the consumer. We’re probably the exception to the rule. We charge about four times more for the New York Times than the nearest competitor. There’s a reason why people are willing to pay for that value.

The Wall Street Journal is becoming more of a competitor by challenging you for luxury ad dollars and following the paper to San Francisco, to match the NYT’s own local edition. How does the expansion into local cities fit into the company’s advertising strategy?

The San Francisco and Chicago editions are actually less a part of my world. It’s more of subscription play, as opposed to focusing on building ad revenues. Don’t get me wrong, we are selling advertising in those local areas. But it’s more about trying to give readers in those areas a richer package based on local content. The idea behind it was more of a retention play, however, it could turn into more of an advertising play at some point.

It’s the same with the hyperlocal sites we launched a few months ago. We’re experimenting. In this case, it’s about curation and putting content on our site that the NYTimes.com would be proud to have as part of its offerings. If we could do the hyperlocal sites at a scale that makes sense, with more than the five sites we have now, that would be a possible business we could build. But that’s not the focus right now.

Turning back to online advertising generally, what has been the impetus for the comeback you’re seeing? For example, you noted that auto ad spend is looking healthier. I wonder if that’s the result of the Cash for Clunkers program and how much of this upside appears to be sustainable?

I do believe that there was a lot of money in the marketplace from automotive manufacturers because of Cash for Clunkers. But we’re still seeing a lot of activity in the automotive marketplace. I think what’s happening there is – and this is true of a lot of consumer categories – there’s a lot less consumer loyalty to any one car brand. So the advertisers know that they have to be out there with branding campaigns to try to steal market share from their competitors.

We’re also seeing some activity in the real-estate market because the first-time home-buyers credit is about to expire. So the question is whether it will be extended or whether that credit program ends, what will that do to the marketplace.

On the flip side, we’ve been hearing from a lot of retail and luxury clients that post-Labor Day, they’re feeling a lot better. So yes, the level of spending that we had a couple of years ago isn’t coming back. But we can live with a lower level of spending – as long as marketers are spending. But they’re also telling us that they’re not going to believe that things are stable until we’ve had six months to a year of this kind of performance. With that in mind, comparing this year to last is kind of false, because everything fell off a cliff.

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Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-interview-nyts-denise-warren-things-are-looking-up-but-ask-again-next-w/

Journalism Online Offers Alternative To Pay Wall

2009-11-18T16:54:00.000+01:00

With ~~Newsweek~~ NewsDay about to begin charging access to their online articles via a pay wall, we're beginning to wonder if there is any other alternative for print publications to make money off the web. Obviously, ads aren't cutting it, and if you aren't charging readers access, then you're giving your content away.

Journalism Online - a new media consulting agency formed by media gurus Steven Brill, Gordon Crovitz, andLeo Hindery, Jr - is offering what might be the best solution yet to this problem: In the next month or so, 10-15 publishers will roll out the media consulting site's pay model, which involves a gradual, not abrupt, dip into the charging-for-content sector.

Poynter Online, outlines Journalism Online's Reader Revenue Platform, which offers several different features that users could pay for:

* High Activity Pay Points: Users can view a certain number of articles within a particular time period.
* Selected Content Pay Points: Some content is free, other content is paid.
* Time-Based Pay Points: For a particular time period after content is published, it's available for a fee; later, it's free. (This method sounds like a consumer version of the Associated Press' proposal to charge search engines a premium for the most immediate news, which my colleague Bill Mitchell wrote about.)
* Enhanced Service Pay Points: Users pay for more frequent updates, access to commenting systems, tools to share content or other services.
* Market Access Pay Points: Users pay based on where they are. International users may pay because their traffic doesn't help sell advertising, for instance.
* Preview Activity Pay Points: A certain amount of an article is available for free; an additional amount costs.

Users can also choose how to pay: A monthly subscription, a per-basis charge, print/online bundles, ect. By offering so many choices at varying monetary levels, users will hopefully feel like they aren't being bullied into paying for previously free content. Another added bonus is that aggregators who benefit off of pay walls by reprinting and getting the pageviews for whole articles that a publication tries to charge for, will offer less of an incentive when what a consumer is paying for isn't the content per say, but their relationship with it.

To be sure, it's not a perfect model, and we've yet to see it play out in action with any success, but so far it's the best alternative suggestion to pay walls so far.

Read More: Journalism Online's Official Site

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/markets_media/journalism_online_offers_alternative_to_pay_wall_142463.asp

Murdoch's plan for web pay walls 'raises questions of anti-trust law'

2009-11-18T16:52:00.001+01:00

Questions over competition in the media industry have been raised byRupert Murdoch's admission that News Corporation is talking to other organisations about its plans to introduce web charging.

Murdoch this week admitted that it is proving harder than expected to introduce charges for readers browsing his newspaper websites and that News Corp may miss a target of next June for the introduction of so-called "pay walls" at papers including the Sun, the Times, the New York Post and the Australian.

The initiative, which has divided the industry, is an attempt to recalibrate the business model for struggling print media businesses.

Three months ago, Murdoch announced that he intended to introduce website charges by the end of News Corporation's financial year, which runs to June 2010. Some rivals, including the New York Times, are planning similar moves.

He declined to comment on the reasons for any delay except to indicate that he was talking to rival publishers, including the Telegraph group in Britain. "It's a work in progress and there's a huge amount of work going on," Murdoch said.

But Murdoch's discussions could breach UK anti-trust regulations, according to a competition law specialist. Alan Davis of legal firm Pinsent Masons warned that if the conversations went as far as talking about pricing, then regulators would almost certainly get involved.

"Competitors should not be discussing business strategy for charging for online content and should certainly not be discussing pricing," he said. "Be under no doubt the competition authorities would be interested about why, and what, conversations are taking place. It is the nature of regulators to be suspicious."

However, Davis said that without knowing the exact nature of the conversations between News Corporation and the Telegraph, it was difficult to point to specific regulatory issues.

"One caveat is that there could be an objective justification [for the talks] such as some form of joint venture that results in efficiencies and consumer benefits," he said.

