Nine Takeaways from the Verizon–AOL Deal

It’s easy to quickly label yesterday’s Verizon purchase of AOL as one aging utility buying another. One superannuated phone company buying a web company that’s gotten long in the tooth. Two companies of slowing revenue growth looking for updated identities and finding ways to compete with ...

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Newsonomics: Quartz Expands Into Africa, With A Twofer Strategy

Boko Haram. Ebola. Child soldiers. These are the sort of tales of woe that many western readers associate with Africa, home to 1.1 billion, a sixth of the world’s population. Relatively few American or European reporters are based there. As foreign reporting staffs have been cut over the past ...

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Newsonomics: Bill Keller’s Marshall Project Finds Its Legs

The Marshall Project is off to a fast start. Ten thousand people a day now receive its daily summary of the latest news in criminal justice, linking up the best reporting and writing on topics from law enforcement to courts to corrections. It’s already published collaborations with The ...

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The Newsonomics of Talking Points Memo’s Native Advertising Shift

Call it addition by subtraction, or deduction over misdirection. The commercial progress of Talking Points Memo is a telling lesson in the maturation of digital native news companies. TPM was born very much a blog, one of those early political blogs built on single-minded strong opinion and ...

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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 ...

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The newsonomics of Schibsted’s VGTV and Native TV

Follow Newsonomics on Twitter: @kdoctor   AUSTIN — What’s one of the first principles of building a new digital business? “Make sure you lose money for at least three years,” VG CEO and editor Torry Pedersen told a London publishing crowd last week. There were some ...

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The Newsonomics of Newsweek’s Pricey Relaunch

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab Maybe the third time is the charm. Three years before Don Graham and Jeff Bezos talked about selling and buying The Washington Post, the Graham family bid goodbye to its second favorite son, Newsweek. Sid Harman, then 91, optimistically ...

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The Newsonomics of Why Everyone Seems to Be Starting a News Site

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab You’d think the new digital printing presses were minting money. Just within the last month, all kinds of details have emerged about the construction of new, digital, high-quality-aiming national news organizations. What may seem like a ...

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The Newsonomics of the November Shuffle, From Forbes to Freedom and Couric to Stelter

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab Ah, the pre-Thanksgiving bounty. Those of us who try to chronicle the business end of the news business have seen our plates overflowing lately. Not since the Bezos blitz of August have we seen so many announcements, shuffles, offers to ...

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As Digital First Media Announces Its Paywalls, 41% of US Dailies Will Soon Have Them

Even the paywall contrarians are coming around. John Paton’s Digital First Media will announce today its adoption of metered paywalls at all its Media News and Journal Register sites. That’s more than 75 papers, including big ones in Denver, San Jose, L.A., Salt Lake City (among the ...

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