May 20, 2024
In five languages (English, Mandarin, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian) and two U.S. printing, “Newsonomics: Twelve Trends That Will Shape the News You Get” is the first Ken Doctor book. Sign up here for notice of the new Newsonomics Readers.
Important Details: A newspaper company put up a different kind of for-sale sign this week. On Monday, Tribune Inc. announced that it is buying ForSaleByOwner.com. The for-sale-by-owner acronym – FSBO – has been a four-letter word, spat out in disgust by realtors and those ...
Read MoreImportant Details: What a difference a week makes. One week ago, McClatchy was emerging as the successful bidder in the Knight Ridder auction. Late Sunday, the white smoke emerged with the news that McClatchy had indeed won KR’s 32 dailies, at a not-bad-considering price of $67.25 per ...
Read MoreAlden’s going to snatch Gannett! No, Gannett’s going to turn the tables and buy Alden’s Digital First Media! But wait, Gannett will reject Alden — is that a real offer? — and turn its attention to merging with Tribune! No, Tribune — having dispatched its CEO Justin Dearborn to clear the way for ...
Read MoreQuibble, if you will, about the level of degeneracy now afoot in the heart of the Old and New Confederacy, as the Roy Moore saga provides yet more sick drama in the country. That’s a sideshow. What’s quickly appearing on the main stage — if it’s still behind the curtain for now — is the... Read More
Why, I asked, Aaron Kushner, is he announcing the new L.A. Register as we’re winding down toward the end of the year? Given that the big questions about it — when will it launch, how will it be staffed — are as yet unannounced, why put the news out now? “We were ready to ...
Read MoreLet’s look then at the newsonomics of Pulitzers, paywalls, and investing in newsrooms, and think about whether our intuition has any basis in provable fact. If even 20 percent of expense devoted to newsroom seems like a low number, consider that the industry average is about 12.7 percent for ...
Read MoreThe next 48 hours may decide the fate of two of America’s largest newspaper chains that collectively serve almost a fifth of all American local newspaper readers. And what happens in those hours could prompt a wave of other moves across the rest of the industry. The dates June 30 and July 1 ...
Read MoreMcClatchy’s bankruptcy is barreling to a conclusion. Tribune’s quietly trimming its board to prepare for a merger. Google and Facebook face unprecedented calls to pay up on at least three continents. And all the while — wait for it — Alden Global Capital’s Heath Freeman is joining the fray, ...
Read MoreAs 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 MoreAt first blush, it looks a bit like an old-fashioned newspaper war. (For our younger readers: Long ago, some cities had two or more strong newspapers that fought each other for scoops, talent, readers, and advertisers. Really.) In Memphis, two newsrooms — each with about three dozen journalists ...
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