originally appeared in The Associated Press:
New and expanded sections to cover business, automobiles and food. A nearly five-fold increase in community news pages and more investigative reporting. Even daily color comics.
It feels like a throwback to an earlier era at the Orange County Register, where a first-time newspaper owner is defying conventional wisdom by spending heavily to expand the printed edition and playing down digital formats.
The head of an investor group added about 75 journalists and, with 25 more coming, will have expanded the newsroom by half since his group bought the nation's 20th-largest newspaper by circulation in July.
Changes also include thicker pages with triple the number of colors to produce razor-sharp photos and graphics. By the end of March, the newspaper will have 40 percent more space than under previous owners, Freedom Communications Inc.
The investor group chief believes people will pay for high-quality news. His bet is remarkable in an industry where newspapers have shrunk their way to profits for years, slashing costs while seeking clicks on often-free websites to attract online advertising.
As more newspapers begin charging for online access, Kushner's spending spree is drawing close attention.
If he's successful, it's going to show the way for other papers to follow, according to the publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and an early advocate of charging readers for online access.
Seated behind his large, clutter-free desk near shelves stacked with newspapers, the former Stanford University gymnast said his lack of industry experience may be a plus because he hasn't been through the tough times in newspapering.
So when we sit down and look at what's possible, our view of the world is different, he said. We're a little crazy in that we really do believe that we can grow this particular newspaper.
It's too early to know whether he's right. he said advertising revenues have grown, though he won't say how much.
Average daily circulation rose 5.3 percent as of Sept. 30 from a year earlier to 285,088 on weekdays and 387,547 on Sundays, bucking an industry decline of 0.2 percent, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.
One key test will be when the Register begins charging for online access sometime before the end of March. He said readers will pay the same as the print edition - a contrast to publications that charge online subscribers substantially less.
If you have a wonderful restaurant and it cost $10 to come in the front door, I've never understood why it should cost anything less to come through a side door, he said.
The value of the journalism isn't any less. The reporter isn't paid any less. The photographer isn't paid any less.
The investor group president who has a master's degree in organizational analysis, founded a business in the 1990s that allowed people to change their addresses online and later owned and managed a greeting-card company for seven years.
In 2010, he started an investors group, 2100 Trust LLC, to scout for newspapers, flirting with The Boston Globe and later with MaineToday Media Inc., publisher of The Portland Press Herald.
The president of The Portland Newspaper Guild, said the group chief presented the union with 50 demands, including a longer work week and increases in employee health care contributions.
We got off to such a bad start that it was hard to recover, according to the Newspaper Guild president, who is skeptical that the investor group's print bet will succeed.
The investor group president settled on Freedom and its 107-year-old flagship paper, the Register, for an undisclosed sum. The newspaper serves affluent, growing, well-educated and ethnically diverse communities near Los Angeles, bolstered by 24 community publications.
He became Freedom's chief executive and the Register's publisher, working five days a week at the company's Santa Ana headquarters and flying cross-country to his wife and three children in the Boston area.
Many executives stayed put, including the top editor, who joined the Register in 1989.
The newsroom is nearing 300 employees, including about 40 year-round interns who are paid $10 an hour and provided housing. The new owners eliminated 401(k) matches at the non-union newspaper and have resisted pay raises.
Like other newspapers, the Register experimented over the last decade as its circulation tumbled 40 percent and the newsroom shrank in half. A tabloid paper featuring snappier stories failed, as did a weekly entertainment publication.
Reporters got ever-rising numerical targets to generate Web traffic, with constant reminders of how they fared against peers. It was more like a sales floor than a newsroom, one columnist wrote in a recent piece hailing the Register's reawakening.
To focus more on the print edition, the Register slashed the number of blogs from around 40 to less than a dozen. It scrapped an iPad application for news, traffic and weather.
The new owners have introduced a daily page for coverage of a major development, began sending a reporter and photographer to every one of the region's 50 high school football games on Fridays and doubled editorial pages.
Reporters have been encouraged to dig deeper and expand sources. It's a new experience for (a publisher) to say, Are you sure you have enough investigative reporters? I think you ought to hire more, he said.
The Register's editorial page - once a strong libertarian voice - didn't endorse for president in November. The new owner has contributed to Democrats such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden and moderate Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
He declined to discuss his political views and said they are separate from his work at the Register.
He is looking to buy more newspapers, telling Register staff last year that he had a list of 15 that fit his criteria. In an interview, he expressed interest in Tribune Co. newspapers, which include the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun.
Some readers and employees question how much the new owners will stomach if growth stalls. The owner insisted he is committed, saying the Register has a strong balance sheet and doesn't answer to shareholders seeking quick returns.
If you don't have a clear tangible way to grow revenue you only have one alternative and that's to cut costs, he said. That path may well work. That's not the path that we're on here.
Showing posts with label Newspaper Industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newspaper Industry. Show all posts
02 January 2013
06 January 2012
New York Times Sells Papers
First appeared on Yahoo! News
The New York Times Co said it will sell 16 regional newspapers spread across the U.S. Southeast and California to Halifax Media Holdings for $143 million in cash as it looks to cut costs and focus on its most important papers and their websites.
Regional newspapers have struggled recently because of weak local retail and national advertising, partly reflecting the economy's broader travails.
The company said it will record an after-tax gain of $150 million on the sale -- expected to close in a few weeks -- in the first quarter of 2012.
"I think that it's toward the low end of what we expected. I was expecting $150-$200 million," Evercore Partners analyst Douglas Arthur told Reuters.
"What it implies is that margins on regional newspapers were not as high as we thought, but the underlying profitability of the main New York Times is higher."
The analyst, however, said pension obligation will stay with the company and that could be one of the uses of the proceeds.
The group to be hived off has a weekday circulation of about 430,000, with newspapers such as Sarasota Herald-Tribune, The Ledger, in Florida; Herald-Journal in South Carolina; and The Press Democrat in California in its stable.
Last week, the Times Co said it will sell its regional newspapers days after Chief Executive Janet Robinson announced her sudden retirement.
The group's revenue -- more than a tenth of Times Co's overall sales -- fell about 7 percent to $190 million in the first nine months of this year.
"These newspapers have been a drag on overall results due to heavier reliance on local advertising which lags national advertising growth," Morningstar's Joscelyn Mackay said.
"Without these papers, the firm will be able to focus on its flagship The New York Times and monetize its digital content."
Halifax Media owns The Daytona-Beach News Journal, among other papers and media businesses across the south.
Times Co shares, which have lost a fifth of their value this year, closed at $7.76 on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
The New York Times Co said it will sell 16 regional newspapers spread across the U.S. Southeast and California to Halifax Media Holdings for $143 million in cash as it looks to cut costs and focus on its most important papers and their websites.
Regional newspapers have struggled recently because of weak local retail and national advertising, partly reflecting the economy's broader travails.
The company said it will record an after-tax gain of $150 million on the sale -- expected to close in a few weeks -- in the first quarter of 2012.
"I think that it's toward the low end of what we expected. I was expecting $150-$200 million," Evercore Partners analyst Douglas Arthur told Reuters.
"What it implies is that margins on regional newspapers were not as high as we thought, but the underlying profitability of the main New York Times is higher."
The analyst, however, said pension obligation will stay with the company and that could be one of the uses of the proceeds.
The group to be hived off has a weekday circulation of about 430,000, with newspapers such as Sarasota Herald-Tribune, The Ledger, in Florida; Herald-Journal in South Carolina; and The Press Democrat in California in its stable.
Last week, the Times Co said it will sell its regional newspapers days after Chief Executive Janet Robinson announced her sudden retirement.
The group's revenue -- more than a tenth of Times Co's overall sales -- fell about 7 percent to $190 million in the first nine months of this year.
"These newspapers have been a drag on overall results due to heavier reliance on local advertising which lags national advertising growth," Morningstar's Joscelyn Mackay said.
"Without these papers, the firm will be able to focus on its flagship The New York Times and monetize its digital content."
Halifax Media owns The Daytona-Beach News Journal, among other papers and media businesses across the south.
Times Co shares, which have lost a fifth of their value this year, closed at $7.76 on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
03 November 2010
Ailing Washington Times sold to Founder for $1
Associated Press
The Washington Times, one of many ailing newspapers, has been sold for a $1 to a group backed by its founder, Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
The deal closed late Monday after months of wrangling, according to a story published Tuesday on newspaper's website. Sam Dealey, executive editor of The Washington Times, confirmed the sale with The Associated Press.
Preston Moon, the oldest son of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, had been running the newspaper since his father turned it over to him four years ago.
The elder Moon's group also will take on the newspaper's liabilities. The new ownership will bring back executives that had been ousted last year: former chairman Doug Joo and former publisher Thomas P. McDevitt.
Like many newspapers, The Washington Times has been hard hit by a downturn in advertising that has depleted its main source of income in recent years. The slump began as the Internet attracted more readers and marketers and became worse as the U.S. economy collapsed into a deep recession that lasted from December 2007 through June 2009.
To cope, The Washington Times has cut about 40 percent of its staff this year and eliminated its sport section.
A preliminary deal to sell the 28-year-old newspaper was announced in August, but delays in closing the deal raised fears that it might shut down instead.
The new ownership group appears confident that it can revive The Washington Times.
In Tuesday's story on the newspaper's website, Joo and McDevitt vowed to attract more subscribers while expanding The Washington Times' activity on the radio and Internet.
"We'll continue to keep the highest standard in journalistic excellence in this leading democratic country that upholds the values of freedom, faith, family and service," Joo said in The Washington Times' story.
The deal closed late Monday after months of wrangling, according to a story published Tuesday on newspaper's website. Sam Dealey, executive editor of The Washington Times, confirmed the sale with The Associated Press.
Preston Moon, the oldest son of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, had been running the newspaper since his father turned it over to him four years ago.
The elder Moon's group also will take on the newspaper's liabilities. The new ownership will bring back executives that had been ousted last year: former chairman Doug Joo and former publisher Thomas P. McDevitt.
Like many newspapers, The Washington Times has been hard hit by a downturn in advertising that has depleted its main source of income in recent years. The slump began as the Internet attracted more readers and marketers and became worse as the U.S. economy collapsed into a deep recession that lasted from December 2007 through June 2009.
To cope, The Washington Times has cut about 40 percent of its staff this year and eliminated its sport section.
A preliminary deal to sell the 28-year-old newspaper was announced in August, but delays in closing the deal raised fears that it might shut down instead.
The new ownership group appears confident that it can revive The Washington Times.
In Tuesday's story on the newspaper's website, Joo and McDevitt vowed to attract more subscribers while expanding The Washington Times' activity on the radio and Internet.
"We'll continue to keep the highest standard in journalistic excellence in this leading democratic country that upholds the values of freedom, faith, family and service," Joo said in The Washington Times' story.
28 July 2010
Tour de France Family Top Contador in Money Race
Bloomberg
The Tour de France’s biggest prize isn’t heading to the likely race-winner, Alberto Contador. It will go to the Amaury family.
Contador, who is leading at the end of yesterday’s 108-mile mountain stage, would earn 50,000 euros ($64,600) after sharing the winner’s 450,000-euro paycheck with his eight teammates, a tradition in cycling, his Astana team general manager Yvon Sanquer said.
That compares with the 136.6 million euros of dividends paid between 2004 and 2008 by the family’s Amaury Sport Organisation, which runs cycling’s biggest event, to its shareholders, the Paris-based company’s latest published accounts show. The payout to riders hasn’t changed since the first of Contador’s three victories in 2007. The ASO blames the stagnant funds on doping in the sport cutting into sponsorship income.
“When you compare it to other sports the prize money is not high,” Sanquer said in an interview. “It should be increased if possible. The riders deserve it.”
This year’s Tour ends in Paris in two days. Even after scandals involving blood doping in recent years, the event remains the biggest asset of the Amaury family, according to Conor O’Shea, a media analyst at Kepler Capital Markets in Paris. The family and Lagardere SCA get dividends from ASO.
Family
Jean-Etienne Amaury is president, and his mother, Marie- Odile, is on the board of the company, which also manages smaller races such as the Dakar rally and the Paris half- marathon. Lagardere, which owns Elle and Paris Match magazines, holds a 25 percent stake in the family’s group of companies.
