Nine Takeaways from the Verizon–AOL Deal

It’s easy to quickly label yesterday’s Verizon purchase of AOL as one aging utility buying another. One superannuated phone company buying a web company that’s gotten long in the tooth. Two companies of slowing revenue growth looking for updated identities and finding ways to compete with ...

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Newsonomics: Are Local Newspapers The Taxi Cabs of the Uber Age?

Traveling recently, I found myself needing transport from an offsite car rental facility near Portland’s airport. I called a recommended local taxi company and asked if it could pick me up there and take me downtown? “Yes,” came the answer. “How long?” “Soon as we can get there,” came the ...

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What Are They Thinking? Apollo’s Acquisition of Digital First Media

Apollo Global Management has almost won its two-horse race with Cerberus Capital Management to acquire Digital First Media’s 75 daily newspapers and more than 100 non-dailies, or as DFM likes to put it “800 multi-platform products reach 64 million Americans each month across 14 states.” The two ...

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What Are They Thinking? Tribune in Final Bidding to Buy U-T San Diego

Tribune Publishing is one of three final bidders on the acquisition of U-T San Diego, the entity formerly known as the San Diego Union-Tribune, according to several confidential sources. For Tribune Publishing, spun off from Tribune Broadcasting six months ago, San Diego—California’s second ...

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What Are They Thinking? Bloomberg’s Justin Smith Sees a Window in Shakeup of Digital Reader Habits

Justin Smith pronounces himself happy with Bloomberg’s month-old redesign. The C.E.O. of Bloomberg Media has been watched closely since he assumed the job a year and a half ago, coming over from a much-acclaimed stint rebuilding Atlantic Media. Now he can finally point to something very ...

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Newsonomics: The Financial Times Triples Its Profits and Swaps Champagne Flutes for Martini Glasses

Even as the Financial Times announces excellent bottom-line numbers, the heat it’s feeling from the diverse and growing competition in business news is palpable. The FT may be 127 years old and roundly and rightfully respected for its journalism. But it doesn’t even break into the top 25 ...

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What Are They Thinking? The Daily Beast’s Mike Dyer, Against Wishful Thinking

  What is The Daily Beast exactly? It’s not one of the high-flying venture-fueled news companies we read so much about these days, like Vox or Buzzfeed, given its Barry Diller–IAC ownership. It’s not a legacy magazine or newspaper company, though its founder Tina Brown came out of that world. ...

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What Are They Thinking? Mark Thompson’s Plan for the Times, 2015 and Beyond

Ask anyone around The New York Times, and they’ll tell you C.E.O. Mark Thompson is a model of certitude. Confidence exudes from him, even in the face of business performance that leaves everyone else less sanguine. So it was this morning as Thompson explained the New York Times company’s ...

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What Are They Thinking? Jim Moroney’s Digital-Reaching Dallas Morning News

Jim Moroney’s newspaper once dominated Dallas as only a monopoly daily can. After beating its rival Dallas Times Herald, then a Times-Mirror–owned property, to a bloody pulp, forcing the paper’s closing in 1991, The Dallas Morning News was the kind of paper that threw off tens of millions in ...

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Inch by Inch, the New York Times Seeks Daylight Down the Field

Inch by inch, the New York Times’ strategies seem to be working. This is, though, a game of almost inches, as we look at the Times’ full-year and fourth-quarter financials, just released this morning. Overall, there’s a remarkable flatness to the business: Profit of $256M as ...

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