Newsonomics: Tomorrow’s Life-Or-Death Decisions For Newspapers Are Suddenly Today’s, Thanks To Coronavirus

As local newspapers’ businesses hit the skids, they’re finding themselves careening right now into a future they’d thought was still several years away. “We are all going to jump ahead three years,” Mike Orren, chief product officer of The Dallas Morning News, suggested to me last week. At ...

Read More

Newsonomics: What Was Once Unthinkable Is Quickly Becoming Reality In The Destruction Of Local News

As words like “annihilation” and “extinction” enter our news vocabulary — or at least move from debates over the years-away future to the frighteningly contemporary — it’s helpful to start out with the good news. Maybe even an old joke. What’s black and white and now deemed “essential”? ...

Read More

Newsonomics: Thirst For Liquidity Drives The News Chain Consolidation Games

“People think nothing is happening, but that’s the farthest thing from the truth. Everybody is talking to everybody.” That’s the best quick summation I can offer of the first few months of what I called 2019 Consolidation Games back in January. That line, offered last week by one newspaper ...

Read More

Newsonomics: Newspapers In Name Only & Who’s Going To Build What Comes Next In Local?

Neil Chase knows the painful realities of managing and motivating a daily newsroom in 2018. “You can’t ask dedicated, veteran career journalists to completely change the way they work without explaining why,” the Mercury News executive editor said at a panel discussion I moderated at Stanford ...

Read More

Newsonomics: Alden Global Capital Is Making So Much Money Wrecking Local Journalism It Might Not Want To Stop Anytime Soon

Is there any chance Alden Global Capital might change course? The majority owner of Digital First Media — publisher of The Mercury News, The Denver Post, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, 11 Southern California dailies, and 49 others from California to Michigan to New Jersey — has faced a rising tide ...

Read More

Newsonomics: Inside L.A.’s Journalistic Collapse

How far is The Post from Los Angeles? Figure almost 50 years, as well as 3,000 miles. While big audiences and the remaining fully paid journalists can delight in the triumphant Spielbergian tale of The Washington Post’s decision to follow The New York Times in publishing the Pentagon Papers in ...

Read More

Newsonomics: 20 Words That Defined The Bizarre News Year That Was

This is the year America wishes it could take a shower long enough to wash away the scum of daily mud-slinging. Remember 2016? Last year, it seemed as if Tronc was the most memorable word of the news year, a new media name seemingly invented as self-parody. In 2017, the memorable words tumble ...

Read More

New York Times’ Breakthrough ‘The Daily’: How It Fits Its Digital Business Transformation

Within nine months of its launch, it looks like The New York Times has more than a success on its hands. “The Daily” is becoming a phenomenon, an out-of-the-blue hit that is forcing print-based business leaders to think anew about the revolutionary power of digital audio. Further, ...

Read More

Newsonomics: A Q & A With The Daily’s Michael Barbaro, Host Of NYT’s Breakout Podcast

  Companion Piece: How The New York Times Intends to Build A Franchise Around “The Daily” and How It Figures Into The Times’ Digital Transformation         He doesn’t listen to many podcasts, and he doesn’t even own an Amazon Echo or Google ...

Read More

Newsonomics: A Q and A With Tony Haile, Building Scroll, The “TSA Pre✓” For Reader Revenue

Tony Haile learned a lot of things about news during his seven years building Chartbeat, the analytics platform used in newsrooms worldwide. One of them: “Attempts to get this industry to work together have been slow at best.” Amen to that, one of the biggest hurdles to innovation ...

Read More