The family has controlled the race since the 1940s, and it is more profitable than their publishing interests, including Le Parisien newspaper.
“The value of sports rights is strong and the Tour de France is a huge global brand,” O’Shea said. It could be worth 1 billion euros, five times more than Le Parisien, in which the Amaurys may sell a stake, O’Shea said.
The Tour, first run in 1903, attracts millions of spectators and is broadcast in 186 countries. It gets as much as 60 percent of sales from television rights, with about 30 percent coming from sponsorship and much of the rest coming from fees from the towns that host stages of the race, according to ASO marketing director Laurent Lachaux. ASO had sales of 158.6 million euros in 2008. Lachaux declined to say how much came from the Tour. Members of the family weren’t made available for interview.
Prize Money
Overall, the Tour hands out about 3.3 million euros in prize money. Even if 27-year-old Contador was to bank the whole first prize, he would be pulling in less than half the 1 million pounds ($1.5 million) that compatriot Rafael Nadal got from winning the Wimbledon tennis championship earlier this month.
“They could double the prizes without any problem,” said Daniel Malbranque, general secretary of the international union of riders for a decade until March.
To be sure, Contador earns “millions” of euros a year from Kazakhstan-backed Astana, Sanquer said, without being more specific. He gets a salary of 5 million euros, L’Equipe newspaper reported on July 20.
Race organizers froze prize money the last few years after doping by riders threatened sponsorship contracts, ASO director Lachaux said. Floyd Landis was stripped of his 2006 title for doping and one of the 2007 race favorites, Alexandre Vinokourov, was thrown out when tests showed he had two different groups of red blood cells, indicating he’d injected someone else’s blood to boost his stamina.
‘Absurd’ Request
“There wouldn’t have been any basis for them to ask for a 10 percent rise,” Lachaux said of Tour riders. “It would have been absurd.”
No positive doping tests have yet emerged from this year’s three-week race, which covers 2,264 miles. Contador leads Team Saxo Bank’s Andy Schleck by 8 seconds with the most difficult mountain stages finished.
Contador gets almost all his earnings from the team, although he has minor deals with fashion brand Hugo Boss AG and Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., his spokesman Jacinto Vidarte said. He said Contador was satisfied with the amount of Tour prize money.
“It’s just a bit of extra money,” Vidarte said.
Pedro Horrillo, a former rider who retired after a crash that left him hospitalized last year, said in an interview that cyclists regard race prize money as a perk and not part of their regular income.
Rewards
“The mentality of the rider is to negotiate with the team” not race organizers, Horrillo said. “You get your reward with extra salary or bonuses.”
The Amaurys have controlled the Tour de France since buying L’Auto magazine, which had set up the race as a promotional stunt. The title became known as L’Equipe, which the family still owns, Lachaux said.
While it plans to keep L’Equipe, an Amaury group executive who declined to be identified confirmed reports last month that it is considering selling a stake in Le Parisien, which it also owned since the 1940s.
“Newspapers are trophy buys that don’t make any money,” O’Shea said. “The value of sports rights is much higher.”
Contador, who is leading at the end of yesterday’s 108-mile mountain stage, would earn 50,000 euros ($64,600) after sharing the winner’s 450,000-euro paycheck with his eight teammates, a tradition in cycling, his Astana team general manager Yvon Sanquer said.
That compares with the 136.6 million euros of dividends paid between 2004 and 2008 by the family’s Amaury Sport Organisation, which runs cycling’s biggest event, to its shareholders, the Paris-based company’s latest published accounts show. The payout to riders hasn’t changed since the first of Contador’s three victories in 2007. The ASO blames the stagnant funds on doping in the sport cutting into sponsorship income.
“When you compare it to other sports the prize money is not high,” Sanquer said in an interview. “It should be increased if possible. The riders deserve it.”
This year’s Tour ends in Paris in two days. Even after scandals involving blood doping in recent years, the event remains the biggest asset of the Amaury family, according to Conor O’Shea, a media analyst at Kepler Capital Markets in Paris. The family and Lagardere SCA get dividends from ASO.
Family
Jean-Etienne Amaury is president, and his mother, Marie- Odile, is on the board of the company, which also manages smaller races such as the Dakar rally and the Paris half- marathon. Lagardere, which owns Elle and Paris Match magazines, holds a 25 percent stake in the family’s group of companies.
The family has controlled the race since the 1940s, and it is more profitable than their publishing interests, including Le Parisien newspaper.
“The value of sports rights is strong and the Tour de France is a huge global brand,” O’Shea said. It could be worth 1 billion euros, five times more than Le Parisien, in which the Amaurys may sell a stake, O’Shea said.
The Tour, first run in 1903, attracts millions of spectators and is broadcast in 186 countries. It gets as much as 60 percent of sales from television rights, with about 30 percent coming from sponsorship and much of the rest coming from fees from the towns that host stages of the race, according to ASO marketing director Laurent Lachaux. ASO had sales of 158.6 million euros in 2008. Lachaux declined to say how much came from the Tour. Members of the family weren’t made available for interview.
Prize Money
Overall, the Tour hands out about 3.3 million euros in prize money. Even if 27-year-old Contador was to bank the whole first prize, he would be pulling in less than half the 1 million pounds ($1.5 million) that compatriot Rafael Nadal got from winning the Wimbledon tennis championship earlier this month.
“They could double the prizes without any problem,” said Daniel Malbranque, general secretary of the international union of riders for a decade until March.
To be sure, Contador earns “millions” of euros a year from Kazakhstan-backed Astana, Sanquer said, without being more specific. He gets a salary of 5 million euros, L’Equipe newspaper reported on July 20.
Race organizers froze prize money the last few years after doping by riders threatened sponsorship contracts, ASO director Lachaux said. Floyd Landis was stripped of his 2006 title for doping and one of the 2007 race favorites, Alexandre Vinokourov, was thrown out when tests showed he had two different groups of red blood cells, indicating he’d injected someone else’s blood to boost his stamina.
‘Absurd’ Request
“There wouldn’t have been any basis for them to ask for a 10 percent rise,” Lachaux said of Tour riders. “It would have been absurd.”
No positive doping tests have yet emerged from this year’s three-week race, which covers 2,264 miles. Contador leads Team Saxo Bank’s Andy Schleck by 8 seconds with the most difficult mountain stages finished.
Contador gets almost all his earnings from the team, although he has minor deals with fashion brand Hugo Boss AG and Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., his spokesman Jacinto Vidarte said. He said Contador was satisfied with the amount of Tour prize money.
“It’s just a bit of extra money,” Vidarte said.
Pedro Horrillo, a former rider who retired after a crash that left him hospitalized last year, said in an interview that cyclists regard race prize money as a perk and not part of their regular income.
Rewards
“The mentality of the rider is to negotiate with the team” not race organizers, Horrillo said. “You get your reward with extra salary or bonuses.”
The Amaurys have controlled the Tour de France since buying L’Auto magazine, which had set up the race as a promotional stunt. The title became known as L’Equipe, which the family still owns, Lachaux said.
While it plans to keep L’Equipe, an Amaury group executive who declined to be identified confirmed reports last month that it is considering selling a stake in Le Parisien, which it also owned since the 1940s.
“Newspapers are trophy buys that don’t make any money,” O’Shea said. “The value of sports rights is much higher.”
27 July 2010
Ad Bounce Gives Relief to U.S. Newspapers, for Now
Reuters
Advertising sales at newspapers finally rebounded in the second quarter, with banks, luxury retailers and automakers once more spending on print campaigns.
Figures released by the Wall Street Journal on Friday should add to the brightening mood in the publishing business, with the largest U.S. paper posting an 11 percent increase in advertising revenue for April, May and June.
Chief Revenue Officer Michael Rooney said that, thanks to healthier spending by finance and consumer companies, the newspaper's print sales rose 9 percent and its digital sales jumped 19 percent.
"We have just concluded our third consecutive quarter with an increase in ad revenue across both print and digital," Rooney said. News Corp, which owns the newspaper, reports quarterly earnings on Aug. 4.
Several key publishers showed similar trends in earnings reports this week, but the better figures still failed to reverse a month-long slide in stock prices. Gannett Co is down 17 percent, McClatchy Co has dropped 24 percent and the New York Times Inc has slid 9 percent over the past four weeks.
One concern among investors is that advertising gains are coming against deeply depressed numbers from a year ago, making for easy comparisons. Newspapers were pummeled by the economic recession, which exacerbated years of declining readership and advertising revenues caused by competition from the Internet and other media.
The biggest question is how newspapers perform in the third and fourth quarters.
"I think they are bouncing along the bottom," said Ken Doctor an affiliate analyst with Outsell Research. Doctor said that comparables will get more difficult during the third and fourth quarters.
The New York Times said this week that total revenue increased 1 percent, a first in nearly three years. Advertising revenue at the flagship and its sister the International Herald Tribune was positive, too, rising just over 1 percent.
Media General, the publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the operator of several broadcast stations, also said that revenue rose -- also a first in three years.
Figures released by the Wall Street Journal on Friday should add to the brightening mood in the publishing business, with the largest U.S. paper posting an 11 percent increase in advertising revenue for April, May and June.
Chief Revenue Officer Michael Rooney said that, thanks to healthier spending by finance and consumer companies, the newspaper's print sales rose 9 percent and its digital sales jumped 19 percent.
"We have just concluded our third consecutive quarter with an increase in ad revenue across both print and digital," Rooney said. News Corp, which owns the newspaper, reports quarterly earnings on Aug. 4.
Several key publishers showed similar trends in earnings reports this week, but the better figures still failed to reverse a month-long slide in stock prices. Gannett Co is down 17 percent, McClatchy Co has dropped 24 percent and the New York Times Inc has slid 9 percent over the past four weeks.
One concern among investors is that advertising gains are coming against deeply depressed numbers from a year ago, making for easy comparisons. Newspapers were pummeled by the economic recession, which exacerbated years of declining readership and advertising revenues caused by competition from the Internet and other media.
The biggest question is how newspapers perform in the third and fourth quarters.
"I think they are bouncing along the bottom," said Ken Doctor an affiliate analyst with Outsell Research. Doctor said that comparables will get more difficult during the third and fourth quarters.
The New York Times said this week that total revenue increased 1 percent, a first in nearly three years. Advertising revenue at the flagship and its sister the International Herald Tribune was positive, too, rising just over 1 percent.
Media General, the publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the operator of several broadcast stations, also said that revenue rose -- also a first in three years.
26 July 2010
Tribune to Leave Bankruptcy, Old Ways Behind
The Wall Street Journal
Tribune Co. Chief Executive Randy Michaels wants to remake the 163-year-old media company. But first he has to steer it out of bankruptcy.
Mr. Michaels, a veteran radio executive, was hired by investor Sam Zell to run Tribune's Internet and broadcast divisions when Mr. Zell took the company private in 2007. But the $8.2 billion deal, funded nearly entirely with borrowed money, proved unmanageable, leading to a December 2008 filing for bankruptcy protection.
Now, Mr. Michaels—promoted seven months ago to CEO— is rethinking Tribune's business, which includes eight major newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, and 23 local TV stations. He's reducing duplication in news reporting, so that smaller papers use national and foreign articles from larger siblings rather than writing their own.
He's also looking for revenue boosts in unconventional places, such as renting out part of Tribune's headquarters for the filming of a "Transformers" movie for more than $200,000.
The company is expected to wrap up bankruptcy proceedings later this summer. On Monday, a bankruptcy examiner is slated to weigh in on certain debtholders' claims that the buyout was improper.
As a radio personality before becoming an executive at Clear Channel and elsewhere, Mr. Michaels was known for colorful on-air stunts, including faking a frog being pureed in a blender.
He shared his strategy at Tribune's Chicago headquarters.
Excerpts:
WSJ:As a radio executive, you helped lead industry consolidation by merging local stations. Will Tribune consolidate the newspaper and local-TV industries?
Mr. Michaels: For there to be a printing plant in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach is crazy. There's too much infrastructure.
On the TV side, this is an industry ready to consolidate. I believe my experience in helping people look rationally at opportunities to grow their business by intelligently consolidating regionally will be very helpful.
