Search results matching tag 'The New York Times'

Sad but true: buy one newspaper title and get another free

255762 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:31:00 GMT

There is something a little sad and dispiriting about this. It is being reported that whoever buys the Boston Globe will get another New England newspaper thrown in for free. In this case the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

It is almost like some newspapers are doing so badly that media owners are willing to give them away as opposed to simply closing them down, which can be more costly depending on labour deals.

It could be taken as an indication of how keen the New York Times Company is to offload the Boston Globe, I mean why else would it also be willing to throw in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette?

The bundling of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette with the Boston Globe comes according to a letter sent to possible bidders by Goldman Sachs, which is handling the sale of the loss making paper. The letter was (funnily enough) seen by New York Times reporters. This always makes me laugh particularly when the story includes (as this one does) the line that the New York Times Co had no comment to make.

"The confidential letter from the company’s investment bankers at Goldman Sachs, which was obtained by a Times reporter, says the company will focus on getting the highest price and “on the certainty and speed with which bidders can sign a definitive agreement and complete an acquisition.” It sets a July 8 deadline for initial, nonbinding bids, after which the company would choose which potential buyers would participate in a second round and would be allowed to submit binding offers," the New York Times reported.

On Paidcontent, which blogged the story, it also had that an internal New York Times Co memo sent out earlier this week, revenues at the New England Media Group (which includes the Globe, Boston.com, the Telegram & Gazette and its website) were revealed to have declined from $700m in 2004 to $524m last year. The Boston Globe itself is set to lose $85m this year alone.

There are three bidders in the running for the paper including Jack Connors, co-founder of Hill Holiday.

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No bounce back for traditional media says Ballmer

255762 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:50:00 GMT

Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive, was sounding pessimistic in Cannes yesterday and warned publishers that there was going to be no bounce back and that the global advertising economy had reset for good.

Ballmer argued that traditional print media will have to plan business models around a smaller share of the advertising market.

To be honest not exactly a news flash. Nor is the fact that publishers are failing to generate serious digital revenues.

Ballmer said: "Once you get past the Google search site, you say, 'Is there a publisher making a lot of money with an advertising- or fee-based model?' The answer is no. We have to ask who will be creating the content."

It could be me, but he's sounding a tad pessimistic. I think one of the issues that people often forget when they predict doom and gloom is that this is all pretty new.

And in some senses the recession has been a benefit as it has forced publishers to maybe face up to questions about paid content faster than they might have done. It's the thing about adversity driving innovation and development.

Ballmer talked about all content being digital in two, five or ten years, but it has only been ten years since we really got on this road and maybe only four or five since the levels of investment publishers were pouring in started to rise dramatically.

So far these are investments that have not been recouped. It's been a period of experimentation: it began with charging; then it became free and now we're back again with the realisation that it is probably a mixture of the two.

It is too soon to make sweeping judgements about making or not making money online. The challenge is to make money and to experiment.

Some paid content will come back as publishers also realise they can charge for mobile phone access and e-readers like the Amazon Kindle. Not all these experiments will work, but some will.

What underscores all of them is continuing to build strong communities online and building loyalty. That's the only way to ensure future growth and profitability.

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Google drops idea to buy a newspaper what is the industry going to do now!?

255762 — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:23:00 GMT

Did Google ever really want a newspaper? Did it want the New York Times? Well it doesn't now and has told the FT that it is really not interested. Maybe it has worked out that, well, while it can make money out of newspapers they in themselves are worthless black holes.

There had been speculation that Google might buy something like the New York Times and turn it into a charitable trust, but according to CEO Eric Schmidt this idea is as dead, well, as some US newspapers. He also appeared to rule out buying the 19% stake in the paper that is owned by investment firm Harbinger Capital (who are clearly wishing they never bought it).

FT: Would you ever consider buying a newspaper; they’re cheap right now?

Eric Schmidt: We've actually looked at this and we're trying to avoid crossing the line between the infrastructure and technology that Google provides and the content that our partners provide. There is a line and we're trying to stay on our side it.

FT: And so the Harbinger Capital doesn’t hold any appeal for you?

ES: I don’t want to comment about a specific stake and ownership but, in general, we have done well by letting content people do content in their own terms and in their own way, and working with them to try to make some significant money for them.

In short Google wants to focus on the bit of the business that makes money. And you have to get the irony here. Google has risen to fame and fortune to a great extent on the endeavours of others.

