Newsonomics: Could a Small Google Tech Change Mean Tens of Millions to News Publishers?

The late April news was impressive and divisive: Google would spend €150 million on a new Digital News Initiative (DNI) partnership with European news publishers (“Google to launch $150 million partnership with publishers”). The amount of money caught the eye, even if it was a tiny fraction of ...

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Newsonomics: La Presse’s Bet on Tablets and Its Crossover Calculus

News of the tablet first came from the west. Steve Jobs celebrated the beginning of this decade with a few thousand of his fans: “We want to kick off the year and introduce a truly magical and revolutionary product.” Then it came from the East, with Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily, the first ...

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Newsonomics: The Vox/Recode Deal Is a Sign of More Consolidation to Come

Vox Media’s acquisition of Recode appears to be a relatively small deal. No dollar amount was disclosed; Vox is trading a little of its stock for a highly regarded but underperforming tech-business site. The deal, though, is part of a much larger trend of media consolidation and tells us a lot ...

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Newsonomics: Razor-Thin Profits Cut Into Newspapers’ Chances at Innovation

If you want to talk about profits at the U.S.’s top newspaper companies, you don’t need big numbers any more. Tribune Publishing could count a bare $2.5 million in net income for the first three months of the year. That’s the combined net of eight metro papers, including the ...

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Newsonomics: Tribune Publishing Wraps Its Arms Around San Diego — and All of Southern California

Update: Sales announcement at $85 million here   Southern California, poking northward into Santa Barbara and stretching southward to the Mexican border, will soon become Tribune Territory. In a deal intended to be soon announced, Tribune Publishing will buy UT San Diego (the former San ...

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Newsonomics: Wall Street Journal Redesign a Step in Its Digital Catchup

Don’t just call it a redesign. The Wall Street Journal, like Bloomberg before it a couple of months ago, wants you think about more than appearance, which “redesign” implies for many. You might call the new Journal a multi-platform rejiggering. Importantly, it represents the first major, uh, ...

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What Are They Thinking: Kinsey Wilson’s Meteoric Rise at NYT

In a move both opportunistic and commonsensical, The New York Times finally filled its top digital job Monday. Kinsey Wilson becomes the Times’ first executive vice president for product and technology, charged with the huge task of rethinking The New York Times—as a product. Curiously, Wilson ...

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Newsonomics: A Coast-to-Coast Newspaper Shuffle Is Taking Shape

From coast to coast, the spring scent of newspaper transactions hangs in the air. The big one — Apollo Global Management’s purchase of Digital First Media — is nearing completion. Meanwhile, sellers from New York City to southern California test the mettle (and wallets) of would-be buyers. ...

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Newsonomics: BuzzFeed and The New York Times Play Facebook’s Ubiquity Game

Intellectually, we all knew that the Internet was so big as to be virtually infinite. But it’s hard to know what to do with that squishy concept. Then BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti outlined his all-in approach in front of a couple thousand nerds at SXSW Interactive last week. He was both ...

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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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