A potential joint project could involve a cross-publisher common payment system that would simplify charging regimes for consumers. As long as any discussions, or joint venture, left the newspaper groups to set their own pricing independently, then any such talks might not breach competition law.

When Murdoch announced that he intended to introduce charges for access to all his news websites, he said that he believed other publishers would follow suit. Davis said that a pattern of such statements, in effect a signal to rivals to do the same, can be interpreted as a "tacit cartel", even if no meeting or explicit deal has taken place.

News Corp revealed an 11% increase in profits to $571m (£344m) for the three months to September, aided by 20th Century Fox's blockbuster box office takings for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the highest-grossing international animated movie of all time.

The film helped push profits from News Corp's movies business up by 55% to $391m, offsetting a plunge in profits from newspapers, which saw their earnings fall from $134m to $25m.

Murdoch's cable television stations, which include the popular, right-leaning Fox News network in the US, enjoyed a 41% surge in profits to $495m.

But News Corp continues to struggle with its digital offerings. Murdoch revealed that the social networking site MySpace had failed to deliver on a minimum level of web traffic it guaranteed under an advertising tie-up with Google three years ago. As a result, it will not receive all of the $900m that Google had agreed to pay for the right to offer search and advertising on MySpace.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/05/murdoch-pay-wall-anti-trust

People Will Pay For Premium Content—Kindle Is A Good Example

2009-11-18T16:49:00.000+01:00

A day after News Corp (NYSE: NWS) posted higher Q3 losses in its Digital Media Group (fka Fox Interactive Media) resulting from lower search revenue and restructuring costs, Jon Miller, chief digital officer/chairman and CEO of the company’s interactive unit, opened day two of Ad:tech NY saying that display advertising is not getting its due. “Only 3 percent of ad dollars make it into display, while 30 percent of consumers time with media is spent online,” Miller said in a conversation with Drew Ianni, Advisory Board Chairman, Programming, ad:tech expositions.

Turning to the pay vs. free argument, Miller began by saying that unless you have premium content, you don’t have a place to start. One venue of premium content is the Kindle and consumers appear to have responded positively, at least initially. “People are willing to pay for Kindle. For example, I pay for my Journal on the Kindle. But I don’t think people are going to pay for scores or to learn that the Yankees won the World Series last night. I envision a day when most news consumption is through mobile readers. The same for TV and movies.”

There’s definitely a role for networks and exchanges, Miller said, after discussing the deals between the Fox Audience Network, which represents 700 (mostly) third-party sites, and ad agencies such as Omnicom and thejust-announced arrangement with WPP. But he believes that ad nets will be eclipsed by ad exchanges. “The industry is moving to exchanges now. Going forward, we’re going to a real-time bidding situation. But it’s not there yet, there are some issues. If you’re on the buy side, you could be in the arbitrage business. But it potentially puts you into conflict with your clients. It’s not been an accepted model here. Dentsu, in Japan, buys inventory from networks in Japan and sells it to its clients. So they can do it.”

Ianni interjected a point about Dentsu, noting that they can do that because they have practically a monopoly in that country. Miller: “I don’t think I want to get into that issue.”

Then, switching gears to MySpace and the attempts to rebuild that brand, Miller talked about it in contrast to Facebook. “To win in social media, you have to build a site that is interest-based—you focus on what people into. Facebook is about what people are up to. MySpace is about what people are in to. That sets the stage for more premium content.”
As for the next big thing, Miller said something will come along and it might not turn out to be a very popular micro-blogging tool. “If you look at the last month, Twitter’s numbers have started to flatten. It could be a hiccup. It’s not a youth phenomenon. It’s adult. And the changes of Facebook could have affected Twitter. That’s a real possibility.”

I caught up briefly with Miller after his presentation and he offered an elaboration on his views about Kindle and the problem News Corp. and others have voiced about Amazon’s revenue split, which is generally 70/30 percent in the e-commerce company’s favor: “We don’t think there’s a fair valuation in the split with Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), but we think the service is great.” As for whether there are any existing revenue share models that would appeal to newspapers like the WSJ, Miller gave a plug to Hulu, which News Corp. shares with NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) and ABC. “We want to look for something closer to Hulu’s revenue share, which we feel values the content.” Asked to cite the specific revenue share Hulu offers its content suppliers, Miller turned away and said, “Check with [Hulu CEO] Jason Kilar.”

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-adtech-jon-miller-people-will-pay-for-premium-content-kindle-is-a-good/

News aggregator defends itself against news publishers

2009-11-18T16:46:00.000+01:00

Newsnow.co.uk, the UK's largest news aggregator with a 20% market share second only to Google, posted a public letter on its home page regarding the multiple legal actions it faces from several news publishers.

In an open letter addressed to the UK's newspapers, particularly the Times, Sun, Guardian and Daily Mail, Newsnow.co.uk claimed that their service does nothing to detract from the revenue of newspapers, and that vilifications of aggregagtors as 'content kleptomaniacs' are misguided.

Newsnow.co.uk's letter has so far attracted 60,000 clicks, on top of its normal 100 million monthly pages views.

The letter responds to the pressure and legal action from many UK newspapers that want aggregators to pay for their links and content. News International wants it to stop linking all together.

Newsnow.co.uk's managing director and chairman, Struan Bartlett, claims in the letter that "we don't redistribute your web pages to anyone. We operate within the law, and we don't do you any harm...We deliver you traffic and drive you revenues you otherwise wouldn't have received."

The letter points to the growth and nature of the internet itself as the reason for the decline of newspapers, saying that linking is the heart of the web, free and uncontrollable. Fighting the internet, Bartlett claims, will end in failure.

Source: MediaGuardian

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/11/news_aggregator_defends_itself_against_n.php

News Corp. Papers Struggle In Q1

2009-11-16T16:27:00.000+01:00

As more media companies report their earnings for the most recent financial period, we're starting to get a better pictures of the state of the industry.