WSJ: You've centralized the production of foreign and national news across your papers to save money and manpower. What have you done and why?
Mr. Michaels: Stories [are] laid out in modules — standard sizes with collections of headlines, content, images [reducing the need for layout and copy editors]. If you pick up the Allentown [Pa.] Morning Call, the foreign news was written in Los Angeles and the national news was written in either Chicago or Washington. It's probably higher quality journalism than a local paper that size is going to be able to afford.
WSJ: How are you keeping employees motivated?
Mr. Michaels: We recognize people who've had great ideas. A fellow in Florida figured out a way to save us a couple of million dollars [in] the way we buy newsprint. We gave him a $25,000 check, took his picture, sent it around. There were some people who groused about that, but there were a lot more people who sent us ideas.
WSJ: Are companies spending money on advertising again?
Mr. Michaels: We're seeing a substantial rebound in certain sectors. Auto [advertising] is back to a large extent, particularly in broadcast, but I don't believe auto sales are matching ad spend. If that doesn't change it could be a different situation. BP is spending a lot of money [on ads]. There apparently is a bright side to polluting the planet.
WSJ: But the newspaper industry's revenue from selling print ads has been falling for more than four years. Is print media in a death spiral?
Mr. Michaels: We're going to do a couple billion dollars in newspaper advertising this year. It's still the number one place people advertise. It's just [that] costs went up at a time when margins were very high.
WSJ: Mr. Zell got a lot of attention recently when he said print newspaper delivery will be replaced by electronic versions. What do you think?
Mr. Michaels: We will stop printing if and when it's no longer economically viable. Today, at every one of our papers, it's not even close. Our smallest paper makes north of $10 million [a year]. Our largest paper makes north of $100 million.
WSJ: News organizations have been flirting with charging people to read their websites. Will you?
Mr. Michaels: I just don't believe the economics of a paywall are going to work, unless your content is unique, highly differentiated, difficult to duplicate. As good as I believe our content is, if there are reasonable substitutes available for free it's tough to get people to pay.
WSJ: You and your team have said Tribune is going to "blow up" the traditions of local-TV news. What do you mean?
Mr. Michaels: We are about to launch a TV newscast in Houston that has no anchors, that has great pictures and great writing, but doesn't involve a set or a desk or anyone standing in the way of the picture. Now is it going to work? We're going to find out.
WSJ: When are you expecting Tribune will be out of bankruptcy?
Mr. Michaels: I believe we're close to the end of the process. We're working towards the dates that you see [lenders must vote by Aug. 6 on the company's bankruptcy-exit plan] and believe that those will hold.
Mr. Michaels, a veteran radio executive, was hired by investor Sam Zell to run Tribune's Internet and broadcast divisions when Mr. Zell took the company private in 2007. But the $8.2 billion deal, funded nearly entirely with borrowed money, proved unmanageable, leading to a December 2008 filing for bankruptcy protection.
Now, Mr. Michaels—promoted seven months ago to CEO— is rethinking Tribune's business, which includes eight major newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, and 23 local TV stations. He's reducing duplication in news reporting, so that smaller papers use national and foreign articles from larger siblings rather than writing their own.
He's also looking for revenue boosts in unconventional places, such as renting out part of Tribune's headquarters for the filming of a "Transformers" movie for more than $200,000.
The company is expected to wrap up bankruptcy proceedings later this summer. On Monday, a bankruptcy examiner is slated to weigh in on certain debtholders' claims that the buyout was improper.
As a radio personality before becoming an executive at Clear Channel and elsewhere, Mr. Michaels was known for colorful on-air stunts, including faking a frog being pureed in a blender.
He shared his strategy at Tribune's Chicago headquarters.
Excerpts:
WSJ:As a radio executive, you helped lead industry consolidation by merging local stations. Will Tribune consolidate the newspaper and local-TV industries?
Mr. Michaels: For there to be a printing plant in Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach is crazy. There's too much infrastructure.
On the TV side, this is an industry ready to consolidate. I believe my experience in helping people look rationally at opportunities to grow their business by intelligently consolidating regionally will be very helpful.
WSJ: You've centralized the production of foreign and national news across your papers to save money and manpower. What have you done and why?
Mr. Michaels: Stories [are] laid out in modules — standard sizes with collections of headlines, content, images [reducing the need for layout and copy editors]. If you pick up the Allentown [Pa.] Morning Call, the foreign news was written in Los Angeles and the national news was written in either Chicago or Washington. It's probably higher quality journalism than a local paper that size is going to be able to afford.
WSJ: How are you keeping employees motivated?
Mr. Michaels: We recognize people who've had great ideas. A fellow in Florida figured out a way to save us a couple of million dollars [in] the way we buy newsprint. We gave him a $25,000 check, took his picture, sent it around. There were some people who groused about that, but there were a lot more people who sent us ideas.
WSJ: Are companies spending money on advertising again?
Mr. Michaels: We're seeing a substantial rebound in certain sectors. Auto [advertising] is back to a large extent, particularly in broadcast, but I don't believe auto sales are matching ad spend. If that doesn't change it could be a different situation. BP is spending a lot of money [on ads]. There apparently is a bright side to polluting the planet.
WSJ: But the newspaper industry's revenue from selling print ads has been falling for more than four years. Is print media in a death spiral?
Mr. Michaels: We're going to do a couple billion dollars in newspaper advertising this year. It's still the number one place people advertise. It's just [that] costs went up at a time when margins were very high.
WSJ: Mr. Zell got a lot of attention recently when he said print newspaper delivery will be replaced by electronic versions. What do you think?
Mr. Michaels: We will stop printing if and when it's no longer economically viable. Today, at every one of our papers, it's not even close. Our smallest paper makes north of $10 million [a year]. Our largest paper makes north of $100 million.
WSJ: News organizations have been flirting with charging people to read their websites. Will you?
Mr. Michaels: I just don't believe the economics of a paywall are going to work, unless your content is unique, highly differentiated, difficult to duplicate. As good as I believe our content is, if there are reasonable substitutes available for free it's tough to get people to pay.
WSJ: You and your team have said Tribune is going to "blow up" the traditions of local-TV news. What do you mean?
Mr. Michaels: We are about to launch a TV newscast in Houston that has no anchors, that has great pictures and great writing, but doesn't involve a set or a desk or anyone standing in the way of the picture. Now is it going to work? We're going to find out.
WSJ: When are you expecting Tribune will be out of bankruptcy?
Mr. Michaels: I believe we're close to the end of the process. We're working towards the dates that you see [lenders must vote by Aug. 6 on the company's bankruptcy-exit plan] and believe that those will hold.
16 July 2010
Gannett Experimenting With Online Pay Walls In Three Markets
The Wall Street Journal
Chief Executive Craig Dubow said Friday the publishing company is experimenting with subscription models for online news content in three local markets in the U.S.
Dubow said on a conference call with analysts following its second-quarter earnings results that Gannett has launched experiments with "paid content" on its newspaper sites in Greenville, S.C., Talahassee, Fla. and St. George, Utah.
The tests come as a conviction grows in the newspaper industry that online advertising revenue alone can't support substantial newsgathering operations in the digital age, and several major news publishers are moving towards online subscription models to generate a new revenue stream from online readers, who have grown accustomed to getting news online for free.
The New York Times Co. (NYT) has said it will begin charging readers for access to some articles on its website next year, and News Corp. (NWS, NWSA) Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch has said subscription payments will become a much larger part of the company's digital strategy.
News Corp., which owns this newswire as well as The Wall Street Journal, recently announced two investments that reflect its efforts to wrest consumer payments for its news properties on the Web. It acquired a stake in Journalism Online LLC, a venture that helps publishers set up a payment system and business strategies to charge readers for online news and information.
It also acquired Skiff LLC, an electronic-reading technology firm that handles the behind-the-scenes workings of publishing on mobile devices, such as converting files to digital formats and setting up ways to serve up advertisements.
Many publishers view the proliferation of mobile reading devices as a new opportunity to set up subscription models for electronic distribution of news. Dubow said Friday that USA Today's iPhone application would remain a free, ad-supported service at least through the third quarter.
The Wall Street Journal is one of the few examples of newspapers that have maintained a healthy online subscription business as its business and investment-oriented audience has shown a willingness to pay online for its content. Its rival The Financial Times also has a thriving online subscription business, but more general news sites have struggled with the prospect of getting their readers to begin paying online. The New York Times has twice launched online subscription offerings, only to remove them after their results were disappointing.
Dubow said Gannett's experiments will allow the company to gain insights into the willingness of consumers to pay for local, online news content without disrupting its broader publishing business by launching a larger subscription offering.
Gannett Chief Operating Officer Gracia Martore said the company is beefing up its local content offerings in each test market in areas of particular interest to each community, and it is trying different price points in an effort to see what works.
Martore said in three to six months, Gannett should be "much better informed about what business models are sustainable."
Dubow said on a conference call with analysts following its second-quarter earnings results that Gannett has launched experiments with "paid content" on its newspaper sites in Greenville, S.C., Talahassee, Fla. and St. George, Utah.
The tests come as a conviction grows in the newspaper industry that online advertising revenue alone can't support substantial newsgathering operations in the digital age, and several major news publishers are moving towards online subscription models to generate a new revenue stream from online readers, who have grown accustomed to getting news online for free.
The New York Times Co. (NYT) has said it will begin charging readers for access to some articles on its website next year, and News Corp. (NWS, NWSA) Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch has said subscription payments will become a much larger part of the company's digital strategy.
News Corp., which owns this newswire as well as The Wall Street Journal, recently announced two investments that reflect its efforts to wrest consumer payments for its news properties on the Web. It acquired a stake in Journalism Online LLC, a venture that helps publishers set up a payment system and business strategies to charge readers for online news and information.
It also acquired Skiff LLC, an electronic-reading technology firm that handles the behind-the-scenes workings of publishing on mobile devices, such as converting files to digital formats and setting up ways to serve up advertisements.
Many publishers view the proliferation of mobile reading devices as a new opportunity to set up subscription models for electronic distribution of news. Dubow said Friday that USA Today's iPhone application would remain a free, ad-supported service at least through the third quarter.
The Wall Street Journal is one of the few examples of newspapers that have maintained a healthy online subscription business as its business and investment-oriented audience has shown a willingness to pay online for its content. Its rival The Financial Times also has a thriving online subscription business, but more general news sites have struggled with the prospect of getting their readers to begin paying online. The New York Times has twice launched online subscription offerings, only to remove them after their results were disappointing.
Dubow said Gannett's experiments will allow the company to gain insights into the willingness of consumers to pay for local, online news content without disrupting its broader publishing business by launching a larger subscription offering.
Gannett Chief Operating Officer Gracia Martore said the company is beefing up its local content offerings in each test market in areas of particular interest to each community, and it is trying different price points in an effort to see what works.
Martore said in three to six months, Gannett should be "much better informed about what business models are sustainable."
05 July 2010
Home Delivery Cuts Working for Detroit Newspapers
Associated Press
Detroit's two daily newspapers knew they were shoving some readers overboard in an effort to stay afloat when they decided to limit home delivery to just three days a week.
It was only a question of how many subscribers would abandon the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News once their print editions were no longer hitting doorsteps and driveways each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday.
More than a year later, Detroit newspaper executives are convinced they made the right call. If that holds up, other newspapers could follow as they look for ways to save money to offset a three-year slump in advertising, the industry's main source of revenue. About 100 U.S. newspapers already have reduced the number of days they publish or have shifted exclusively to Web editions, but Detroit is the biggest market to try a version of either move.
The Detroit newspapers won't release detailed financial figures, but they say they have saved millions of dollars by reducing the use of delivery trucks, paper and ink. Yet revenue hasn't fallen as much because the remaining three days — Thursday, Friday and Sunday — had already garnered most of the advertising anyway. Many readers have bailed on the newspapers, as anticipated, but the exodus hasn't been has dramatic as at several other large dailies that alienated subscribers by raising their prices while maintaining daily home delivery.
That suggests many readers are more willing to tolerate limited home delivery than significantly higher prices for newspapers in an era of high unemployment and free news online.
Besides covering the same metropolitan area, the Detroit newspapers are tied together by a business partnership known as a joint operating agreement. The News, which is owned by MediaNews Inc., and the Free Press, owned by Gannett Co., rely on the partnership to handle advertising, distribution and administrative tasks.
