Strib’s New Publisher: Good Q & A

We hear about mobile, about using analytics, about learning from other media and, of course, lots on metering. That makes sense: A new Strib board member is Gordon Crovitz, a co-founder of Journalism Online, whose Press+-based metering approach will get a good test this year. If you could get a ...

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The Newsonomics of Tablets, floor by floor

News and magazine publishers now see a second digital revenue line. It’s 70 percent of X (the retail price) multiplied by Y (volume of sales). As news companies reinvent not only products, but new business arrangements with the distributors of the day — from Google/Amazon/Yahoo to ...

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iPad and the New Five-Fingered Exercise

I think we'll see these companies go head-to-head for reader and subscriber dollars. As they do, I think they'll face a new five-fingered exercise. Raise one hand; five is the probably the maximum number of iPad news sites for which readers will pay.

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Nine Questions on the Tablet and the News Industry Future

The Apple model, in a sense, just sets a new cost-of-distribution. While web distribution has been free-plus, the cost of Apple distribution – if you charge for news products – is a predictable, and seemingly stable 30%. Just give me 30% off the top, says Steve Jobs. Ironically, that 30% is ...

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Membership: GlobalPost, Press+ April Test Worth Watching

On a national scale, look to the new experiment soon to be tested by GlobalPost -- the international news start-up -- and Journalism Online. GlobalPost, a for-profit company, has assembled some 500 members, but CEO Phil Balboni believes pricing and implementation issues have held back growth on ...

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The Times Meter: Why 2011?

Why 2011? That’s a compelling question about the New York Times’ metering announcement, one that I somehow missed in my list of nine (“Nine Questions: New York Times Goes Metered” ).  It’s a good one, given that making a mid-January announcement of a 2011 business move is highly unusual ...

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Media News, Bankruptcy and the Fog of Media War

Who will be next? And is the mating of banko companies the look of the next year? Dean Singleton bit the bitter bullet last week. After staving off bankruptcy for all of 2009, telling MediaNews execs that the company would not need to take that route, the company succumbed. MediaNews is ...

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Nine Questions: Murdoch’s Lion in Winter, Alicia Calling, Junk Traffic and Negotiating Like It’s 1999

It’s quite a cat-and-mouse game. The cat is Rupert Murdoch, a lion in the winter of his career. Astoundingly, he’s become the leading spokesman for American journalism. The mouse is the crafty Google, adjusting its algorithms and its tactics, faster than publishers can bemoan, “who moved my ...

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Circ Math 101: Less is Less

Look at some of the individual results, and you understand why the New York Times just announced that it is taking another 100 jobs out of its newsroom and why other newsroom (and, of course, wider) cuts may increase -- not decrease -- as Wall Street indicates that an overall economic recovery ...

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9 Questions: EveryBlock’s New Location, Do-Over Strategies, Sly Sports Moves and Madeleine Brand

If it fact, the ability to charge -- and get paid -- is based on having a good degree of proprietary content, then maybe it is the weeklies who have a better chance of bundling print and online than city dailies. Those that have websites or e-editions have seen them mainly as print retention ...

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