Yesterday, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. reported operating income of $1.04 billion, up 9 percent year over year, despite a massive 82 percent drop in income in the company's Newspaper division, which dived to $25 million.

News Corp. attributed declines in revenue at Dow Jones to decreased ad revenues at The Wall Street Journal, although operating expense cuts and increased circulation revenues -- related to the Journal's price increases -- partially offset the division's losses.

The company's Television division also saw operating income drop 54 percent to $38 million. However, the company's cable network division had a great quarter -- reporting a 41 percent increase in operating income thanks in part to Fox News Channel's highest ever quarterly profit.

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/markets_media/news_corp_papers_struggle_in_q1_142307.asp

Murdoch admits delay in introducing newspaper website charges

2009-11-16T16:25:00.000+01:00

Rupert Murdoch is finding it harder than expected to introduce charges for readers browsing his newspaper websites and may miss a target of next June for the introduction of so-called "pay walls".

Murdoch admitted last night that the schedule was slipping for the start of online charging at papers including the Sun, the Times, the New York Post and the Australian. The initiative, which has divided the media industry, is an attempt to recalibrate the business model for struggling print media.

Three months ago, Murdoch announced that he intended to introduce website charges by the end of News Corporation's financial year, which runs to June next year. Certain rivals, including the New York Times, are planning similar moves But others, including the Guardian, intend to remain free and pose a potential competitive threat.

When asked about his self-imposed deadline yesterday, Murdoch said: "I wouldn't promise that we're going to meet that date."

He declined to comment on the reasons for any delay except to say that he was talking to rival publishers including the Telegraph group in Britain. "It's a work in progress and there's a huge amount of work going on," Murdoch said.

News Corp revealed an 11% increase in profits to $571m for the three months to September, aided by Twentieth Century Fox's blockbuster box office takings for Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the highest grossing international animated movie of all time.

The film helped push profits from News Corp's movies business up by 55% to $391m, offsetting a plunge in profits from newspapers, which saw their earnings plunge from $134m to $25m.

Murdoch's cable television stations, which include the popular, right-leaning Fox News network in the US, enjoyed a 41% surge in profits to $495m.

But News Corp continues to struggle with its digital offerings. Murdoch revealed that the social networking website MySpace has failed to deliver on a minimum level of web traffic it guaranteed under an advertising tie-up with Google three years ago. As a result, it will not receive all of the $900m that Google had agreed to pay for the right to offer search and advertising on MySpace.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/05/murdoch-online-news-charge-delay

Wall Street Journal Bay Area Edition to Begin Tomorrow

2009-11-16T16:24:00.001+01:00

The Wall Street Journal's much anticipated Bay Area edition launches tomorrow, the newspaper said in an announcement. The newspaper will fold Bay Area-specific news into the A-section of the print edition every Thursday, the newspaper says, and has also created a Bay Area-specific section of its Web site at WSJ.com/SF.

The announcement said the paper will provide coverage in a variety of areas, including "local business news, economics, technology, cultural activities, sports, politics and education issues."

While it said the paper will provide "unique insights" for readers, Chief Revenue Officer Michael Rooney also had this to say: "This edition also provides a new platform that helps advertisers target this important audience." The print edition currently reaches 92,000 subscribers with a median household income of more than $154,000.

No word yet on whether the paper's San Francisco bureau will produce the content or whether, like the New York Times, they will be seeking other partners.

Update 1: A WSJ spokeswoman just told us that all editing and reporting will be done by current Journal staff. That's in marked contrast to the Times, whose president and general manager said that the Times was looking for partners to produce the content for the Bay Area edition, because having Times reporters do the reporting and writing "doesn't really fit within our staffing model."

Update 2: Matt Murray, the Journal's deputy managing editor, and Steve Yoder, the Journal's San Francisco bureau chief, will oversee the editorial direction of the print and Web content. And most of the content on the WSJ.com/SF site will be free, since it is general news. Business and finance stories, however, will be subscriber-only.

Complete press release, after the jump.

Wall Street Journal Launches San Francisco Bay Area Edition Focused on Local News and Events

NASDAQ OMX is Official Launch Sponsor of New Edition

NEW YORK , Nov. 4, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Wall Street Journal today announced it will launch a San Francisco Bay Area edition focusing on local news and events, beginning tomorrow, Nov. 5, and appearing locally every Thursday in the A-section of the print Journal.

In addition, WSJ.com will provide regularly updated local news and information at WSJ.com/SF.

NASDAQ OMX is the official launch sponsor of the new San Francisco Bay Area edition beginning Nov. 5 through the end of 2009.

"NASDAQ OMX is delighted to be an advertising partner in the new WSJ Bay Area edition. The Bay Area and Silicon Valley are key markets where NASDAQ and our listed companies have made a strong mark since NASDAQ's inception nearly 40 years ago. With over 550 companies listed on NASDAQ OMX based in California, Northern California is home to some of NASDAQ's most innovative companies from a number of key sectors including technology, healthcare/biotech, financial and consumer.

Within the tech sector, 88% of public technology companies in California list on NASDAQ," said John Jacobs, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of NASDAQ OMX. "We look forward to reading the WSJ's Bay edition regularly and hearing about key business trends and innovations coming from this vibrant, progressive region in our country."

The Journal will offer unique insight to a wide range of topics of
interest to local readers in the San Francisco Bay Area, including
local business news, economics, technology, cultural activities,
sports, politics and education issues.

"The new San Francisco Bay Area edition is a great addition to the wide range of U.S. and international coverage we currently provide to
Journal readers in the Bay Area," said Michael F. Rooney, chief revenue officer of The Wall Street Journal. "This edition also provides a new platform that helps advertisers target this important audience."

WSJ.com/SF will offer users content from the print edition, surface
additional relevant articles from across Dow Jones properties with
related video and offer the opportunity for feedback and discussion via Journal Community groups. Additional online elements include a weekly email newsletter each Thursday with links to top headlines and video from that day's local edition.