The financial benefits from joint-operating agreements haven't been enough to keep two newspapers afloat in other cities, such as Seattle and Denver. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer went online only last year and the Rocky Mountain News shut down entirely. A similar fate likely awaited one of the Detroit dailies if they hadn't sacrificed some of their readership or found some other way to lower their costs. While the newspaper industry has been slumping for the past three years, the Free Press and the News were among the worst off because Detroit's manufacturing-driven economy had been struggling even before the Great Recession began in December 2007.
When Detroit newspaper executives did the math on their plan last year, they said they could have cut their costs about 40 percent by dropping print entirely. But they said that would have erased the more than 85 percent of their revenue that comes from subscriptions, newsstand sales and ads in the printed newspapers. Less than 15 percent of the newspapers' revenue had come from online ads.
Instead, the publications said, cutting back home delivery to three days would reduce the newspapers' joint costs by about 20 percent while giving them the chance to keep most of their revenue.
Executives at the newspapers won't discuss how close they came to meeting those projections. Rather, they say that more than 90 percent of the newspapers' advertisers have stuck with the dailies. The publications won't give detailed revenue figures, other than to say that Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays now account for 93 percent of the newspapers' print ad revenue. Even before the home-delivery cutback, those three days accounted for about 80 percent of the print ad revenue.
And the publications say the savings on newsprint and distribution costs have helped to minimize newsroom layoffs. The two newspapers have retained about 400 reporters, editors and photographers. That's down from roughly 600 newsroom workers five years ago, but still a much larger staff than would have otherwise been possible, said Rich Harshbarger, vice president of marketing for the Detroit Media Partnership.
Avoiding additional layoffs has allowed the remaining reporters to work on more projects, produce more engaging online coverage of Detroit touchstones such as automobile trade shows and provide early morning news reports from the Free Press for a local TV program.
"We have accomplished most of what we set out to do," said Susie Ellwood, CEO of the Detroit Media Partnership, which manages the business side of the two newspapers.
The average combined weekday circulation of the News and Free Press fell 12 percent to 401,889 during the six months ended March 31. That amounted to nearly 56,000 fewer copies than last year and was worse than the industry's total circulation decline of 9 percent. It also marked an acceleration from the decline in the first six months of the reduction in home delivery, when the combined Free Press and News circulation fell 8 percent. (In that same span the overall industry dropped 11 percent.)
However, Detroit's latest decline wasn't as severe as the drop-offs at newspapers in Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta and Dallas, which all have raised delivery prices during the past 18 months while still delivering daily. Weekday circulation at those big-city newspapers plunged about 15 percent to 25 percent during the October-March measurement period. Getting more money from fewer subscribers has helped some of these newspapers increase their circulation revenue, although the gains have not been nearly enough to offset the declines in their ad revenue.
The Detroit newspapers are still printing on non-delivery days. But those editions generally have about a dozen fewer pages than on other weekdays, and they are sold on the street and in stores. The publications sold more than 122,000 copies on newsstands on non-delivery days during the October-March period, accounting for a little more than one-quarter of the average circulation. That compared to about 99,000 copies on Thursdays and Fridays, when readers can still get the print edition dropped on their doorsteps.
Buying the thinner newspapers on non-delivery days has been less appealing since October, when the Detroit dailies doubled their newsstand price to $1 for weekday editions. Newsstand sales in the latest measurement period were down by an average of more than 51,000 copies, or 30 percent, on non-delivery days compared with the six months before the price increase. The three-day home delivery rate for either of the newspapers has remained unchanged at $12 per month since the cutbacks. That price is $1 to $2 less than what many subscribers had been paying for seven-day delivery.
Going without daily delivery hasn't been easy for some longtime readers.
Bill and Karen Foster are among the loyal Free Press subscribers who have stuck with the newspaper, even though they don't like having to turn to the Web on non-delivery days. Before the home-delivery cutback, the Fosters got a course in Web training from the newspaper in an effort to ease the transition.
"I still would prefer getting the paper on the porch," said Karen Foster, 70. "I find it very difficult to read on the computer. My eyes blur."
Don Nauss, managing editor of The Detroit News, empathizes. He, too, would prefer being able to walk out his front door to pick up the newspaper instead of heading into his den to sit down at his computer.
"It's hard to break a habit that some people have had for 40 or 50 years," Nauss said. "And I don't think anyone likes the idea of not being able to deliver your product to your customers. But we had to do what we had to do to survive."
Unwilling to give up their daily fix, more than 4,000 of the Detroit newspapers' subscribers have been paying an additional $30 per month to have the print editions mailed to their homes on the four days a week that carriers don't deliver, Harshbarger said.
In other instances, independent contractors buy the newspapers at retail outlets on non-delivery days and bring them to subscribers willing to pay an extra $4 to $12 per week to have a newspaper dropped on their porch or driveway. The Detroit newspapers recently began to encourage more of this entrepreneurial system of daily home delivery by offering independent carriers an opportunity to buy the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday newspapers at a discount. It's still up to the independent carriers to negotiate the delivery price with subscribers. About 2,000 subscribers are going this route, Harshbarger said.
Some alienated readers already may have defected to neighboring publications that still provide daily home delivery. For instance, weekday circulation of The Oakland Press in nearby Pontiac rose 3 percent to 68,770 in the October-March period.
But the management of the Detroit newspapers suspects the circulation losses would have been even worse if not for the hard times that their readers have experienced through years of factory closures, home foreclosures and unemployment rates well above most of the country. The adversity made it easier for people to understand why the newspapers took such drastic measures, Nauss said.
And it may be one reason that limited home delivery may not be as well received elsewhere.
"No other market has made such a risky move like this and we would not at all endorse it for everyone," Harshbarger said. "Just because it has worked in Detroit doesn't mean it will work in Des Moines."
21 June 2010
Less May Be More for Murdoch, New York Times as Newspapers Put Up Paywalls
Bloomberg
The Times, the London newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., is offering free tickets to Toy Story 3 or the chance of a weekend at the Grosvenor Hotel in Dorset to persuade readers to pay for news online.
The newspaper this week began closing down its free website and will charge for access, mirroring a long-standing practice at the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times Co. plans to do the same next year. Both concede the step will mean fewer readers. A drop in advertising revenue is forcing them to seek other, more steady, sources of income.
“We don’t expect or require that all the people who do now will still look at it,” said Daniel Finkelstein, executive editor of the Times in London whose online fee will be 2 pounds ($2.89) a week. “What’s left is still a vast market.”
Among the first general newspapers seeking to charge for online content, the Times and the New York daily are betting that a smaller number of committed, paying online readers may allow them to extract subscription fees and bigger advertising sales. Print ads in the U.S. last year slid 29 percent to about $24.8 billion, the lowest since 1984. With online ad sales holding up better, newspapers want to capture a bigger piece of that pie, even as they lose some readers.
“Obviously a huge number of casual readers will get their news elsewhere,” said Paul Richards, an analyst at Numis Securities Ltd. in London. “What you’ll have left is a core of readers that you can target more effectively with advertising and services. If you know who your readers are it’s easier to monetize them.”
Hard to Do
While the Financial Times has had some success with the strategy, the ability of general interest dailies to carry it off is less obvious, industry experts say. Luring paying online readers may be harder with news that is more easily available for free on the Web.
“They’re not going to convince people to pay for news, because people weren’t paying for news,” said Nelson Phillips, professor of organization and management at Imperial College in London. “The big brands may be able to do it. But if you’re a mid-level paper, what do you have that’s not available on the Web for free?”
Murdoch’s News Corp., which this week offered to buy the rest of U.K. pay-TV operator British Sky Broadcasting Plc for 7.8 billion pounds ($11.5 billion), is pushing a business model with clients paying for content as a driver of revenue growth. He’s using that same strategy at the Times and the Sunday Times. The Times is now offering paying subscribers access to free events and discounted products through its ‘Times+’ service in an effort to build customer loyalty.
Volume Battle
News Corp. shares dropped 1.5 percent to $14.16 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading yesterday. The stock has risen 3.4 percent since the start of the year.
In May, the Times said it would cut its editorial budget by 10 percent, leading to the departure of as many as 50 staff. Editor James Harding said the newspaper’s “losses are unsustainable.”
Revenue at Times Co.’s News Media Group, owner of the New York Times, tumbled 23 percent between 2007 and 2009 to $2.32 billion. The company as a whole reported a $20 million 2009 profit, after a $58 million loss in 2008.
Charging for online content is among efforts at the two dailies to boost sales.
“If you want to get into a battle on volume, Facebook has already won,” said Rob Grimshaw, managing director of Pearson Plc’s FT.com, alluding to the world’s largest social-networking site. “You can gain a lot more on yield,” and by offering advertisers information on paying visitors, he said.
Striking a Balance
The Financial Times, which has a daily circulation of about 390,000, began its current system for access to its FT.com site in 2007. The site has about 126,000 subscribers, each shelling out at least 3.29 pounds a week in the U.K., and two million more registered users, who provide basic personal information in exchange for 10 free stories a month.
While the site usually charges about 35 to 40 pounds in fees from advertisers for every 1,000 views of a story, some parts of FT.com command “much higher” rates, according to Grimshaw. That compares with as little as one pound for less focused sites, he said.
The FT’s website has succeeded in striking a balance between mass-market appeal and winning money from subscribers, said Alexander Wisch, a media analyst at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research in London. “They are able to draw ads and get the eyeballs, and at the same time to monetize subscriptions.” Specialized publications “do draw audiences, and they draw audiences that pay.”
‘Prix-Fixe Menus’
The New York Times will see “some effect” on readership after it implements a paywall next year, Times Co. Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson said in an interview. “We feel that we will protect as much of the audience as possible” with a “metering” approach, that allows free access to a limited number of stories, she added.
Existing paywalls usually follow one of three strategies: a flat-rate subscription for all content, a mix of paid and free articles determined by editors, or a metering system that allows readers a capped number of free stories of their choice.
Flat-rate subscription models have the advantage of “decoupling” the unpleasant experience of payment from that of reading articles, according to Ziv Carmon, who researches consumer behavior at INSEAD in Singapore.
Newspapers should “look at the prix-fixe menus in French restaurants,” he said. “If you’re eating a shrimp appetizer, you don’t think that every bite equals two bucks.”
Makes No Sense
The Financial Times in 2007 switched from a mix of free and paid content to its current metered model.
“One person’s goldmine of an article was behind the wall, but it could be irrelevant to another person,” Grimshaw said.
Still, any paywall strategy risks cutting newspapers off from an ecosystem of blogs and social media sites that was created partly by the availability of free content.
The New York Times in 2007 abandoned its two-year TimesSelect experiment, which charged for access to some columnists and articles.
Andrew Sullivan, a commentator at The Atlantic magazine whose site is among the top 15 blogs on the Web, dubbed the service “TimesDelete,” because of the difficulty of linking readers to stories behind the paywall.
Tim Kevan, a legal blogger, on May 28 left the London-based Times, arguing that he didn’t want his work to become “the preserve of a limited few.”
The Times’s Finkelstein argues that the newspaper needs to charge to invest in content output, even at the risk of smaller readership.
“It doesn’t make sense for any length of time to give away the product you’re selling,” he said.
The newspaper this week began closing down its free website and will charge for access, mirroring a long-standing practice at the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times Co. plans to do the same next year. Both concede the step will mean fewer readers. A drop in advertising revenue is forcing them to seek other, more steady, sources of income.
“We don’t expect or require that all the people who do now will still look at it,” said Daniel Finkelstein, executive editor of the Times in London whose online fee will be 2 pounds ($2.89) a week. “What’s left is still a vast market.”
Among the first general newspapers seeking to charge for online content, the Times and the New York daily are betting that a smaller number of committed, paying online readers may allow them to extract subscription fees and bigger advertising sales. Print ads in the U.S. last year slid 29 percent to about $24.8 billion, the lowest since 1984. With online ad sales holding up better, newspapers want to capture a bigger piece of that pie, even as they lose some readers.
