What Are They Thinking? Apollo’s Acquisition of Digital First Media

Apollo Global Management has almost won its two-horse race with Cerberus Capital Management to acquire Digital First Media’s 75 daily newspapers and more than 100 non-dailies, or as DFM likes to put it “800 multi-platform products reach 64 million Americans each month across 14 states.” The two ...

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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: Single-copy Newspaper Sales Are Collapsing, and It’s Largely a Self-Inflicted Wound

Have you bought a lonely single copy of a newspaper lately, from a newsstand or a newspaper box? Probably not. Neither are many other people. Single-copy newspaper sales — which not that long ago made up as much as 15 to 25 percent of sales — are obsolescent, dropping in double digits per year ...

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What Are They Thinking? Jim Brady’s Mobile-Millennial Philadelphia Local-News Adventure

“I’m not from Philly. Worse yet, I’m from New York,” Jim Brady told a recent conference audience in Atlanta. What’s more, which may or may not tell us lots about one of the leading digital news pioneers, he’s a New York Jets fan. Much accomplished with his early work at WashingtonPost.com—which ...

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What Are They Thinking? Tribune in Final Bidding to Buy U-T San Diego

Tribune Publishing is one of three final bidders on the acquisition of U-T San Diego, the entity formerly known as the San Diego Union-Tribune, according to several confidential sources. For Tribune Publishing, spun off from Tribune Broadcasting six months ago, San Diego—California’s second ...

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Newsonomics: Tribune Publishing is Busy Playing Catch-Up

Throughout this morning’s earnings call, the thought reoccurred: Jack Griffin’s new Tribune Publishing Company is playing catch-up. Then, toward the end of the call, one a little more informative than average, the CEO said it plainly, and more honestly than what we usually expect to hear on ...

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What Are They Thinking? Bloomberg’s Justin Smith Sees a Window in Shakeup of Digital Reader Habits

Justin Smith pronounces himself happy with Bloomberg’s month-old redesign. The C.E.O. of Bloomberg Media has been watched closely since he assumed the job a year and a half ago, coming over from a much-acclaimed stint rebuilding Atlantic Media. Now he can finally point to something very ...

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Newsonomics: The Financial Times Triples Its Profits and Swaps Champagne Flutes for Martini Glasses

Even as the Financial Times announces excellent bottom-line numbers, the heat it’s feeling from the diverse and growing competition in business news is palpable. The FT may be 127 years old and roundly and rightfully respected for its journalism. But it doesn’t even break into the top 25 ...

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Newsonomics: Texas, Vast Texas, Aims to Set a New Standard in Statewide Public Media News

Texas Standard debuts with a snap, crackle, and pop. David Brown, its daily host, “brings us the snap of Marketplace, which he used to anchor,” says KUT general manager Stewart Vanderwilt, who has the fun of acting the impresario in the launch of a new one-hour, five-day-a-week public radio ...

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David Carr: The New York Times’ Unlikely Mascot

First published at Capital New York   The gristle and the gravel of his voice was unmistakable, on a phone call or calling into a public radio program. That such scratch could reach instant and repeated rhapsody at first jarred. Then we all got used to it. His writing—simultaneously ...

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