The Journal has aggressively covered local news in the Bay Area since
the opening of its San Francisco bureau in 1929. The bureau currently
leads the Journal's coverage of the tech industry and Silicon Valley,
California state politics and a wide range of general California news, from housing to economics. The Journal reaches an audience of more than 92,000 readers in the San Francisco market with a median household income of more than $154,000 -- the most affluent and influential audience in Northern California.

The San Francisco Bay Area edition is the latest investment in the
Journal franchise that has included additional news and opinion pages
in the newspaper; a redesigned WSJ.com with expanded free and
subscription content; enhanced Web sites in Europe and Asia, including local language sites in China and Japan; WSJ., the Journal's first glossy magazine; launch of The News Hub, a twice-daily online news video broadcast on WSJ.com; mobile delivery of Journal content via the WSJ Mobile Reader for iPhone and BlackBerry; and the launch of Wall Street Journal Professional, the Journal's new premium product.

About The Wall Street Journal

Founded in 1889, The Wall Street Journal, the flagship publication of
Dow Jones & Company is the world's leading business publication and
holds 33 Pulitzer Prizes for outstanding journalism. The Wall Street
Journal has a print and online circulation of more than 2 million,
reaching the nation's top business and political leaders, as well as
investors across the country. The Wall Street Journal boasts the
largest individually paid circulation out of the top 25 U.S.
newspapers. Other publications that are part of The Wall Street Journal franchise, with a global audience of 3.8 million, include The Wall Street Journal Asia and The Wall Street Journal Europe. The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com is the leading provider of business and financial news and analysis on the Web with more than one million
subscribers and 26 million users per month. WSJ.com is the flagship
site of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network, which also includes
MarketWatch.com, Barrons.com and AllThingsD.com. In 2009, the Journal
was ranked No. 1 in BtoB's Media Power 50 for the 10th consecutive
year. The Wall Street Journal Radio Network services news and
information to more than 375 radio stations in the U.S.

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/baynewser/bay_area_newspapers/wall_street_journal_bay_area_edition_to_begin_tomorrow_142236.asp

Paid content model prevails in Germany

2009-11-16T16:16:00.000+01:00

Two newspapers in Germany are getting serious about paid content: "Süddeutsche" newspaper has declared its intentions to publish fewer free articles online and Springer's most popular Berlin tabloid, "B.Z." is set to charge for its previously free iPhone app. For a one off payment of just 79 cents users will have access to all photo galleries and articles, which as of the New Year will require a subscription. Similarly, "Süddeutsche" will charge for its own application from the middle of November, offering access to all articles and a smarter homepage for the grand total of just 1,59 euros a month.

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/multimedia/2009/11/paid_content_model_prevails_in_germany.php

MediaNews to place partial pay wall on two newspapers

2009-11-16T16:14:00.001+01:00

MediaNews Group announced yesterday that it will be placing pay walls on two of its newspaper sites by early 2010. They will be partial pay walls because, according to MediaNews Group CEO and vice-chair, William Dean Singleton, "we don't think putting everything behind a pay wall works, but we think putting some things behind a pay wall works... We have to condition readers that everything is not free." The decision as to what will remain free and what will be paid for has not yet been made, according to Howard Saltz, vice president for content development.

The two papers that will be receiving the pay walls are the Enterprise-Record in Chico, California, and the York Daily Record of York County, Pennsylvania. These two newspapers were chosen as test sites for MediaNews following a meeting in April regarding different Internet issues. If the test runs proves successful, there are talks to place pay walls on more of the company's newspapers in the future.

The California and Pennsylvania sites were chosen for their middle of the road size and traffic rates. This was to ensure there was enough internet traffic to begin with that a change in usage would be noticed as well as to avoid a large metropolitan area where it would be impossible to recover from a failed experiment.

This announcement comes just after the release of a study by Balderton Capital that found that a newspaper could make more money off subscriptions than advertisers if its could get just 3-4% of its current readers to subscribe. Pay walls, however, remain controversial, so demonstrated by the Newsday reporter who quit earlier this week after the decision was made to place his work behind a pay wall.

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/11/medianews_to_place_partial_pay_wall_on_t.php

Selling Magazines, Piece by Piece

2009-11-12T17:58:00.000+01:00

Three former Wall Street investment analysts—Ryan Klenovich, 24, Jian Chai, 26, and Steve DeWald, 24—plan to save the magazine business with a Web site calledMaggwire.com.

“We’re going to do for magazines what iTunes did for music,” Mr. Klenovich, the start-up’s chief executive, toldThe Observer in an interview.

Currently a free aggregator of magazine articles from more than 650 publications, separated into channels like “Politics” and “Entertainment,” Maggwire.com will soon offer a premium service—one that Mr. Klenovich thinks could have a significant impact on the industry.

“The biggest threat to magazines is not competition from within the market, but with other forms of media,” Mr. Klenovich said.

Here’s the pitch: Offer users a year’s subscription to a “channel” where they can get premium magazine content from a series of relevant magazines, for, say, $1.99 a month, with an additional 99 cents per magazine that they want to add to the package. The publishers would keep 75 percent of the profit, and Maggwire would get the rest.

“The pricing has to be inexpensive to get users to adopt this in mass numbers,” Mr. Klenovich said. “That’s how iTunes became so successful at first—because the pricing was simple,” at 99 cents apiece for most songs.

Creating a specialized “iTunes” for every form of media content, from MP3s to professional movie clips to DVDs, is hardly a new idea. Steven Brill cooked up Journalism Online to rescue newspapers. Time Inc., Hearst and Condé Nast are reportedly working on creating their own digital store that would offer material compatible with the slew of e-readers soon to hit the market. But none of the companies have confirmed or gone public with their projects.

Mr. Klenovich said the trio left Deutsche Bank in July to start working on the site full time. They raised a round of financing from family and friends and colleagues, and are currently meeting with “major players” in the publishing industry. At the moment, though, most magazines are staying hush-hush about a possible partnership. Representatives from Condé Nast and Hearst did not return messages to The Observer by deadline to confirm or deny any talks with Maggwire.

greagan@observer.com

Source: http://www.observer.com/2009/media/selling-magazines-piece-piece

Hearst, Time Inc., Wenner Discussing Marketing Campaign

2009-11-12T17:55:00.000+01:00

Amid all the negativity surrounding print, the heads of some rival publishing companies have been privately talking about creating a marketing campaign to promote the medium’s positive aspects.