“Obviously a huge number of casual readers will get their news elsewhere,” said Paul Richards, an analyst at Numis Securities Ltd. in London. “What you’ll have left is a core of readers that you can target more effectively with advertising and services. If you know who your readers are it’s easier to monetize them.”
Hard to Do
While the Financial Times has had some success with the strategy, the ability of general interest dailies to carry it off is less obvious, industry experts say. Luring paying online readers may be harder with news that is more easily available for free on the Web.
“They’re not going to convince people to pay for news, because people weren’t paying for news,” said Nelson Phillips, professor of organization and management at Imperial College in London. “The big brands may be able to do it. But if you’re a mid-level paper, what do you have that’s not available on the Web for free?”
Murdoch’s News Corp., which this week offered to buy the rest of U.K. pay-TV operator British Sky Broadcasting Plc for 7.8 billion pounds ($11.5 billion), is pushing a business model with clients paying for content as a driver of revenue growth. He’s using that same strategy at the Times and the Sunday Times. The Times is now offering paying subscribers access to free events and discounted products through its ‘Times+’ service in an effort to build customer loyalty.
Volume Battle
News Corp. shares dropped 1.5 percent to $14.16 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading yesterday. The stock has risen 3.4 percent since the start of the year.
In May, the Times said it would cut its editorial budget by 10 percent, leading to the departure of as many as 50 staff. Editor James Harding said the newspaper’s “losses are unsustainable.”
Revenue at Times Co.’s News Media Group, owner of the New York Times, tumbled 23 percent between 2007 and 2009 to $2.32 billion. The company as a whole reported a $20 million 2009 profit, after a $58 million loss in 2008.
Charging for online content is among efforts at the two dailies to boost sales.
“If you want to get into a battle on volume, Facebook has already won,” said Rob Grimshaw, managing director of Pearson Plc’s FT.com, alluding to the world’s largest social-networking site. “You can gain a lot more on yield,” and by offering advertisers information on paying visitors, he said.
Striking a Balance
The Financial Times, which has a daily circulation of about 390,000, began its current system for access to its FT.com site in 2007. The site has about 126,000 subscribers, each shelling out at least 3.29 pounds a week in the U.K., and two million more registered users, who provide basic personal information in exchange for 10 free stories a month.
While the site usually charges about 35 to 40 pounds in fees from advertisers for every 1,000 views of a story, some parts of FT.com command “much higher” rates, according to Grimshaw. That compares with as little as one pound for less focused sites, he said.
The FT’s website has succeeded in striking a balance between mass-market appeal and winning money from subscribers, said Alexander Wisch, a media analyst at Standard & Poor’s Equity Research in London. “They are able to draw ads and get the eyeballs, and at the same time to monetize subscriptions.” Specialized publications “do draw audiences, and they draw audiences that pay.”
‘Prix-Fixe Menus’
The New York Times will see “some effect” on readership after it implements a paywall next year, Times Co. Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson said in an interview. “We feel that we will protect as much of the audience as possible” with a “metering” approach, that allows free access to a limited number of stories, she added.
Existing paywalls usually follow one of three strategies: a flat-rate subscription for all content, a mix of paid and free articles determined by editors, or a metering system that allows readers a capped number of free stories of their choice.
Flat-rate subscription models have the advantage of “decoupling” the unpleasant experience of payment from that of reading articles, according to Ziv Carmon, who researches consumer behavior at INSEAD in Singapore.
Newspapers should “look at the prix-fixe menus in French restaurants,” he said. “If you’re eating a shrimp appetizer, you don’t think that every bite equals two bucks.”
Makes No Sense
The Financial Times in 2007 switched from a mix of free and paid content to its current metered model.
“One person’s goldmine of an article was behind the wall, but it could be irrelevant to another person,” Grimshaw said.
Still, any paywall strategy risks cutting newspapers off from an ecosystem of blogs and social media sites that was created partly by the availability of free content.
The New York Times in 2007 abandoned its two-year TimesSelect experiment, which charged for access to some columnists and articles.
Andrew Sullivan, a commentator at The Atlantic magazine whose site is among the top 15 blogs on the Web, dubbed the service “TimesDelete,” because of the difficulty of linking readers to stories behind the paywall.
Tim Kevan, a legal blogger, on May 28 left the London-based Times, arguing that he didn’t want his work to become “the preserve of a limited few.”
The Times’s Finkelstein argues that the newspaper needs to charge to invest in content output, even at the risk of smaller readership.
“It doesn’t make sense for any length of time to give away the product you’re selling,” he said.
01 June 2010
U.S. Newspaper Ad Revenue falls 10 Percent in 1Q
Bloomberg / Business Week
Advertising revenue at U.S. newspapers fell 10 percent to $6 billion in the first quarter from the same period last year. That is the lowest rate of decline in more than two years.
The statistics released Thursday by the Newspaper Association of America are the latest sign that the industry's financial woes may be easing in the fourth year of an advertising downturn that has triggered bankruptcy filings and dramatic cutbacks in staff.
Newspapers traditionally have relied on advertising for about 80 percent of their revenue. But recently they have been raising their subscription and newsstand prices to counter a marketing shift that has driven more spending to the Internet.
Ad revenue has now fallen at U.S. newspapers in 13 consecutive quarters compared with the previous year.
The statistics released Thursday by the Newspaper Association of America are the latest sign that the industry's financial woes may be easing in the fourth year of an advertising downturn that has triggered bankruptcy filings and dramatic cutbacks in staff.
Newspapers traditionally have relied on advertising for about 80 percent of their revenue. But recently they have been raising their subscription and newsstand prices to counter a marketing shift that has driven more spending to the Internet.
Ad revenue has now fallen at U.S. newspapers in 13 consecutive quarters compared with the previous year.
17 May 2010
Pa. Newspapers' Layoff Notice Called 'Procedural'
Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA — Employees of Philadelphia's two major newspapers have been sent a letter warning of possible layoffs, but the lenders who won the newspapers at a bankruptcy auction last month say the notice is "procedural" and no such action is planned.
The letters, sent Friday on letterhead of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, say the new owners "will continue as the employer of all employees" but also note that the letter would serve as notice under a federal law that requires employers to give 60 days' notice in the event of mass layoffs.
"The letter is a procedural letter. It was agreed they would send it out up at the auction in New York," said Robert Hall, named chief operating officer by the new owners. "The old company goes out of business that day and we start anew."
"Our intention is still exactly the same as it was before," Hall said. "There will be no massive layoffs when we take over the company."
Creditors last month won a frenzied bankruptcy auction for the two newspapers and their website over a local group's bid. Greg Osberg, who has been named publisher and chief executive officer, has said he expects the sale to close in late May and hopes to complete contracts with the newspapers' unions by the end of June.
In a note accompanying the letters, outgoing publisher Brian Tierney said he was sending them "with a heavy heart, but at the direction of the prospective owners."
"Issuing this kind of ... notice does not happen in every sale," Tierney said. Such notices weren't issued when the previous owner, Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC, bought the newspapers nearly four years ago, he said.
Dan Gross, a Daily News columnist and president of the union that represents newsroom and advertising employees, said he had been assured that no job cuts are planned at the newspapers, which have about 4,500 full-time and part-time workers.
"They reiterated their commitment to offering employment to all current employees," Gross said.
Gov. Ed Rendell said a company lawyer had given him similar assurances and told him the letters were required because of "an entity change."
Rendell said he would have no problem if there were no layoffs or unilateral reductions in wages and benefits, but "if they unilaterally offer ... wages at 75 percent or 50 percent benefit cuts, that would be absolutely wrong and a betrayal of the process."
18 April 2010
Gannett's Posts 51% Profit Leap
USA Today
NEW YORK (AP) — Gannett, the largest U.S. newspaper publisher and publisher of USA TODAY, said Friday its first-quarter profit jumped 51%.
Cost cutting and a less severe drop in advertising revenue boosted the results.
Gannett (GCI) earned $117.2 million, or 49 cents a share, compared with $77.4 million, or 34 cents a share, a year earlier.
Taking out a $2.2 million tax charge related to the recent U.S. health care overhaul, the company said it would have earned 50 cents a share. Analysts, who typically exclude such one-time items, expected 41 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.
Gannett, which is based in McLean, Via., publishes more than 80 daily newspapers. It is the first major publisher to report earnings for the January-March period and could offer a preview of what will come next week from McClatchy, Lee Enterprises and The New York Times Co.
As expected, Gannett reported its smallest ad revenue decline in more than a year, although the comparison is being made against a period in 2009 when advertising spending was plunging in the recession.
Gannett's overall revenue fell 4% from the same period of 2009 to $1.3 billion, matching forecasts. Ad revenue in its publishing division — which accounts for most of the company's income — fell 8%. That was a significant improvement from the decline of 18% that Gannett had in the last quarter of 2009 from the same period a year earlier.
The continued decline in newspaper ads was offset by a 15% rise in TV broadcasting revenue from the prior year. Gannett benefited from advertising tied to the Winter Olympics.
Its stock hit a a 52-week high.
Cost cutting and a less severe drop in advertising revenue boosted the results.
Gannett (GCI) earned $117.2 million, or 49 cents a share, compared with $77.4 million, or 34 cents a share, a year earlier.
Taking out a $2.2 million tax charge related to the recent U.S. health care overhaul, the company said it would have earned 50 cents a share. Analysts, who typically exclude such one-time items, expected 41 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.
Gannett, which is based in McLean, Via., publishes more than 80 daily newspapers. It is the first major publisher to report earnings for the January-March period and could offer a preview of what will come next week from McClatchy, Lee Enterprises and The New York Times Co.
As expected, Gannett reported its smallest ad revenue decline in more than a year, although the comparison is being made against a period in 2009 when advertising spending was plunging in the recession.
Gannett's overall revenue fell 4% from the same period of 2009 to $1.3 billion, matching forecasts. Ad revenue in its publishing division — which accounts for most of the company's income — fell 8%. That was a significant improvement from the decline of 18% that Gannett had in the last quarter of 2009 from the same period a year earlier.
The continued decline in newspaper ads was offset by a 15% rise in TV broadcasting revenue from the prior year. Gannett benefited from advertising tied to the Winter Olympics.
Its stock hit a a 52-week high.
30 March 2010
Murdoch to Sulzberger: You are a Girly Man ?
Vanity Fair
It’s not just that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t like Arthur Sulzberger, or doesn’t think he’s a serious newspaper publisher. It’s that he thinks he’s weak—girly. Sulzberger—“young Arthur”—was a frequent subject during the many hours I talked to Murdoch when I was writing his biography. Sulzberger was always, for Murdoch, a punch line. Murdoch even mimicked him in a way to suggest … well … a certain lack of manhood.
It is a joke that is shared by Murdoch and Robert Thomson, the former Australian-rules football player who is now the editor of Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal: Arthur is a sort of poofter.
Well, on the front page of the Journal’s Weekend section this morning is a feature on how women from healthier populations prefer feminine-looking men. The piece is illustrated with a grid showing facial features of such feminine-looking men..
There is, in the bottom image of the lower quadrant of a male face, an unmistakable—if you pay attention to such things—dimple and odd right ear.
Without a doubt, the Wall Street Journal has selected Arthur Sulzberger as a prime example of its idea of a feminine-looking man.
Pure coincidence?
Murdoch often uses the editorial power of his papers to pursue his business goals. Foremost on his agenda is to maul The New York Times. Murdoch believes that one advantage he has in going after the Times is that Sulzberger is so easy to play and rile up—Murdoch once, with me, used puppet strings to refer to Sulzberger—and that Murdoch has a special understanding for how to get under Sulzberger’s skin. In the past, Murdoch has taken particular delight when the New York Post’s “Page Six” has ridiculed Sulzberger—with Sulzberger calling Murdoch personally to protest. “Whinging” is the word Murdoch uses for Sulzberger’s calls.
So just imagine what Young Arthur felt this morning when he saw the lower quadrant of his face in the Journal representing the archetypal girly-man.
This is a psychological warfare side of what’s going to be a very nasty newspaper war.
It is a joke that is shared by Murdoch and Robert Thomson, the former Australian-rules football player who is now the editor of Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal: Arthur is a sort of poofter.
Well, on the front page of the Journal’s Weekend section this morning is a feature on how women from healthier populations prefer feminine-looking men. The piece is illustrated with a grid showing facial features of such feminine-looking men..