It is one of the few firms that have made a lot of money out of content online. That is the truth.

Google is a something of a sneaky operator. Having made all of this money out of content it should in some way now contribute, give something back if you want, for all that it has taken. Maybe buying a newspaper is one way of doing it. I'm sure there are others.

But what does Schmidt have to say about this? Well, as the FT put it, he "played down industry calls for Google to increase the amount of revenue it shared with news organisations whose content appears on Google News".

"We've decided that the value we provide to the partners is the traffic. So we want to provide incredible numbers of users going to their sites, their content, which is why we urge them to make it deeper, stronger and use better tools and so forth. From our perspective, that’s where the real source would be."

He apparently said that to do this Google would have to take money from “another pocket” to do so. Would that be another really deep pocket? I'm guessing so.

What Google is doing is working with newspapers in some shape or form including The Washington Post.

"With a number of newspapers, and The Washington Post being an example, we are very interested in trying to develop online news versions that somehow address the immediate needs of people and for which advertising works better. Without commenting specifically about products it seems to me that the newspaper that I read online should remember what I read. It should allow me to go deeper into the stories. It’s that kind of a discussion that we’re having.

Schmidt is also clear that as far as paid content goes, it is not going to happen except in specialist and B2B cases, which appears to be the general consensus.

"I think it's [paid content] unlikely to work although people will certainly try it and they’re welcome to do so. And the reason is that for most content people are preferring an advertising model. There will be some very specialised content, you know, high-quality newspaper articles, magazines, that sort of thing, which I suspect subscriptions will work for. But for the average news that everybody gets today they would prefer an advertising-supportive model."

The full transcript of the FT.com's comprehensive interview is here.

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New York Times one of the few that can thrive in a digital age

255762 — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:03:00 GMT

John Gapper in the FT today has a good piece on the woes of the New York Times, but he says the Gray Lady is one of the "few print publications with a good chance of thriving in the digital age".

It has been a helluva week for the New York Times as mogul David Geffen emerged as someone being interested in buying a stake in the New York Times Company and elsewhere it was speculated by Gawker that Mexican billionaire, Carlos Slim, could become the biggest shareholder in the New York Times in the next couple of years because of the high interest rates the Ochs-Sulzberger family borrowed $250m at.

Gapper says that while it must be tempting for Arthur Sulzberger Junior to sell up, he says that unlike the Bancroft family who cashed in two years ago and sold the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation, he should hang on.

"The family should learn from its mistakes by holding on to the enterprise long enough to clean up its balance sheet and put the paper on a solid footing. Then it should retire with dignity by selling it to someone with sharper instincts.

"Despite the financial errors of the controlling family, The New York Times is not just another doomed US city paper. It is one of the few print publications with a good chance of thriving in the digital age."

He has some praise for the Ochs-Sulzbergers. This for instance, he says they are better publishers than media owners, which has seen them turn a city paper into a national and global brand with a loyal, affluent readership in print and online.

Compare that to the Graham family and The Washington Post, which has lost some of its heyday cache as it has become more local and less an international force.

Talking of newspaper brands that have made a global impact, The Guardian always gets a mention here. Not always like this though as Gapper takes a swipe in his piece, which seems harsh.

"Meanwhile, it [The New York Times] produces more original stories than most rivals put together. The UK’s Guardian is another paper that has built a global brand from what was a regional paper, but it relies more on cut-and- pasting (or aggregating) from others."

Looking towards the future what the paper really needs he says is an owner to best exploit its power and reputation as a force in journalism on and offline. Big question: is that owner person a Mexican telecoms billionaire such as Slim or an entertainment mogul such as Geffen? What does Geffen want with the paper anyway? The kind of owner it needs Gapper says is another billionaire, Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg.

"Bloomberg, who is demonstrably attached to New York, has entrepreneurial and financial talent, has a track record of cultivating rigorous and independent journalism, and knows how to profit from digital subscriptions."

What one wonders could Bloomberg do with the New York Times and its digital business? Could he turn a profit? Would he even be interested? All questions for the (near) future.

For now the Ochs-Sulzberger family control 89% of the voting shares, which is a fortress of power, but that fortress is well and truly under assault.

One more thing, I mean really why does the New York Times have 1,300 editorial staff (compared this to the FT which has 550 or The Guardian which will have 800 by the end of the year). Who can survive with those numbers in this digital age?

