Newsonomics: On End Games and End Times

Platish or perish? With those malaprop-sounding fighting words a year ago, digital entrepreneur Jonathan Glick neatly, if broadly, summed up a question of the moment on Twitter. We’ve read so many obits for news media over the past 10 years that you’d think we’d be inured to yet another. But ...

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

What Are They Thinking? Times Aims to Double Its Branded Content Business

You can almost hear the beeps. Fortune 500 companies have taken a big liking to content marketing and native advertising, creating a battlefield competition among the biggest publishers. Those beeps? Those are the sounds of the many hands in the content marketing game joining in on conference ...

Read More

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 ...

Read More

Newsonomics: In Toronto, Star Touch Aims to Write Anew on the Tablet

Can The Toronto Star have it both ways? Can it maximize the value of its print paper, continuing to extend that value proposition to advertisers and readers every which way — and find a new, large profitable audience with the launch of its La Presse-like tablet news product in mid September? ...

Read More

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 ...

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: 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 ...

Read More

What Are They Thinking? Eight Principles for Mathias Dopfner’s Transformation of Axel Springer

Mathias Döpfner wants you to know that Axel Springer is a player—in the U.S., and worldwide. The C.E.O. of what is likely Europe’s largest digital media company already has transformed his heavyweight German publishing Haus, turning it into a globe-spanning media player. Springer’s investments ...

Read More

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 ...

Read More