There is, in the bottom image of the lower quadrant of a male face, an unmistakable—if you pay attention to such things—dimple and odd right ear.
Without a doubt, the Wall Street Journal has selected Arthur Sulzberger as a prime example of its idea of a feminine-looking man.
Pure coincidence?
Murdoch often uses the editorial power of his papers to pursue his business goals. Foremost on his agenda is to maul The New York Times. Murdoch believes that one advantage he has in going after the Times is that Sulzberger is so easy to play and rile up—Murdoch once, with me, used puppet strings to refer to Sulzberger—and that Murdoch has a special understanding for how to get under Sulzberger’s skin. In the past, Murdoch has taken particular delight when the New York Post’s “Page Six” has ridiculed Sulzberger—with Sulzberger calling Murdoch personally to protest. “Whinging” is the word Murdoch uses for Sulzberger’s calls.
So just imagine what Young Arthur felt this morning when he saw the lower quadrant of his face in the Journal representing the archetypal girly-man.
This is a psychological warfare side of what’s going to be a very nasty newspaper war.
02 February 2010
McClatchy CEO: Focused On Free, Ad-Supported Content Model
The Wall Street Journal
Gary Pruitt, chief executive with McClatchy Co. (MNI), said Wednesday that while the newspaper publisher is willing to experiment with online paid-content models, it's primarily focused on driving revenue with online content from advertising.
"We tend to believe that the overwhelming model [for the online news publishing industry] will be a free, ad-supported model," said Pruitt on a conference call with analysts following McClatchy's fourth-quarter earnings release.
He noted that online advertising "has proven to be very profitable for us."
Pruitt's comments come as many newspaper publishers have signaled a desire to try charging consumers online for news content as a way to stabilize their businesses, which have suffered amid the rise of web media and the recent downturn in ad markets.
Most notably, The New York Times Co. (NYT) said recently it will launch a metered pay model on the Web site of its flagship newspaper next year, aimed at requiring heavy users of its web site that don't subscribe to its print publication to pay in order to access articles.
The Times Co. is widely viewed as a bellwether for the newspaper industry's efforts to adapt to online media, but Pruitt voiced doubts about whether online subscriptions will flourish into a major business model for the publishing industry.
On the advertising side, prices for display ads have suffered as enormous quantities of inventory have populated the web from giant social media sites like Facebook. Pruitt, however, noted that McClatchy has worked with Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) to use behavorial targeting tools on its sites. He said providing advertisers with the ability to target certain consumers effectively online has helped support its ad pricing.
Pruitt also said McClatchy has had more luck recently with smaller, local advertisers than with large national advertisers, suggesting that the company is having some success in filling a void in local advertising that has been particularly painful for smaller, local media outlets.
McClatchy said its online ad revenue rose 15% in the fourth quarter, and accounted for nearly 16% of total ad revenue, compared with 11% a year earlier.
"Our efforts to evolve into a hybrid print and online media company are advancing," said Pruitt, noting that 44% of its 2009 online ad revenue came from online-only deals.
Despite its progress, a large majority of McClatchy's ad revenue comes from print, which continued to decline in the quarter, dragging down the company's overall revenue by 16.5%.
"The model isn't broken, but on the other hand, we are willing to experiment and see what works," said Pruitt. "If somebody cracks the code, we'll copy it."
"We tend to believe that the overwhelming model [for the online news publishing industry] will be a free, ad-supported model," said Pruitt on a conference call with analysts following McClatchy's fourth-quarter earnings release.
He noted that online advertising "has proven to be very profitable for us."
Pruitt's comments come as many newspaper publishers have signaled a desire to try charging consumers online for news content as a way to stabilize their businesses, which have suffered amid the rise of web media and the recent downturn in ad markets.
Most notably, The New York Times Co. (NYT) said recently it will launch a metered pay model on the Web site of its flagship newspaper next year, aimed at requiring heavy users of its web site that don't subscribe to its print publication to pay in order to access articles.
The Times Co. is widely viewed as a bellwether for the newspaper industry's efforts to adapt to online media, but Pruitt voiced doubts about whether online subscriptions will flourish into a major business model for the publishing industry.
On the advertising side, prices for display ads have suffered as enormous quantities of inventory have populated the web from giant social media sites like Facebook. Pruitt, however, noted that McClatchy has worked with Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) to use behavorial targeting tools on its sites. He said providing advertisers with the ability to target certain consumers effectively online has helped support its ad pricing.
Pruitt also said McClatchy has had more luck recently with smaller, local advertisers than with large national advertisers, suggesting that the company is having some success in filling a void in local advertising that has been particularly painful for smaller, local media outlets.
McClatchy said its online ad revenue rose 15% in the fourth quarter, and accounted for nearly 16% of total ad revenue, compared with 11% a year earlier.
"Our efforts to evolve into a hybrid print and online media company are advancing," said Pruitt, noting that 44% of its 2009 online ad revenue came from online-only deals.
Despite its progress, a large majority of McClatchy's ad revenue comes from print, which continued to decline in the quarter, dragging down the company's overall revenue by 16.5%.
"The model isn't broken, but on the other hand, we are willing to experiment and see what works," said Pruitt. "If somebody cracks the code, we'll copy it."
23 January 2010
Affiliated Media Inc. Files Chapter 11
AP
The owner of The Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News and 52 other daily newspapers filed for bankruptcy protection Friday, joining the procession of publishers choking on too much debt.
The filing by Affiliated Media Inc., the holding company of MediaNews Group, was expected. The privately held company had said Jan. 15 that it would seek to reorganize its finances in bankruptcy court.
The filing by Affiliated Media Inc., the holding company of MediaNews Group, was expected. The privately held company had said Jan. 15 that it would seek to reorganize its finances in bankruptcy court.
MediaNews, based in Denver, says its newspapers and 8,700 employees won't be affected during the bankruptcy proceedings.
Affiliated Media worked with its major lenders and shareholders to hammer out a plan aimed at shortening the company's stay in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. Affiliated hopes to emerge from bankruptcy protection within a month or two.
The plan calls for Affiliated Media's debt to fall to $179 million from $930 million, according to a person familiar with some of the additional bankruptcy documents expected to be filed late Friday. This person wasn't authorized to discuss them before they were filed.
In exchange for this $751 million concession, a group of lenders led by Bank of America become the company's majority owners with 88 percent of the stock. The remaining 12 percent goes to MediaNews' management team, which is led by William Dean Singleton, who is also chairman of The Associated Press. The MediaNews executives will receive warrants that eventually could boost their combined stakes to 20 percent.
Heading into the bankruptcy filing, Singleton held a roughly 30 percent stake in Affiliated.
Richard Scudder, who co-founded MediaNews with Singleton in 1985, will relinquish his interests in the company to the lenders.
Singleton will also continue to run MediaNews, signaling the lenders remain confident in him despite the company's recent struggles.
The decision probably stems from Singleton's reputation as a hard-nosed businessman who has never shied away from cutting costs, said Alan Mutter, a former newspaper editor who blogs on the media business.
"Who do we know who can go in and run the hell out of a newspaper and make a buck?" he said. "The only answer is William Dean Singleton."
MediaNews spokesman Seth Faison declined to comment Friday.
Despite MediaNews' troubles, Singleton says all but one of the company's newspapers are profitable. He hasn't identified which one is losing money.
"By aggressively facing the challenges of the newspaper business, we will continue to deliver high-quality journalism and will prepare our newspapers for a promising future," Singleton said in a statement Friday.
Apparently, not even Singleton could figure out a way to deal with all the debt that MediaNews took on to expand into new markets. Like other publishers, Singleton borrowed heavily before the Internet and recent recession began to devour the newspaper's main source of income - advertising.
Last year was particularly hard on big newspapers as the industry's print ad sales plunged by nearly 30 percent. Some of the revenue is expected to return as the economy bounces back, but much of it is expected to remain on the Internet, where many marketers are finding they can generate more sales for less money.
At least 14 U.S. newspaper publishers have now filed for bankruptcy protection in the past 13 months.
"What (Singleton) did was what everyone else did - make acquisitions not knowing that in 18 months they'd see a 30 percent decline in advertising and then run out of options," said newspaper analyst Edward Atorino of Benchmark Co.
Affiliated's annual revenue has fallen by $270 million, or 20 percent, during the past two fiscal years. The erosion pared Affiliated's revenue to $1.06 billion in fiscal 2009, which ended June 30.
Another major newspaper publisher, Hearst Corp., is one of the biggest losers in Affiliated's reorganization.
The plan calls for Hearst to lose the roughly 30 percent stake it held in MediaNews' newspapers outside the San Francisco Bay area.
Hearst got its MediaNews stock as part of a complicated deal to acquire The Monterey County Herald and St. Paul Pioneer Press from McClatchy Co. in 2006. Hearst invested $317.3 million in MediaNews, which then bought the two newspapers and the Torrance Daily Breeze from Hearst.
Although the bankruptcy documents don't say it directly, Hearst's holdings clearly weren't worth anywhere close to the $317 million that it paid a few years ago. Affiliated Media estimates the market value of its total enterprise at $190 million to $230 million. The company also said it has $53 million in cash.
As part of the bankruptcy case, Hearst will get warrants that could be converted into MediaNews stock in the future, Faison said.
Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer declined to comment.
Affiliated Media worked with its major lenders and shareholders to hammer out a plan aimed at shortening the company's stay in federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. Affiliated hopes to emerge from bankruptcy protection within a month or two.
The plan calls for Affiliated Media's debt to fall to $179 million from $930 million, according to a person familiar with some of the additional bankruptcy documents expected to be filed late Friday. This person wasn't authorized to discuss them before they were filed.
In exchange for this $751 million concession, a group of lenders led by Bank of America become the company's majority owners with 88 percent of the stock. The remaining 12 percent goes to MediaNews' management team, which is led by William Dean Singleton, who is also chairman of The Associated Press. The MediaNews executives will receive warrants that eventually could boost their combined stakes to 20 percent.
Heading into the bankruptcy filing, Singleton held a roughly 30 percent stake in Affiliated.
Richard Scudder, who co-founded MediaNews with Singleton in 1985, will relinquish his interests in the company to the lenders.
Singleton will also continue to run MediaNews, signaling the lenders remain confident in him despite the company's recent struggles.
The decision probably stems from Singleton's reputation as a hard-nosed businessman who has never shied away from cutting costs, said Alan Mutter, a former newspaper editor who blogs on the media business.
"Who do we know who can go in and run the hell out of a newspaper and make a buck?" he said. "The only answer is William Dean Singleton."
MediaNews spokesman Seth Faison declined to comment Friday.
Despite MediaNews' troubles, Singleton says all but one of the company's newspapers are profitable. He hasn't identified which one is losing money.
"By aggressively facing the challenges of the newspaper business, we will continue to deliver high-quality journalism and will prepare our newspapers for a promising future," Singleton said in a statement Friday.
Apparently, not even Singleton could figure out a way to deal with all the debt that MediaNews took on to expand into new markets. Like other publishers, Singleton borrowed heavily before the Internet and recent recession began to devour the newspaper's main source of income - advertising.
Last year was particularly hard on big newspapers as the industry's print ad sales plunged by nearly 30 percent. Some of the revenue is expected to return as the economy bounces back, but much of it is expected to remain on the Internet, where many marketers are finding they can generate more sales for less money.
At least 14 U.S. newspaper publishers have now filed for bankruptcy protection in the past 13 months.
"What (Singleton) did was what everyone else did - make acquisitions not knowing that in 18 months they'd see a 30 percent decline in advertising and then run out of options," said newspaper analyst Edward Atorino of Benchmark Co.
Affiliated's annual revenue has fallen by $270 million, or 20 percent, during the past two fiscal years. The erosion pared Affiliated's revenue to $1.06 billion in fiscal 2009, which ended June 30.
Another major newspaper publisher, Hearst Corp., is one of the biggest losers in Affiliated's reorganization.
The plan calls for Hearst to lose the roughly 30 percent stake it held in MediaNews' newspapers outside the San Francisco Bay area.