Hearst Magazines president Cathie Black and Time Inc. chairman Ann Moore are said to have taken part in the very preliminary conversations, along with Jann Wenner, chairman of Wenner Media, according to sources who heard about the conversations.

Wenner’s involvement is notable because of his low visibility as an industry member; for years, his company has been out of the industry’s main trade organization, the Magazine Publishers of America. (Wenner also apparently talked with Nina Link, MPA president and CEO, about the marketing campaign, though.)

Reps for Wenner and Moore and MPA declined to comment. Hearst didn’t return a call by presstime.

The reported talks on boosting magazines’ image are the latest sign of a willingness of rival publishing companies—embattled by the ad downturn and competitive pressures—to join forces. Time Inc. is quietly leading a charge to create an industry-wide digital storefront to sell magazine editions for future magazine-friendly e-readers. Meredith, Condé Nast and Hearst have been in on the discussions. No announcement has been made.

There’s no doubt, magazines could use some help burnishing their image. Print is experiencing its worst ad downturn in memory. Total reported ad revenue fell 20.3 percent for the first nine months of the year, with pages down 27.2 percent, per Publishers Information Bureau.

Throughout the year, news of magazine shutdowns and massive layoffs have dominated headlines about the industry. All the while, magazines are being criticized as being unexciting as a creative medium; behind in demonstrating accountability to advertisers; and slow to adapt their content to platforms outside print.

Some companies have tried on their own to counteract the negativity surrounding the medium. Hearst has given presentations around the country this year to showcase its various print and production innovations. Rodale execs have had formal meetings with media buyers to talk about print’s challenges and how they’re responding.

But while the bad news seems to keep on coming for the medium, the industry has been quieter on the marketing front. The Magazine Publishers of America’s last marketing campaign ran from 2004 to 2006. The three-year, $40 million campaign was designed to promote the value of print to media buyers and advertisers. Condé Nast had its well-known Point of Passion campaign in 2005, which involved magazine spreads featuring readers and well-known personalities hugging their favorite Condé Nast titles, but that effort also has ended.

Buyers cheered the idea of an industry marketing campaign for print.

“There needs to be some communication or a marketing campaign to tell the good story that’s out there about the consumer connection with magazines, and more importantly, the power of the magazine brand,” said Brenda White, senior vp, publishing activation director, Starcom USA, “because I think there’s a lot of good momentum going on with publishers thinking about the magazines as brands. This would be something both agencies and clients would benefit from.”

Andrea Luhtanen, president of Haworth Marketing + Media, said that with the negative perceptions publishers are battling, “[There] couldn't be a better time for these industry leaders to come together to reestablish the relevance of magazines in the media community.”

Source: http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/magazines-newspapers/e3i4eef19a7bf70315d3ed1a455048c9c2d

Bloomberg to Build Out 'Business,' Set Web Strategy

2009-11-12T17:53:00.000+01:00

Signaling strong confidence in the print medium, Bloomberg LP executives said they planned to make BusinessWeek bigger, glossier and more international, while exploring a strategy to charge for content on their own Web site.

Bloomberg’s chief content officer Norman Pearlstine revealed the plans for BusinessWeek's future direction during an employee meeting Nov. 3. He said that Bloomberg would increase the number of pages in the magazine, upgrade the paper stock, double the story count and expand its global coverage, according to a source who was present.

Bloomberg agreed Oct. 13 to buy the struggling weekly from the McGraw-Hill Cos.

As for the Web, Bloomberg plans to keep most of its content free while creating deep, vertical content areas that paying users could access for roughly $100 a year.

Such a plan represents a decidedly different tack from rival News Corp., where Rupert Murdoch has been vocal about erecting pay walls on his Web sites, including The Wall Street Journal's.

Since the BusinessWeek deal was announced, Bloomberg execs have laid out plans to add Bloomberg to the magazine’s name and charge subscribers more for the magazine.

The changes would move BusinessWeek in the direction of The Economist, for which Pearlstine has expressed admiration and which is envied for its high subscription price, robust circulation growth and strong advertiser appeal.

Pearlstine, who will become chairman of BusinessWeek following the deal’s completion, also said in the meeting that he expects to have a new editor on board by the time the deal closes, which is expected to happen Dec. 1. He also said that Bloomberg’s and BusinessWeek’s ad sales staffs would remain separate.

BusinessWeek’s editor and president, Steve Adler and Keith Fox, respectively, have already announced plans to step down from the magazine after the sale closes. Bloomberg is expected to make hiring decisions about the rest of the BusinessWeek staff by the deal’s close.

Source: http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/magazines-newspapers/e3i86ae90f31229976234124b05dddfef5d

Taking Aim At The NYT, The WSJ Beefs Up New York Coverage

2009-11-12T17:52:00.001+01:00

The Wall Street Journal will hire a dozen reporters to staff a new New York metro bureau, the NYT reports. The establishment of a New York-focused unit comes a week after the WSJ shutteredits highly regarded Boston bureau, citing the need to cut costs amid the advertising downturn. The formation of the New York metro bureau, which will cover the courts, municipal politics and the state capital, is part of owner Rupert Murdoch’s goal to transform the financial newspaper into a more general-interest publication, where it can challenge the New York Times for advertisers and readers.

One of the first moves in Murdoch’s bid to broaden the WSJ’sscope beyond business and hard news coverage was the introduction of a new luxury section. Since then, the paper has also begun offering more sports coverage, crowding out some of the business news.

While nine people lost their jobs in last week’s closing of theWSJ’s Boston office, a memo signed by the paper’s Editor-in-Chief Robert Thomson said that some of the affected employees could apply for other jobs within the company. It’s not clear whether they’ll be given first crack at the New York bureau openings.

