Newsonomics: Here Are 20 Epiphanies For The News Business Of The 2020s

It is the best of times for The New York Times — and likely the worst of times for all the local newspapers with Times (or Gazette or Sun or Telegram or Journal) in their nameplates across the land. When I spoke at state newspaper conferences five or ten years ago, people would say: “It’ll... ...

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Newsonomics: The New York Times’ Mark Thompson On How He’d Run A Local Newspaper: “Where Can We Stand And Fight?”

  What would New York Times CEO Mark Thompson do if he ran Gannett? How much does he attribute the Times’ accumulation of millions of digital subscribers to the journalism produced by its burgeoning newsroom? Does the Times have a role to play in helping local news recover?   RELATED ...

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Newsonomics: Inside Tronc’s Sale of the L.A. Times (And All The New Questions To Come

Patrick Soon-Shiong has finally won his hometown prize. After a number of years of trying to buy his local paper, Los Angeles’ richest billionaire has seized an unpredictable opportunity. In a move that’s shocking but not really surprising, 65-year-old Soon-Shiong will pay a chunk of ...

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Newsonomics: A Call To Arms (And Wallets) In The New Era Of Deregulation And Bigger Media

Quibble, if you will, about the level of degeneracy now afoot in the heart of the Old and New Confederacy, as the Roy Moore saga provides yet more sick drama in the country. That’s a sideshow. What’s quickly appearing on the main stage — if it’s still behind the curtain for now — is the... Read More

Newsonomics: Can You Get Readers To Pay A Dollar A Day For Digital News?

Is local news worth a dollar a day? That’s the fascinating question The Boston Globe is now posing to its local readers. It’s a query that should resonate among the press around North America and Europe as well. Ninety-nine cents has become the golden price of digital media. ...

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Newsonomics: Buying Yelp — and Making It the Next Core of the Local News and Information business

Yelp’s for sale, and the news has generated the usual, now-tiresome lists of potential buyers: Google, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook. It’s like all the money in the business world slid off one end of the table and sluiced down to Silicon Valley. Forget the old spend-a-week-without-the-Internet ...

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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 ...

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The Newsonomics of How the News Industry Will Be Tested in 2014

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab   Our 2014 stage is set, and oh what a marvelous assortment of characters will be walking across it. Many of these characters — the Bezoses, Henrys, Kushners, Omidyars, and Buffetts — are new non-newsies thrusting themselves into the ...

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The Newsonomics of Outrageous Confidence

First published at Nieman Journalism Lab   Who expected a virtual coming-out party for the newspaper industry in late 2013? In the past several weeks, we’ve seen new newspaper owners proudly raising the flags of their new enterprises, speaking grandly of their futures and spouting that ...

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The Newsonomics of Jeff Bezos’ (and Warren Buffett’s) “Runway”

What do all of these newspaper buyers have in common? They don’t have to look back at loss and what used to be. They’ve bought strong brands with tens or hundreds of thousands of reader/customer relationships and thousands of advertising relationships. Those are the kinds of assets that a ...

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