Hearst got its MediaNews stock as part of a complicated deal to acquire The Monterey County Herald and St. Paul Pioneer Press from McClatchy Co. in 2006. Hearst invested $317.3 million in MediaNews, which then bought the two newspapers and the Torrance Daily Breeze from Hearst.
Although the bankruptcy documents don't say it directly, Hearst's holdings clearly weren't worth anywhere close to the $317 million that it paid a few years ago. Affiliated Media estimates the market value of its total enterprise at $190 million to $230 million. The company also said it has $53 million in cash.
As part of the bankruptcy case, Hearst will get warrants that could be converted into MediaNews stock in the future, Faison said.
Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer declined to comment.
05 January 2010
Bono Blasts Internet Bosses
MSN
U2 frontman Bono has slammed internet service providers for allowing customers to trade rock records online -- branding them "reverse Robin Hoods."
The rocker accuses wealthy web executives of benefiting from the ailing music industry, which loses potential profits whenever albums are illegally downloaded.
And he's warned that the same problem could cripple Hollywood as the popularity of sharing films over the internet increases.
In a column in the New York Times, Bono writes: "The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we're just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of (TV series) 24 in 24 seconds.
"A decade's worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators... The people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.
"The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files."
The "Beautiful Day" hitmaker believes the problem would be solved if internet service providers monitor their file-sharers and enforce strict controls, adding: "We know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content...
"Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly four per cent of gross domestic product."
And he's warned that the same problem could cripple Hollywood as the popularity of sharing films over the internet increases.
In a column in the New York Times, Bono writes: "The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we're just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of (TV series) 24 in 24 seconds.
"A decade's worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators... The people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.
"The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files."
The "Beautiful Day" hitmaker believes the problem would be solved if internet service providers monitor their file-sharers and enforce strict controls, adding: "We know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content...
"Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly four per cent of gross domestic product."
09 December 2009
Dave Eggers: Author, Screenwriter...Newspaper Publisher?
LA Times
Reporting from San Francisco - Dave Eggers doesn't look like a newspaper baron. At 39, wearing a baseball cap and hiking boots, the author -- whose most recent project is the screenplay for "Where the Wild Things Are" -- appears more an older brother to the interns who work feverishly in the Mission District offices of McSweeney's, the independent publisher Eggers founded with the proceeds from his bestselling 2000 memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."
In addition to books and a monthly magazine, McSweeney's publishes a literary journal, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the new issue of which is set to appear here today in a form that confounds every trend in publishing: a 300-plus-page Sunday-style broadsheet newspaper called the San Francisco Panorama, with which Eggers and company mean to celebrate the glory of the form. Featuring news and sports as well as stand-alone food and arts sections, a magazine and a 96-page pullout Book Review, the Panorama is both homage and conversation starter.
"We don't pretend to have the solutions," Eggers says. "We're just asking a few questions. We admit how little we know, but we're trying to luxuriate in print and maybe remind people of everything it can do."
McSweeney's' projects are marked by an intention to break boundaries, and nowhere is this more true than with the quarterly. A 2005 issue was published as a bundle of mail, and other issues have come in a variety of shapes and styles.
The Panorama will be big, its pages 15 by 22 inches, and lavishly laid out, with attention to color and graphics. A two-page spread in the food section illustrates how to make bruschetta, beginning with the butchering of a lamb. The sports section features a gallery of drawings from the World Series, laid out to resemble something from a newspaper of 80 years ago.
The writing represents contemporary literary journalism at its best. Stephen King -- a Red Sox fan who views the New York Yankees with what he describes as "fear and loathing" -- reports from Baseball City, where the World Series takes place in Bloat Stadium, at the intersection of Greed Avenue and Stupid Street. Novelist Andrew Sean Greer goes to Michigan to experience NASCAR firsthand.
"Our hope," Eggers notes, "is that readers will say, 'I forgot all these things that newsprint can do.' I think it's life-affirming when you say, 'Let's just write it at the length it needs to be and not keep shrinking everything.' "
Of course, it's easy to make such an argument when you're not dealing with the issues facing the commercial press. "In 2005," says Alan D. Mutter, who writes the blog Reflections of Newsosaur, "newspapers racked up a record $49 billion in ad sales. This year, they'll be lucky if they can get $28 billion."
Eggers understands these challenges. "All our friends at dailies," he says, "can't experiment the way we can because we don't have anyone to answer to." The Panorama will come out once, with a cover price of $16 in an edition of about 25,000. Although there is a plan to sell the paper on the streets in San Francisco today, national distribution will take place Wednesday via the Internet and bookstores (including Book Soup and Skylight Books in Los Angeles).
Of course, there's more to the project than simply a demonstration of what newspapers once could do. This too is typical McSweeney's. Indeed, the imprint has become a brand, the apotheosis of writerly hip in a world where cachet for literature is sorely lacking. In addition to its publishing efforts, the press works closely with 826 National, a nonprofit literacy organization for kids 6 to 18 that Eggers established in 2002. What connects these endeavors is a sense that writing and publishing should be ambitious.
Among the centerpieces of the Panorama is an investigative piece by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Porterfield, looking into cost overruns in the renovation of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. It's an effort undertaken in conjunction with SF Public Press, a nonprofit Web-based start-up that is looking to fill gaps in local news coverage that have arisen with the contraction of the mainstream press.
Although the San Francisco Chronicle bills itself as "Northern California's largest newspaper," circulation is in decline and staff has been cut; the San Francisco Examiner, meanwhile, is now a free tabloid, distributed six days a week.
"The Panorama is a perfect partner," says Michael Stoll, a former reporter and editor at the Examiner and Philadelphia Inquirer who is now the Public Press' project director and has been a key liaison on the Bay Bridge piece. "They share the same love of the medium but haven't joined the stampede that has given up print for dead."
The Porterfield investigation will encompass more than 10,000 words and half a dozen graphic elements, split between a main piece and several sidebars. It's the kind of thing, Eggers notes, that is hard to do online. This, in turn, suggests a multi-platform approach, in which Twitter or Web updates are used for breaking news and print becomes an outlet for analysis and commentary. "The only thing that doesn't work," Stoll says, "is a single-media strategy."
The McSweeney's effort taps into a larger conversation about the future of long-form journalism in a world where traditional venues are in flux. Last month, the Virginia Quarterly Review, another literary journal, used its website to post an 18,000-word piece in four installments about last year's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. "That's one way of experimenting," says Robert Boynton, director of literary reporting at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
"People constantly underestimate the reading appetite of the American public," Boynton adds, "But there's as big an interest in long-form journalism today as there has ever been, and as we experiment with different delivery systems it will only grow."
That's an optimistic assessment, but it's one Eggers shares. "All of the interns pay for magazines," he says. "They'll read the New Yorker, or they'll read Mother Jones. They'll pay for that, but a lot of them weren't paying for the newspaper anymore. So we started thinking, what if you offered the same sort of depth, analysis, literary value that you get in a magazine? When people sit down, they want to have an experience, and if you surprise them on every page, curate it in such a way that it's constantly surprising and constantly delighting, I think you could keep them."
In addition to books and a monthly magazine, McSweeney's publishes a literary journal, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the new issue of which is set to appear here today in a form that confounds every trend in publishing: a 300-plus-page Sunday-style broadsheet newspaper called the San Francisco Panorama, with which Eggers and company mean to celebrate the glory of the form. Featuring news and sports as well as stand-alone food and arts sections, a magazine and a 96-page pullout Book Review, the Panorama is both homage and conversation starter.
"We don't pretend to have the solutions," Eggers says. "We're just asking a few questions. We admit how little we know, but we're trying to luxuriate in print and maybe remind people of everything it can do."
McSweeney's' projects are marked by an intention to break boundaries, and nowhere is this more true than with the quarterly. A 2005 issue was published as a bundle of mail, and other issues have come in a variety of shapes and styles.
The Panorama will be big, its pages 15 by 22 inches, and lavishly laid out, with attention to color and graphics. A two-page spread in the food section illustrates how to make bruschetta, beginning with the butchering of a lamb. The sports section features a gallery of drawings from the World Series, laid out to resemble something from a newspaper of 80 years ago.
The writing represents contemporary literary journalism at its best. Stephen King -- a Red Sox fan who views the New York Yankees with what he describes as "fear and loathing" -- reports from Baseball City, where the World Series takes place in Bloat Stadium, at the intersection of Greed Avenue and Stupid Street. Novelist Andrew Sean Greer goes to Michigan to experience NASCAR firsthand.
"Our hope," Eggers notes, "is that readers will say, 'I forgot all these things that newsprint can do.' I think it's life-affirming when you say, 'Let's just write it at the length it needs to be and not keep shrinking everything.' "
Of course, it's easy to make such an argument when you're not dealing with the issues facing the commercial press. "In 2005," says Alan D. Mutter, who writes the blog Reflections of Newsosaur, "newspapers racked up a record $49 billion in ad sales. This year, they'll be lucky if they can get $28 billion."
Eggers understands these challenges. "All our friends at dailies," he says, "can't experiment the way we can because we don't have anyone to answer to." The Panorama will come out once, with a cover price of $16 in an edition of about 25,000. Although there is a plan to sell the paper on the streets in San Francisco today, national distribution will take place Wednesday via the Internet and bookstores (including Book Soup and Skylight Books in Los Angeles).
Of course, there's more to the project than simply a demonstration of what newspapers once could do. This too is typical McSweeney's. Indeed, the imprint has become a brand, the apotheosis of writerly hip in a world where cachet for literature is sorely lacking. In addition to its publishing efforts, the press works closely with 826 National, a nonprofit literacy organization for kids 6 to 18 that Eggers established in 2002. What connects these endeavors is a sense that writing and publishing should be ambitious.
Among the centerpieces of the Panorama is an investigative piece by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Porterfield, looking into cost overruns in the renovation of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. It's an effort undertaken in conjunction with SF Public Press, a nonprofit Web-based start-up that is looking to fill gaps in local news coverage that have arisen with the contraction of the mainstream press.
Although the San Francisco Chronicle bills itself as "Northern California's largest newspaper," circulation is in decline and staff has been cut; the San Francisco Examiner, meanwhile, is now a free tabloid, distributed six days a week.
"The Panorama is a perfect partner," says Michael Stoll, a former reporter and editor at the Examiner and Philadelphia Inquirer who is now the Public Press' project director and has been a key liaison on the Bay Bridge piece. "They share the same love of the medium but haven't joined the stampede that has given up print for dead."
The Porterfield investigation will encompass more than 10,000 words and half a dozen graphic elements, split between a main piece and several sidebars. It's the kind of thing, Eggers notes, that is hard to do online. This, in turn, suggests a multi-platform approach, in which Twitter or Web updates are used for breaking news and print becomes an outlet for analysis and commentary. "The only thing that doesn't work," Stoll says, "is a single-media strategy."
The McSweeney's effort taps into a larger conversation about the future of long-form journalism in a world where traditional venues are in flux. Last month, the Virginia Quarterly Review, another literary journal, used its website to post an 18,000-word piece in four installments about last year's terrorist attacks in Mumbai. "That's one way of experimenting," says Robert Boynton, director of literary reporting at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
"People constantly underestimate the reading appetite of the American public," Boynton adds, "But there's as big an interest in long-form journalism today as there has ever been, and as we experiment with different delivery systems it will only grow."
That's an optimistic assessment, but it's one Eggers shares. "All of the interns pay for magazines," he says. "They'll read the New Yorker, or they'll read Mother Jones. They'll pay for that, but a lot of them weren't paying for the newspaper anymore. So we started thinking, what if you offered the same sort of depth, analysis, literary value that you get in a magazine? When people sit down, they want to have an experience, and if you surprise them on every page, curate it in such a way that it's constantly surprising and constantly delighting, I think you could keep them."
02 December 2009
Britain's Johnston Press Experimenting With Paid Content
Times Online
Britain’s most prolific newspaper publisher began charging yesterday for some of its online content, in a closely watched move that could be copied across the country.
Johnston Press, which owns more than 300 local newspapers including the Yorkshire Post and The Scotsman, put “paywalls” around the websites of six of its titles. It is the first regional publisher to charge for online news.