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-after-shutting-boston-bureau-wsj-turns-attention-to-new-york-metro-cove/

Time Inc Layoffs Begin; About 400-500; News Group First To Start

2009-11-12T17:50:00.000+01:00

The layoffs at Time Inc, intended to save about $100 million in costs, have begun, and the news group is the first, understandably. About 15 to 20 sales and marketing employees were told today, most of them from Sports Illustrated, reports NYT. The majority of layoffs, around 500, will be done tomorrow, as has been reported before. NYT reports most of the cuts will also come from the news group, fat as it is with increasingly irrelevant titles like Time, Fortune and SI. Keep in mind this is still a very small percentage of the total of about 10,000 employees Time Inc has worldwide.

Tomorrow is also earnings announcement day for parent Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), so likely more discussion of costs will be on the earnings call. Very little of the cuts will come from the online side of operations, as we reported yesterday. Some of the employees are covered by Newspaper Guild, so negotiations with them will also start tomorrow, and company will ask for voluntary buyouts, as DailyFinance reported earlier today.

Update: Our latest coverage is here.

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-time-inc-layoffs-begin-about-400-500-news-group-first-to-start/

Digital advertising revenue could be exceeded if just 3-4% of users paid online

2009-11-12T17:48:00.000+01:00

If national newspapers in the UK could persuade just three or four per cent of their online audience to pay for content, they could make more money than through advertising, a private equity financier told the Guardian. Dharmash Mistry, a former senior Emap executive who is now a partner at private equity firm Balderton Capital, said that if these 3-4% of users paid £3 a month, that would exceed current digital advertising revenue.

Mistry suggested that £3 a month was about 10% of the monthly price of buying print editions daily, and said that the statistics were based on analysis of a print website attracted 20 million monthly uniques. He estimates that national newspapers are probably each making less than £20 million in online ad revenue per year. If 3.5% of users of a newspaper website with 20m uniques were to pay £3 a month, that would generate £2.1m per month, or £25.2m per year. Mistry told the Guardian that currently, "if any make more than £30m I would be shocked."

He advocates a part-paid, part-free strategy, and highlighted the fact that as paying users are seen as more valuable by advertisers, newspapers can charge higher rates for ads placed alongside subscriber content: a premium of 30% or more. He believes, however, that newspaper groups are resisting putting content behind a pay wall due to fear of their digital audiences shrinking. "They all measure themselves by audience size," he said, and therefore find it harder to accept the economic reality of the situation.

To charge or not to charge online is one of the most fiercely debated questions in the newspaper industry at the moment. Various polls have been carried out on paid online content in the UK and US and have generally shown somewhat discouraging results, for example a paidContent:UK/Harris Interactive found that only 5% of UK online news readers would be prepared to pay. But according to Mistry, this figure would in fact be enough.

Journalism Online, the start-up founded earlier this year dedicated to helping newspapers find the best ways to charge online, has presented similarly convincing figures. Announcements about paid online content are anticipated in coming months from News Corp properties and the New York Times, amongst others. Will paid online content become the norm for general interest newspapers? If so, how will the news landscape change?

Source: Guardian

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/11/digital_advertising_revenue_could_be_exc.php

Nonprofit news outlets draw fire from for-profit media.

2009-11-12T17:43:00.001+01:00

Noncommercial news ventures sprouting around the country are feeling some blowback from their for-profit cousins, who don't seem inspired by the new journalism paternalism.

When Bay Area financier Warren Hellman said in a Forbes.com interview that he may seek city funding for his nonprofit Bay Area News Project, the San Francisco Business Times lobbed this volley: "William Randolph Hearst must be rolling anxiously in his grave. To say nothing of folks likeThomas Jefferson, who wanted journalism to protect us from government, not government to 'protect' an enfeebled Fourth Estate."

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New financing models for news don't impress the Austin Chronicle. "A spotty track record" is how the alternative newsweekly describes their history thus far. Slate's Jack Shafer weighed in with this broadside: "In the current arrangement, we're substituting one flawed business model for another. For-profit newspapers lose money accidentally. Nonprofit news operations lose money deliberately."

The newest nonprofit news outfit to launch, the Texas Tribune, debuts Tuesday. Tribune's chairman, venture capitalist John Thornton, says of the criticism, "I call it the Stockholm Syndrome. They are sympathizing with their advertiser-captors."

Slate, a captive? Maybe Thornton has reason to fire back: He has put up $1 million of the $3.6 million raised for the Tribunethus far. Joining him as Tribune chief executive is a storied name in Texas journalism, Evan Smith, who is leaving his post as editor of the magazine Texas Monthly. Funding is coming from 53 corporate sponsors--"Evan and I just called everybody we knew and said, give us 2,500 bucks"--plus $250,000 from the Knight Foundation and $150,000 from fellow Texan T. Boone Pickens. The 1,100 founding members have given an average of $95 per person.

The Tribune, which plans to focus exclusively on state and local government, public policy and politics, is working with the traditional press to get its stories in front of audiences. Thornton says the Tribune will partner with 10 newspapers and six TV stations to distribute content. In the works is aTribune series called a "Texas Politics Minute," expected to air three times a week. Thornton's outfit will also conduct five statewide polls between now and the end of 2010. "Assuming Kay Bailey Hutchinson runs against Rick Perry for governor, this will be ground zero for internecine Republican politics," he says.

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Fail or succeed, theTribune will be closely watched. Unlike other nonprofit news shops, which are mostly local, theTribune will cover the entire state. As the first nonprofit news venture to launch using this model, does Thornton think his venture is scalable and could succeed elsewhere?

"Probably," he says. "But I grew up in the franchise restaurant business. The biggest clowns in that business are guys who talk about franchising their model before they even get a store open," says Thornton. "For now, we're just trying to get the store open."