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Wait and see as WSJ leaps with micro payments

255762 — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:46:00 GMT

So the Wall Street Journal got it moving as it launches first with micro payments after Rupert Murdoch hinted heavily last week. It was the most obvious to go first, but what the industry really wants is for someone else to leap.

People will shortly be able to buy individual articles according to WSJ managing editor Robert Thomson. He said to Reuters: "It's a payments system -- once we have your details we will be able to charge you according to what you read, in particular, a high price for specialist material."

What's as interesting is that the WSJ.com is using the opportunity for expansion. While newspapers around the US totter on the brink, the WSJ.com is pushing out to cities such as Detroit and San Francisco in an effort to broaden the title's appeal by playing up local political and sports coverage on its website.

What's very interesting about that is that it is not the specialist financial stories (the stuff that people already pay a hundred bucks for), but the more general stories that it also wants to get people paying for.

I could be reading that wrong, but it does not seem likely that the WSJ is to push out to these cities and start giving content away. So it is clearly hoping that people will pay for "local political and sports coverage" as coverage in their own local papers go.

Murdoch said last week that he plans to have all his papers charging. The speed of his US announcement could mean that it happens sooner rather than later in the UK.

If and when that happens, things will start to speed up and maybe quite quickly, as if this is going to work, the industry has to do it as a concerted push – to assert this as the new world order, so to speak.

It was the Financial Times, which reported this story about the WSJ, and it must, along with some element of Guardian Media Group (after chief executive Carolyn McCall's comments last week), be a strong candidate to be somewhere near the front of the cue to begin experimenting with charging. At the moment the FT's system of giving some content away really does not work. I subscribe to the WSJ.com and get to read about all I need from FT.com for free. You can always find its content on Google, no payment necessary.

FT.com introduced its current model in October 2007, which at the time seemed to suggest that paid content was coming to an end. It was also when Murdoch was talking about dumping subs charges.

But if anyone is to be next, it will probably be another American newspaper and probably the New York Times. I imagine that is what people are hoping for.

It is all very well seeing the financially strong WSJ leap into the semi dark (for it at least), but what the industry really wants is to see a more general news outlet take the leap and see how it turns out. There is I think a little wait and see taking place. So I guess we will. Wait and see that is.

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US newspaper crises accelerates as Senator bids to keep business afloat

255762 — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:35:00 GMT

A Democratic senator has launched a bill to help ailing US newspaper companies stay afloat as the crises in US newspapers gathers pace with hundreds more jobs lost and daily papers in more and more US towns become a thing of the past.

Senator Benjamin Cardin wants to allow US newspapers to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks. It follows similar suggestions by philanthropist Eli Broad who was talking about turning the Los Angeles Times into a non profit trust; and staff at the San Francisco Chronicle who were attempting a foundation bid in an effort to save the paper.

"This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat," Cardin said.

According to Reuters the bill has no sponsors, but plenty of interest within the media. In a week that saw another 500 plus job losses it is going to need more than that as it is abundantly clear that the declining fortunes of US newspapers is speeding up.

Hearst Corp, which last week closed the print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, is cutting 12% of jobs at the Houston Chronicle, which will affect around 200 staff. It follows the announcement that it might close the San Francisco Chronicle if it can't make significant cost savings. The Chronicle, which has a weekday circulation of 448,271, cut 5% of staff last year. Hearst also made 15% job cuts at the San Antonio Express-News.

The job losses in Houston follow the 272 at the Ann Arbor News in Michigan as the Newhouse-owned paper (part of its Advance Publications) is turned into the AnnArbor.com website, which will have "some original reporting", but with an emphasis on community forums.

The community emphasis is one of the three main US newspaper trends (cuts and closures and online-only publishing being the others) in what points increasingly towards a future US newspaper business that is much less about hard news (or any news for that matter) and more community, blogs and user generated content.

Elsewhere in Michigan Advance, The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times (141,000 on weekdays and 176,000 on Sundays) will cease being dailies and reduce publication to Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays only. The logic is pretty simple: those days account for 80% of ad revenue. The move will see sweeping job cuts with 35% of staff going, according to the New York Times.

Talking of the New York Times Company it has sold off one of its regional newspapers. The TimesDaily, in Florence, Alabama, has been offloaded to Tennessee Valley Printing Company, which owns the nearby Decatur Daily.