From yesterday, readers of three Johnston titles, the Northumberland Gazette, the Whitby Gazette and the Southern Reporter, will pay £5 for a three-month online subscription. Three others papers, the Carrick Gazette, the Worksop Guardian and Ripley and Heanor News, will post summaries online and tell readers to buy the paper for the full story.
John Fry, the chief executive of Johnston Press, said that his industry had become more open recently to charging for content. “In the last six months the nature of the conversation has changed,” he said.
Mr Fry will judge whether the experiment has been a success before deciding whether to extend the scheme.
Rival publishing groups await the results of the three-month trial. Like them, Johnston Press has been bombarded by both recession and a declining readership. Advertising revenues at the group slumped by 42 per cent over the past two years. Although the decline is bottoming out, executives across the newspaper industry are looking at new ways to boost earnings. “It’s clearly an interesting opportunity for the industry,” said Lynne Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Newspaper Society, which represents local titles. “We would expect more publishers to start exploring whether consumers would be willing to pay for different sections of local content.”
The Johnston scheme follows the announcement by Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corporation, that he intends to introduce fees for all of the group’s news websites, including The Times. Mr Murdoch’s plans were boosted this month by a Boston Consulting Group survey which found that 48 per cent of British and American consumers would be willing to pay for online news.
But other surveys have reached different conclusions, and some media commentators still think charging for online content is risky. “If you have content which broadly can be found somewhere else you’re going to really restrict people coming to your website,” Emily Bell, director of digital content at the Guardian, told Radio 4 yesterday.
Mr Fry emphasised that his local newspapers offered a “unique” service which readers may be prepared to pay for. Reports on local court and council meetings, for instance, could not be accessed elsewhere.
In America, newspaper paywalls have had varying degrees of success. In 2007 The New York Times scrapped its premium subscription programme for online access to columnists and its archive. But the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, which charges online, has maintained its circulation and income.
Specialist publications such as the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, another News Corp title, also have subscription services.
Mingling with other regional newspaper executives at a lunch hosted yesterday by the Newspaper Society, Mr Fry also accused the BBC of “nicking content” through its local news websites. The corporation was “threatening to collapse the news pyramid”, he said. A BBC spokewoman said that the corporation was “a strong contributor to original local journalism”.
Speaking at the lunch was Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, who said there was a “strong case” for alternative public content providers to keep the BBC “on its toes”.
A national roll-out of independently funded news groups is scheduled for 2013, he said.
Last week Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, hinted that he would rein in the Corporation’s online local news output. Mr Thompson said that a strategy review to be announced in the New Year would make sure that the “many millions of pages that are up there need to be there”.
“It might be a slightly smaller website,” he said. “It might be stronger, making sure we are playing to our strengths.”
Reader reaction
Whitby Gazette
In the Yorkshire fishing port of Whitby the idea of paying £5 to subscribe to the online version of the local paper for three months did not impress the residents (Andrew Norfolk writes).
Jane Legge, 58, said that the Whitby Gazette would be “lucky” if people subscribed to an online service that was “not very easy to look at and navigate around. I think that paying for news online has got to happen eventually, otherwise newspapers will go under, but I wouldn’t subscribe. To say there’s not a lot going on in Whitby would be an understatement.”
Worksop Guardian
Online readers of the Worksop Guardian are being tempted by the first sentence of each story, then told that they should buy a copy of the paper (Andrew Norfolk writes). Residents questioned yesterday whether anything ever happened in the town that was exciting enough for a single-sentence summary to make them eager to spend 60p on the paper.
Dawn Hamilton, 19, a student, said: “I don’t think putting teasers on the internet will work.” But Daniel Hall, 24, said: “£5 for three months wouldn’t be very much.”
Johnston Press, which owns more than 300 local newspapers including the Yorkshire Post and The Scotsman, put “paywalls” around the websites of six of its titles. It is the first regional publisher to charge for online news.
From yesterday, readers of three Johnston titles, the Northumberland Gazette, the Whitby Gazette and the Southern Reporter, will pay £5 for a three-month online subscription. Three others papers, the Carrick Gazette, the Worksop Guardian and Ripley and Heanor News, will post summaries online and tell readers to buy the paper for the full story.
John Fry, the chief executive of Johnston Press, said that his industry had become more open recently to charging for content. “In the last six months the nature of the conversation has changed,” he said.
Mr Fry will judge whether the experiment has been a success before deciding whether to extend the scheme.
Rival publishing groups await the results of the three-month trial. Like them, Johnston Press has been bombarded by both recession and a declining readership. Advertising revenues at the group slumped by 42 per cent over the past two years. Although the decline is bottoming out, executives across the newspaper industry are looking at new ways to boost earnings. “It’s clearly an interesting opportunity for the industry,” said Lynne Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Newspaper Society, which represents local titles. “We would expect more publishers to start exploring whether consumers would be willing to pay for different sections of local content.”
The Johnston scheme follows the announcement by Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corporation, that he intends to introduce fees for all of the group’s news websites, including The Times. Mr Murdoch’s plans were boosted this month by a Boston Consulting Group survey which found that 48 per cent of British and American consumers would be willing to pay for online news.
But other surveys have reached different conclusions, and some media commentators still think charging for online content is risky. “If you have content which broadly can be found somewhere else you’re going to really restrict people coming to your website,” Emily Bell, director of digital content at the Guardian, told Radio 4 yesterday.
Mr Fry emphasised that his local newspapers offered a “unique” service which readers may be prepared to pay for. Reports on local court and council meetings, for instance, could not be accessed elsewhere.
In America, newspaper paywalls have had varying degrees of success. In 2007 The New York Times scrapped its premium subscription programme for online access to columnists and its archive. But the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, which charges online, has maintained its circulation and income.
Specialist publications such as the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, another News Corp title, also have subscription services.
Mingling with other regional newspaper executives at a lunch hosted yesterday by the Newspaper Society, Mr Fry also accused the BBC of “nicking content” through its local news websites. The corporation was “threatening to collapse the news pyramid”, he said. A BBC spokewoman said that the corporation was “a strong contributor to original local journalism”.
Speaking at the lunch was Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, who said there was a “strong case” for alternative public content providers to keep the BBC “on its toes”.
A national roll-out of independently funded news groups is scheduled for 2013, he said.
Last week Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, hinted that he would rein in the Corporation’s online local news output. Mr Thompson said that a strategy review to be announced in the New Year would make sure that the “many millions of pages that are up there need to be there”.
“It might be a slightly smaller website,” he said. “It might be stronger, making sure we are playing to our strengths.”
Reader reaction
Whitby Gazette
In the Yorkshire fishing port of Whitby the idea of paying £5 to subscribe to the online version of the local paper for three months did not impress the residents (Andrew Norfolk writes).
Jane Legge, 58, said that the Whitby Gazette would be “lucky” if people subscribed to an online service that was “not very easy to look at and navigate around. I think that paying for news online has got to happen eventually, otherwise newspapers will go under, but I wouldn’t subscribe. To say there’s not a lot going on in Whitby would be an understatement.”
Worksop Guardian
Online readers of the Worksop Guardian are being tempted by the first sentence of each story, then told that they should buy a copy of the paper (Andrew Norfolk writes). Residents questioned yesterday whether anything ever happened in the town that was exciting enough for a single-sentence summary to make them eager to spend 60p on the paper.
Dawn Hamilton, 19, a student, said: “I don’t think putting teasers on the internet will work.” But Daniel Hall, 24, said: “£5 for three months wouldn’t be very much.”
13 November 2009
Murdoch To Try Making Paid Content Stick
from Media Buyer Planner
Rupert Murdoch plans to use the Sunday Times as a test for his new push to charge for online content, beginning in November.
The Sunday Times website is currently combined with sister title the Times, but it will be launched as a stand-alone site in the fall and will begin charging a fee to access content, according to the Guardian. So far, it is unclear whether the site will charge a fee for each visit, or whether it will offer a subscription model.
Following the announcement of huge financial losses in its fourth quarter, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said earlier this week that the company will charge for access to all news websites, including FoxNews.com, by the middle of next year. News Corp. revenue fell 11% to $7.7 billion in the quarter ended June 30; the company’s loss was $203 million, down from a $1.1 billion net gain last year.
The Sunday Times is the largest of the weekend newspapers in the U.K., with more than 1 million copies sold per week. It has long offset losses at the Times, but is now thought to be losing money.
Murdoch’s public announcement that he plans to charge for all titles indicates he may be subtly encouraging competitors to do the same, industry executives say. “[Murdoch] knows that this will work better if all the main competitors do it,” Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunday Times and a key executive in Murdoch’s empire, is quoted as saying. But Neil said the online version of the paper will have to change significantly and have a distinct character, different from the print version, if a pay model is to succeed.
Meanwhile, readers of the News Corp.-owned Australian news site, news.com.au, are threatening to quit News Corp. sites should Murdoch make good on his plan to charge for content. More than 140 replies from readers were attached to Murdoch’s announcement, with most of them opposed to the move.
Murdoch is likely aware the move will not be a popular one among readers - but if he is successful in prompting enough other newspaper companies to charge for content, readers may have little choice but to ante up for the news. “Quality journalism is not cheap,” Murdoch said (via Australian paper The Age). “An industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting.”
Murdoch is not alone in his claim that quality journalism does not come cheaply. BusinessWeek points out that New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, for example, used a similar phrase in an interview last December with NPR.
The most prominent newspapers that charge for content online are the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Both offer some content for free but charge fees to those who want complete access.
The Sunday Times website is currently combined with sister title the Times, but it will be launched as a stand-alone site in the fall and will begin charging a fee to access content, according to the Guardian. So far, it is unclear whether the site will charge a fee for each visit, or whether it will offer a subscription model.
Following the announcement of huge financial losses in its fourth quarter, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch said earlier this week that the company will charge for access to all news websites, including FoxNews.com, by the middle of next year. News Corp. revenue fell 11% to $7.7 billion in the quarter ended June 30; the company’s loss was $203 million, down from a $1.1 billion net gain last year.
The Sunday Times is the largest of the weekend newspapers in the U.K., with more than 1 million copies sold per week. It has long offset losses at the Times, but is now thought to be losing money.
Murdoch’s public announcement that he plans to charge for all titles indicates he may be subtly encouraging competitors to do the same, industry executives say. “[Murdoch] knows that this will work better if all the main competitors do it,” Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunday Times and a key executive in Murdoch’s empire, is quoted as saying. But Neil said the online version of the paper will have to change significantly and have a distinct character, different from the print version, if a pay model is to succeed.
Meanwhile, readers of the News Corp.-owned Australian news site, news.com.au, are threatening to quit News Corp. sites should Murdoch make good on his plan to charge for content. More than 140 replies from readers were attached to Murdoch’s announcement, with most of them opposed to the move.
Murdoch is likely aware the move will not be a popular one among readers - but if he is successful in prompting enough other newspaper companies to charge for content, readers may have little choice but to ante up for the news. “Quality journalism is not cheap,” Murdoch said (via Australian paper The Age). “An industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting.”
Murdoch is not alone in his claim that quality journalism does not come cheaply. BusinessWeek points out that New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, for example, used a similar phrase in an interview last December with NPR.
The most prominent newspapers that charge for content online are the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Both offer some content for free but charge fees to those who want complete access.
How NOT To Show Up In Google SERPs
Rupert Murdoch is determined to change the way print content is treated on the web. In addition to being one of the first and largest media companies to plan a full-scale switch from free to paid content models for its newspapers, Murdoch is saying he will block News Corp content from being indexed by Google.
The issue involves the debate surrounding free versus paid content. Murdoch has made it clear for months that he believes free content online devalues the worth of the content. With that in mind, News Corp plans to stop offering its news sites for free, though Murdoch has said the company might not meet its own deadline of charging for content across all sites by the middle of next year. Murdoch’s company has clearly been at the forefront of the debate, and Murdoch expects a paid model to begin to be played out more and more often over the next two years.
News Corp, if it does indeed block Google’s access to its content, will be the first major media company to do so. “The traffic which comes in from Google SEO brings a consumer who more often than not reads one article and then leaves the site,” Miller says. “That is the least valuable traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it.”Google, for its part, claims to send news organizations about 100,000 clicks every minute. “Publishers put their content on the web because they want it to be found,” said a spokesperson (via the Telegraph). “But if they tell us not to include it, we don’t.”
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