Source: http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/02/texas-tribune-nonprofit-business-media-journalism.html

Tribune Goes On A Diet—No AP News For One Week

2009-11-12T17:38:00.000+01:00

The Tribune Company’s chain of newspapers will try to see if they can do without the Associated Press news feed next week, as the bankrupt publisher tries to find ways it can manage costs,The Chicago Tribune reported (via mathewi). The Tribune’s trial separation from the AP starts next week, a little over one year after the publisher gave the wire service the required two-year cancellation notification. The experiment is similar to the one taken last year by Newark Star Ledger, which only stoppedits AP service for only a single day.

The company isn’t dropping the AP completely next week. Tribune papers will still print AP sports statistics. Also, if there is some essential breaking news it can’t get anywhere else, the company will pick up the relevant AP item. Also, Tribune’s TV stations are not affected by the suspension and will continue to use the AP as they usually do.

To make up for the AP’s absence, Tribune is having its various papers share more articles. In addition, Tribune will run selected stories from multiple other sources, including Reuters, theWashington Post, New York Times, Agence France Presse, Global Post, Bloomberg, McClatchy (NYSE: MNI), and CNN, whichstarted its own wire service last year, though editors wereinitially underwhelmed by the offering.

A number of papers have used the two-year cancellation window that is a stipulation of AP membership to get more favorable rates. That could be part of Tribune’s move here. But it looks like Tribune really wants to see if its readership notices week without the AP as the company continues to work through its bankruptcy.

Source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-tribune-goes-on-a-diet-no-ap-news-for-one-week/

UK shows the US how it's done in the online journalism arena

2009-11-12T17:36:00.000+01:00

On Sunday, Observer columnist Peter Preston raised a difficult but pertinent question: in the current economic climate which has set about ravaging much of newspaper industry on both sides of the Atlantic, who is suffering more ... the British or American press? Whether his claims are prejudiced, patriotic or otherwise, Preston does share some compelling data.

First and foremost, Preston reports the latest in a line of none-too-encouraging US circulation figures: o verall newspaper circulation stateside is down 10.6% on average year on year. Furthermore, America's biggest seller, USA Today, has taken a 17% nosedive down to nearly 400,000. In contrast, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal is riding high, currently enjoying a circulation of over 2 million. But what justification does Preston give for these facts? Citing a Columbia Journalism Review piece concerning the 'triumph of "the Anglo-Australian model"', Preston believes the British press to be generally more upbeat, sharper and concise - and as a result reaping the (semi) rewards.

Going on to look at online statistics, Preston finds much of the same again. Last week's big media story, with theWashington Post having seen its tally of unique users overtaken by web start up Huffington Post for the first time, may have initially raised a few eyebrows- but on closer inspection, the news came as little surprise. Why? Well, industry insiders have long been aware of the fact that print news is losing out to digital news, and that custom-built web-only vehicles have the ability to elbow more ponderous offerings from newspaper sites offering conventional coverage 24/7 aside ... and what's more the most recent Nielsen lists confirm this - at least for the US anyway, with only three sites in the top 10 of wider news sources and the leading paper, the New York Times, having just half the users of Yahoo News.It's a different story for British media outlets however, with three UK newspaper contenders in the wider top 30 list of multi-category champions.

Guardian.co.uk scores 6.04m US users in this Nielsen league, with the Telegraph and Mail (at 5.6m and 5.05m respectively) some way behind, all showing annual US growth rates of between 26% (for the Mail) and 51% (for the Guardian). The Telegraph has around as many users outside Britain as the Washington Post has in the whole of the US. Preston states that if you switched all UK players over into the US newspaper category, they'd all find a place in the top 10. Tabloid websites are still enjoying continually high levels of web traffic, with The Mirror and the Sun developing "cheery, cheeky characters", often absent from the American counterparts making them seem too serious and fusty.

The data poses broader and perhaps more serious questions too however, such as why news aggregators are overtaking newspapers when it comes to attracting unique visits, why newspapers on the web are simply not read with the time and attention you'd expect as with their print versions, and why social media - Twitter or Facebook - are fast becoming the latest form of "citizen" journalism?

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/11/uks_comparative_online_success.php

WSJ's Hook'em and Sink'em Mobile Plan

2009-11-12T17:29:00.000+01:00

News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal is pretty confident about the choices its made in regards to selling content on the Web. It was one of the first pubs to put its articles behind a pay wall, a system that's now being seen as the only option by papers such as Newsday.

But when it comes to iPhone applications, The Wall Street Journal seemed surprisingly lackadaisical about making their users pay to read the news on their phones, by first launching a free version of its site as an app back in April.

Of course, all good things must end, and that includes Wall Street Journal's "free" iPhone content. In September, WSJ.com announced that it would be charging users either $2 or $1 a week (depending on whether readers were actually subscribed to the print version of The Wall Street Journal) for a subscription on their mobile device. Still though, the application would be "free" to download...you'd just have to pay to get any service on it.

This "offering you a free lunch and then taking it away" is not a new business plan, even for the Web. And today's announcement of a free Wall Street Journal"MarketWatch.com" application, which lets you check your stocks, get real-time updates on the ticker index and has a customized feature for companies seems like just another gimmick to get smartphone users dependent on WSJ's online services before making them pay. On the other hand, several publications offer certain columns or content for free in the form of applications, without giving away the entire publication to download. Sort of a tiny taste to get your mouth wet, so you'll buy the subscription cost at a monthly charge.

Either way, we wouldn't get too comfortable with MarketWatch's new free app. You might just end up paying more than you bargained for.

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/new_media/_wsjs_hookem_and_sinkem_mobile_plan_141960.asp

Jeff Jarvis optimistic about the future of world journalism

2009-11-12T15:53:00.000+01:00

American journalist and professor at the City University of New York, Jeff Jarvis, has voiced his opinions on the future of journalism at the 'Is World Journalism in Crisis?'event at Coventry University on Wednesday. Supporting progress and development within the industry, Jarvis implored journalists to "support the means for entrepreneurial journalism," as opposed to trying to protect old models, warning that in doing so, journalists risk "hurting new sprouts that grow".

