The Newsonomics of Patch’s Unraveling

Overall, Patches have proven out a truism: More news coverage is better than less news coverage. Patch has added content to the mix that its competitive dailies missed. Now many of those will be gone, along with all the uncountable coverage losses driven by the loss of those 17,000 largely ...

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The newsonomics of 2013’s second half, from ad depression to day dropping to real estate as destiny

The newest News Corp sets sail. Cast adrift — but with a handy $2.6 billion in cash and no debt, making its peers oh-so-envi0us — the world’s largest newspaper company is in the midst of furious change. At the flagship Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, it’s tough to find anyone in management ...

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The Newsonomics of the Kochs: Impact on the L.A. News Landscape

Critics can say what they want about the diminishment about the L.A. Times. Its news presence and ability to set agendas, through its reporting and opinion pages, is certainly reduced, but it’s still got the only megaphone of its kind in town. As Gabriel Kahn, a University of Southern ...

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The Newsonomics of the Kochs Rising — and Uprising

The new board’s mandate, of course, is to maximize its take on the sale. Tribune newspaper profits run at the roughly $200 million level, maybe a third of which comes out of L.A. So, take the market multiple of 3 or 4 times that number as a price — or $600 million-plus — for the eight papers, ...

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The Newsonomics of Pulitzers, Paywalls, and Investing in the Newsroom

Let’s look then at the newsonomics of Pulitzers, paywalls, and investing in newsrooms, and think about whether our intuition has any basis in provable fact. If even 20 percent of expense devoted to newsroom seems like a low number, consider that the industry average is about 12.7 percent for ...

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The newsonomics of the Orange County Register’s contrarian paywall

It's the membership program — one that's not unique in the industry — that will catch the headlines.The Register wants to go big. It approached the Angels, located 10 minutes away, with the idea of better using the empty seats the Angels couldn't sell. The Angels found themselves sitting on ...

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The Newsonomics of the Boston Globe’s Sale

Make no mistake: 2013, as your friendly newspaper realtors would tell you, is a great time to sell. The last 18 months have seen the greatest volume of deals in the last five years. And, why not: There’s a mildly up economy, all-access is bolstering revenue optimism, and heck, the Oracle ...

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The Newsonomics of Aaron Kushner’s Virtuous Circles

Aaron Kushner is the anti-Advance....Kushner and his 2100 Trust ownership group have taken a industry-contrarian approach since he took over the Orange County Register on July 25 — not even six months ago. It’s addition by addition. Addition of costs in the short run, aimed at the addition of ...

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The Newsonomics of the Body Shop

Cultural misalignment. Reader misalignment. Merchant misalignment. Shopper misalignment. Publishers searched for new models but came up short, and too many stayed the course as the world was changing. You can listen to Click and Clack and realize that lots of people, including publishers, ...

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The Newsonomics of 2013 Wizardry: Tribune, Buffett, Murdoch, Paton, Bloomberg, and more

Today, though, most of the reporting power, much of the brand power, and thepolitical power still resides in big companies and their leadership. We may well get our strongest display of that early in 2013: In Washington, the FCC cross-ownership debate may move to center stage in January. And ...

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