The New York Times owns 15 small to midsize dailies, mostly in the Southeast, and revenues for that group fell 14% to $384m. That is more than double the 6.2% fall the company's the flagship papers the NY Times and the International Herald Tribune.

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This is not a newspaper website

255762 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:02:00 GMT

A sad day for newspapers as Hearst closes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and takes it online, but what it plans online, with efforts to create a community title, could be the model for the future.

I blogged last week about the woes of the top 25 US newspapers and how the future is shaping up to become local or hyperlocal with the New York Times joining established community sites.

Now as Hearst today prints the last copy of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that vision takes on a new impetus.

In its press release, Hearst is quite explicit in its goal of not attempting to transfer a newspaper online, but rather crafting the remnants of it into a new type of digital business serving smaller groups and people and advertisers (a new digital sales team of 20 has been taken on for this task). Possibly even a role for niche paid for content.

The way the New York Times put it was that the Seattlepi.com will more resemble a local Huffington Post more than a traditional newspaper - as the political blog is another that expands locally.

Part of this crafting is about economics pure and simple. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had 165 editorial staff and the Seattlepi.com will have 20. This will be a mixture of traditional reporters, bloggers and columnists, but those staff writers will be far outnumbered by as many as 150 reader blogs, community data bases and photo galleries.

Those reader blogs will be further supplemented by the blogs and forums that already exist in the community and Hearst made the point that it will be "linking to the great work of other websites and blogs in the community".

The same is true of the New York Times experiment, its community blogs launch into neighbourhoods already well covered by existing blogs.

The community based future of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is likely to be repeated across America and elsewhere in the coming 18 months as more newspapers go under.

Jeff Jarvis writing in the Guardian yesterday called hyperlocal "the elusive golden fleece" and said it represented a new collaborative, as opposed to competitive, era for local newspapers.

In the case of Seattlepi.com and the experiments of The New York Times, the hope is that by providing the platform readers and community groups will provide much of the content and the impetus to take such hyperlocal projects forward.

This is the end of an era, but what beckons could be a vibrant age of digital community websites, which are different from the newspapers that came before them in how they are produced and how they are consumed.

There are other really interesting experiments taking place that provide pointers to how this community future might look. Nonprofit journalism enterprise MinnPost.com, which describes itself as part of the "new economic model for high-quality local journalism", has launched a drive for microsponsors for one of its most popular sites the BrauBlog. Almost 130 people have donated a total of $2,575, which will be doubled by a matching gift from The Harnisch Foundation.

With so many regional newspapers and jobs going in the UK it s a model that has merit on this side of the Atlantic as well. Almost 60 UK newspapers closed during 2008 and almost 400 jobs have been cut in the last two weeks with 1000 in total gone since last summer.

This led Sly Bailey, chief executive of Trinity Mirror, to today call on the government to relax merger restrictions on regional media groups and allow them to consolidate to obtain sufficient scale, but it might take something more radical than that.

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How much more would you pay for your newspaper?

255762 — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:48:00 GMT

How much more would you pay for your newspaper? Would you pay £1.50? What if that were linked to online content as well? Maybe, after all, you get a lot of content for very little money.

I was thinking this as I started writing a blog post this morning (Would you buy a failing newspaper?) about efforts in the US by journalists at the San Francisco Chronicle to save their $50m a year loss making newspaper and turn it into a foundation. It is a long shot as no one has a good business model. I had pretty much finished that (so that's my 1,200 word blogging marathon over), but when I then read some comments that Lord Bell, chairman of the UK's Chime Communications, made about newspapers in the UK this morning.

"One of the great problems of the newspaper world is they've never charged the right price for their product, they've always relied on subsidising the consumer price with advertising revenue."

It all comes back to price. The Independent and the Financial Times both already cost £1 and The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph all cost 90p and will likely rise to £1 before the Summer.

But rather than rising by 10p to an even £1, why not go higher to reflect the true value of what it is you are buying.

And what you are buying is this, products with around 100 pages including the ads and content in the case of The Guardian and The Times. You could argue that as a reader of either or any of those titles you also have an additional and extensive web resource.

It is perhaps the failure to link the cost of the two in any way that has led us in part to the situation where we now find ourselves in, which is namely an industry desperately searching for answers to stay in business without having to seriously reduce the quality of the product to do so.