Jarvis also mentioned that he was pleased that the title of the conference, "Is World Journalism in Crisis" posed a question. He answered this question by stating firmly that he did not believe the industry to be in trouble. He did insist however, that in order to support new models state intervention should be avoided at all costs, describing government support for journalism as "dangerous".

Citing research carried out by the CUNY "New business models for news" project, Jarvis said news organisations will again cover beat and investigative reporting. He was also optimistic for the growth of hyperlocalised models in the UK and dismissed the idea that investigative journalism would die with newspapers as merely a misconception, stating; "I don't know that I buy that. I think that investigative journalism has a market."

He also explained that one of the new roles of journalists is as educators and argued that students participating in local news projects were helping citizens learn important skills in journalism. An educator himself, Jarvis' ideas often attract wide spread attention and therefore his recommendation that the BBC should share all its content- not just with media producers but to all: "I think the BBC should give it to anyone who wants it. BBC should be linking to journalism at source and it doesn't do enough of that", was one particularly interesting suggestion.

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/10/jeff_jarvis_optimistic_about_the_future.php

BBC to Cut Pay, Jobs

2009-11-12T15:51:00.000+01:00

LONDON - Under pressure over its pay practices, British Broadcasting Corp. plans to cut the salaries of top managers and axe more than 100 senior posts as part of a broader overhaul to cut costs.

The BBC, which is funded by a license fee paid by the public, plans to cut the amount it spends on the salaries of its top bosses by about 25%, according to the BBC Trust. The BBC Trust oversees the use of the license fee and had asked management to cut salaries as part of a review into ways to save money. The BBC currently spends about £79 million ($129.4 million) on pay for its 634 senior managers and nine most senior executives.

The BBC also expects to abolish 18% of senior management posts in that time. And, the current pay freeze and bonus suspension for top management will also be extended.

The moves come as the BBC is facing tough questions about its funding and spending practices. The BBC -- known around the world for its journalism, quirky comedies and period dramas -- is a media behemoth in its own market. About two-thirds of all shows made by U.K. television networks are BBC productions, while 56% of all U.K. radio shows are made by the BBC and the most-read news Web site in the U.K. is www.bbc.co.uk, according to government figures.

The BBC receives £3.4 billion annually from a £142.50 tax -- known as the TV license fee -- on everyone who owns a TV in the U.K. Commercial rivals complain that gives the BBC an unfair advantage in dominating the radio, TV airwaves and Internet. As a result, the BBC is under pressure to share its publicly funded wealth with rivals.

The BBC's director general Mark Thompson, who is among those who will be affected by the pay cuts, said in a statement as part of the BBC Trust announcement that he and other senior managers "need to recognize that we are in a different economic climate." He said that "senior managers will see their total remuneration fall over the period, with the biggest reductions felt by those in the most senior positions."

Earlier this year, the BBC said it planned to reduce the amount it pays its top on-air talent following widespread public criticism about the talents' compensation.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703363704574503511727617626.html

Merkel to get tough on protecting content online

2009-11-12T15:49:00.000+01:00

The German coalition, led by recently re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel, has pledged to try to introduce a form of copyright legislation to help protect the content produced by journalists online, the New York Times is reporting.

The aim is to give German publishers a fighting chance when coming up against Internet giants such as Google, whom they accuse of exploiting content without sharing the profits.

Whilst the document laying out its policies says: "the Internet cannot be a copyright-free zone," the coalition does support a more aggressive approach to helping resolve the issues currently faced by the news media.

Axel Springer, owner of the newspapers Bild and Die Welt, welcomed the plan and said it could be employed to help build new online business models.

German publishers have previously outright refused any financial handouts, unlike news organisations in France and other parts of Europe. In January, French President Nicolas Sarkozy outlined a 600€ million package to bail out newspapersover the next three years. State intervention in the media is viewed with greater suspicion in Germany, however, bringing memories of a Nazi-controlled press during the Third Reich, back to mind.

Details about how the government will go about implementing the plan have not yet been released, though publishing executives speculated that it could revolve around a a licensing system whereby agencies would have to pay for any content commericially reproduced online. That might include Web sites that post articles from other sources, assuming they sell advertising. A new organization, modeled on the music and book industries' royalty collection societies, could be created to gather and distribute the fees, publishing executives added.

Under this plan, non-commercial users of the material would not be required to obtain a licence, though opponents worry that the distinction between commercial and private use is not easy to define. Many bloggers, for example, sell advertising and have commercial ambitions, whilst many others blog for the fun of it. Determining who would pay will not be easy to regulate.

Another idea currently in place in France and Britain, has already been scrapped. Cutting of Internet access for recurring copyright offenders, is not an option for the German coalition, who instead called for greater cooperation between rights holders and Internet service providers to try to solve the problem.

Critics of the plan have said that it undermines the open nature of the Internet. The proposal "has no value for our society," said Markus Beckedahl, a blogger based in Berlin and advocate of a free Internet. "It only has value for publishers who see a threat from the democratization of the media, he told the Times. "This debate is happening only because German publishers have failed to build successful business models on the Internet.

Publishers responded by saying they understood that they were working in a different realm online, but that they are tired of watching others make money from their content. "This is simply one part of the media's effort to survive in a new kind of economy," said Stefan Söder, a lawyer for Hubert Burda Media, a magazine publisher based in Munich. "Obviously everyone wants access to free and unlimited information, but if everyone has that, then there is no way to pay for the production of it."

A specific date as to when the legislation might be introduced remains undecided, with negotiations still taking place and some journalists against the proposal altogether.

The need to protect content produced online, has been most heavily advocated by the Associated Press. Chief executive,Tom Curley has repeatedly said that publishers need to take control of their content and AP itself has developed a method of tracking where and when its content is being used by adding a 'beacon' to its hnews microformat.

That Merkel's coalition plans to get on board and help German publishers find solutions to online copyright piracy could be a major step forward in helping to rejuvenate an industry that has been seriously injured by the gratis nature of the Internet.

Source: http://www.editorsweblog.org/web_20/2009/10/merkel_to_get_tough_on_protecting_online.php