Newsonomics: Our Peggy Lee Moment: Is That All There Is To Reader Revenue?

It’s an age of ready-to-binge whodunits, exported from the Nordic cold onto our heat-seeking laptops and living room screens. So will anyone take up this mystery: Who killed the news subscriber? As print subscriptions have plummeted, digital subscriptions have slowly emerged. It’s ...

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Newsonomics: Tronc & The Daily News, What To Make Of This Out-Of-The Blue Buy

For much of the winter and spring, Michael Ferro was uncharacteristically quiet. Once he’d defeated Gannett’s hostile takeover attempt of his newly named Tronc, Ferro seemed to cease being the center of the news industry storm. Some applauded; others privately told me they missed ...

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9 Midsummer, 2017 News Lessons: NYT Subs, Sinclair’s Ascent, DFM’s Long Good-bye, New Antitrust Public Interest Thinking, WSJ Resurgence?

This hardly seems like a beachy, devil-may-care summer. Among fears of North Korean missiles, new Russian menace, and a highly unpredictable Administration, we are a nervous people. For the news media, it’s been a year of two tales. Never has the press been so pilloried, relentlessly, ...

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Newsonomics: For The Newspaper Industry’s Next Feat, Can It Get Donald Trump To Give It Antitrust Protection?

Sounds like a John Oliver segment, doesn’t it? As we all know from checking our favorite news apps, the line between satire and news has all but vanished anyhow. Last week, in the friendly confines of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, the News Media Alliance initiative to gain an ...

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What’s Really Behind the Newspaper Industry’s Quixotic Fight With Google and Facebook

David Chavern stepped into the daily newspaper wars not quite two years ago. Did the president and CEO of the News Media Alliance know what he was getting into? “No, in retrospect. In a sense, I’m more optimistic than when I started,” he said. “Clearly, I know the ...

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Newsonomics: Can A Master Blacklist Choke Off Fake News’ Money Supply?

For the last few weeks, it’s looked like fake news has spawned its own opposition industry. Money to fight the now-apparent-to-all evil has poured out of foundation coffers faster than Sean Spicer clarifications. RELATED ARTICLE Newsonomics: Craig Newmark, journalism’s new Six Million Dollar ...

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Newsonomics: As Post, Times explore Snapchat, Quartz Messaging App Celebrates Its First Birthday

Messaging and news. It’s the latest double scoop, as the Washington Post makes itself the through-the-day Snapchat Discover news provider, following an announcement only a week earlier that the New York Times would devote a half dozen staffers to publishing a daily Snapchat edition. Snap Inc. ...

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Newsonomics: Trump May Be The News Industry’s Greatest Opportunity To Build A Sustainable Model

One of the most challenging periods in American press history begins at noon Eastern today. The cries of “Lügenpresse” (defended by the outlet until recently run by new chief strategist to the president) echo almost as much as the stiff-arm salutes in the nation’s capital in late October. The ...

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Newsonomics: Post-Trump, 3 Truths, 4 Long Years, and An Existential Threat

In the mourning after, it’s not just the journalistic post-mortems about polling malpractice that should concern us. It is the very real question of the survival of American journalism as we have known it over the past six decades or more. Donald Trump’s victory leaves a wobbling press in a ...

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Tronc Considers a Counter to Gannett’s 3rd-Sweetened Offer

It’s apparently no longer a question of whether to sell or not, but for how much. For four months, Tronc – the company formerly known as Tribune Publishing, parent of The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune among other similarly august titles in smaller markets – has steadfastly and ...

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