Would a significant price rise in the cost of a newspaper help that situation? Granted it would raise more cover price revenue, but it might drive away readers if the price point becomes too high.

One could imagine that if The Guardian suddenly put up its price to say £1.50, it might drive people to flock to its website, which is currently free.

Like many newspapers and magazines, The Guardian rather wishes that its very good, but highly costly website wasn't free right now.

Earlier this week, Guardian News & Media's managing director, Tim Brooks, at the FT's Digital Media Conference said his "wish this year" would be that "the New York Times would put up a pay wall, then we could achieve all our objectives".

He was followed by Ann S Moore, the chief executive of Time Inc, thinking aloud who said the US magazine giant is considering making its most successful titles Time.com and People.com subscription based.

Maybe not this year, but probably next there will be some kind of charging for newspaper content online. Maybe it will be micro payments, maybe subscription or some other combination of a pay wall.

I like the idea and have no idea if it has legs of linking the paper product to the online product. If your newspaper was £1.50 and also gave you everything free online that has to be worth something. I'm not sure everyone would as our latest BR Video, which asked people if they would pay for online content, indicates.

I have no idea how you would do this. Maybe via printed codes, maybe I don't really know, but if a reader buys a copy of the Guardian, do they then also get access to some or all of that the online content? Someone suggested you get access for the week so maybe differential pricing. Monday is web day, yes the paper costs more, but it gives you access to the website for a week.

Maybe it is too costly or unfeasible, but as Lord Bell pointed out today the maths are wrong and subsiding newspapers via advertising is a strategy that only works in a booming market. Once that market starts to shrink call Houston as you have a serious problem.

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Time Inc considers making its top sites subscription based

255762 — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:43:00 GMT

The debate over paid content is steadily growing. Today Ann S Moore, the chief executive of Time Inc, says that the US magazine giant is considering making its most successful titles Time.com and People.com subscription based.

In an interview in the Daily Telegraph today Moore told the paper that current round of cost savings and restructuring plans did not deal with the fundamental issue facing traditional media groups worldwide – how to make money from the internet.

The latest entrant into the paid content debate follows, New York suburban tabloid Newsday saying it will charge for content and the Guardian's Tim Brooks at the FT's Digital Media Conference saying that if he could get his "wish this year it would be that New York Times would put up a pay wall, then we could achieve all our objectives".

Moore said she thinks it is time for Time Inc to sit down and seriously ask the question what is the model for the future of content. She said that group would "have to figure out a way to have paid content in the future" and that it is considering making its most successful websites, such as Time.com and People.com, subscription-based.

"Who started this rumour that all information should be free and why didn't we challenge this when it first came out? I say this in college classrooms and they start to throw their shoes at me. I say, 'Kids, your food is not free and your cars are not free, your clothes are not free. Good information costs money. Someone has to pay for the Baghdad bureau'," Moore told the paper.

Like most people in the media business Moore says she does not know whether online subscriptions will work, but knows alternative revenue streams have to be tried.

Her comments follows the piece in Time by Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of the magazine, who proposed a plan one-click micro-payments system. Her comments appear to demonstrate the business very publicly thinking aloud to extend the paid content debate.

"I don't know what the business model is, but we are going to start pursuing it. People pay for the Wall Street Journal online," Moore said.

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Paid for content high on Guardian wish list

255762 — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:36:00 GMT

It is is probably on everyone else's in the newspaper industry as well, but Tim Brooks has raised the flag today at the FT's Digital Media Conference in London.

It looks like the place to be today and Tim Bradshaw (who is doing some good Twittering from the conference - @tim) is reporting Brooks saying that if he could get his "wish this year it would be that New York Times would put up a pay wall, then we could achieve all our objectives". It is as we already know on the mind of the New York Times, so who knows.

Brooks is right in that someone has to jump and it has to be someone big with momentum that can take others with it - rather than, you know, someone not so big, like Newsday because as bold as that move is the concern there is that no one will follow unless it has timed its move perfectly (and Newsday might just be riding the tip of the curve).

Bradshaw also tweeted saying there was enthusiasm from the FT and Guardian for micropayments, but both feel unlikely to happen this year. See above and the New York Times.

The FT's John Ridding made the comment that the media industry has done a lousy job in pricing its content making newspapers cheaper than coffee, but in that there is also a solution. If newspapers are already cheaper than coffee then make make online news really cheap (as opposed to really free) and then someone, somewhere, someday might make some cash.

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