9 Questions: Zell’s Clown Car, The New “100,” Tablets & Print Circ & Daughter of Alesia

Will the cats of newspaper industry be successfully herded? After pouring millions into his Alesia project, Rupert Murdoch gave the retreat order to his would-be Roman warriors, killing the tablet-oriented paid news portal initiative. Though his News Corp is the biggest news company in the ...

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“Public Media” $100 Million Plan: 100 Journalists Per City

One hundred "public media" reporters and editors in a market is a huge increase. Among those four stations, the news staff would now range from 12 to 30 each, among them. It's tough to count because these are legacy radio operations and radio requires different job descriptions than digital ...

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The Newsonomics of Public Radio’s Argonauts

The Argo funding is one of the first things that tells us about the business of this effort. Like Silicon Valley startups, the effort is about building a product that seems to meet a clear audience need, building that audience — and then finding a sustainable business model. That’s what has ...

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Seattle Blog Project Breaks New Ground

The notion: to put a more intimate face on the problem. Take a look the project of 10 stories, 6 videos and more than 75 photographs, "Invisible Families: The Homeless You Don’t See" and you do get a different kind of appreciation of the issue. The blogs' postings vary in journalistic quality, ...

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Billionaire Philanthropy Bingo: How ‘Bout 1% for News?

Think what a program to get a modest tithing, a pledging of new philanthropic dollars to assure the free flow of news and information, as that next generation of news creation is born. Using a $300 billion number, take one measly percent, and you get $3 billion. That would do the trick

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Non-Profit Newsweek?

It's a great blurring of lines, one of many. In journalism, in news, the divide between profit and non- ain't what it used to be -- and may not be again.

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The Newsonomics of Membership, Part 2

“The difference is that public radio has a ‘barker channel,’ meaning they have the radio megaphone to get people to come into the tent or become members in the first place during membership drives in which they can withhold the programming,” he says. “That barker channel is great for public ...

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The Philly Watch: Labor, Skills and the Digital Future

Philly's next re-do -- maybe it will catch the recovery wind at its back this time -- won't happen in isolation. Down the road, in D.C., it'll be able to watch Allbritton's TBD start-up experiment, beginning in June. The first lesson: Figuring out how to serve substantial top-flight journalism ...

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Philly Report: Thinking About the Roll-Ups to Come

The magic word here from a business perspective: Roll-up. Whoever figures out how to roll up major audiences and monetize them wins. J-Lab's report holds out hope that may come about somewhat organically. History, though, teaches us that it's more likely to come by dint of more singular zeal.

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The Star Tribune Hears a Who

If Sweeney came concerned, he might have left more worried. Yes, Public Radio’s legacy business is radio, and, more recently, audio, via podcast and streaming. What Sweeney heard, though, was a larger Who, public radio’s nascent attempts to assert itself as a major online (and then presumably ...

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