Newsonomics: L.A. Consequential

It’s a trademark line of Austin Beutner’s: “I cannot imagine Los Angeles without a vibrant L.A. Times.” As anyone who follows media knows, the Los Angeles Times publisher’s imagination short-circuited the day after Labor Day, when he was fired by Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin (“Tribune to ...

Read More

Newsonomics: “Apple News Changes Everything” & 10 Other Headlines You Could See This Fall

Summer appears gone; prepare to mark the first day of fall in the traditional fashion, with a new set of announcements from Apple. On Wednesday, Apple will dazzles with new iPhones, a new Apple TV, iOS 9, and a few more reveals about Apple News. The event has gotten many in the media business ...

Read More

Newsonomics: 10 Numbers on The New York Times’ 1 million Digital-Subscriber Milestone

If, half a decade ago, you’d been able to put money down in Vegas on The New York Times’ chances of reaching 1 million digital subscribers by 2015, what kind of odds could you have gotten? Longer than longshot. In 2010, when the Times announced it would put up a paywall, hardly anyone thought ...

Read More

Newsonomics: 10 Numbers That Define the News Business Today

We’re bombarded by endless numbers every day — some claiming the exalted status of metrics or, even higher, benchmarks. It’s tough for any of us to figure out which — ARPU? TOS? post-click activity? — are meaningful and which will go down in news transformation history as footnotes. For me, ...

Read More

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 ...

Read More

Newsonomics: Single-copy Newspaper Sales Are Collapsing, and It’s Largely a Self-Inflicted Wound

Have you bought a lonely single copy of a newspaper lately, from a newsstand or a newspaper box? Probably not. Neither are many other people. Single-copy newspaper sales — which not that long ago made up as much as 15 to 25 percent of sales — are obsolescent, dropping in double digits per year ...

Read More

The Newsonomics of the Millennial Moment

The new wave of news sites all look like they do different things. Vox attracts those drawn to the populist wonkiness of explainer journalism. BuzzFeed entertains those attracted by its mix of addictive animal videos and a growing news report. Vice entrances with adventurous, less-filtered news ...

Read More

The Newsonomics of the New York Times’ New Cutbacks

It looks like New York Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson got a little ahead of himself. Call it premature exuberance. The Times had built major internal confidence, riding a wave of paywall-induced exhilaration, and eagerly moved on to what it had believed would be icing on the reader-revenue cake. I ...

Read More

Newsonomics: Digital First Media’s Newspapers Half-Billion Dollar Pricetag (and California Schemin’)

Could the sale of the Digital First Media properties lead to the U.S.’s first quasi-national newspaper company? That’s the hope of DFM’s current owners, and the shiniest lure tossed out into the newspaper property marketplace by UBS, the unorthodox pick of DFM to be its banker/broker as its six ...

Read More

The Newsonomics of 50/50 and The Unchaining of the U.S. Press

Follow Newsonomics on Twitter @kdoctor   First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab   Asked last week whether he was buying the Star Tribune for business or altruistic reasons, Glen Taylor said a lot in a two-word answer: “50/50.” News observers have parsed and poked at ...

Read More