Newsonomics: Digital First Media’s Upcoming Sale Produces Some Surprises

Anxious journalists from San Jose to Saint Paul, New Haven to Novato await the final shouts of the Digital First Media auction. Bidding is still in progress, as DFM’s regional business heads coast to coast make presentations to would-be buyers, anonymous to them, by conference call. They share ...

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Newsonomics: “Rosewater,” Cascading Censorship and Press Freedom

I remember the early summer day in Moscow well. I had one day to myself to explore a bit of the city after conducting a two-day workshop for Russian regional publishers. By late afternoon, I was ready to return to the hotel and prepare for the next morning’s flight home. I braved the Moscow ...

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TNR, the AQ and the Perils of New (and Old) News Management

First published at Capital New York    On Thursday, I had lunch with a veteran colleague in the news trade. He’s a top editor, an innovator in digital-only, magazine and newspaper media. Like many, he’s between jobs. He’ll have plenty of opportunities, but finding the ...

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The Newsonomics of Daily Beast’s Quantified News Reader

What’s in your news diet? Sure, we can name the sites, papers, and stations that pepper us with news through the day and week. But we can’t easily sum up what we’ve read and how much of it, or really get an accurate sense of the balance between serious Times or Guardian fare versus ...

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Why The New York Times Hired Kinsey Wilson

In a year of both triumphs and stumbles in The New York Times’ ungainly digital business progress, today’s appointment of Kinsey Wilson to the post of strategy and innovation editor makes a lot of sense. Wilson lost his job as NPR’s chief content officer in October. His availability fits right ...

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The Newsonomics of Telling Your Audience What They Should Do

You should. Two powerful words. If they come from your mother or the government, they pack a particular weight. But what if they come from media? Should media be in the “you should” business? WNYC, the flagship of New York Public Radio, now tests the virtue and value of those powerful ...

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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 Envelopes Open on the Sale of Digital First Media Newspapers

Valentine’s Day may be coming early for Digital First Media this week. DFM’s board and UBS, its broker, open the envelopes, looking for affection. It’s an uneasy love-me/love-me-not time, newspapers’ version of Match.com. Will DFM’s affection for the open market be returned, or will it be left ...

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NYT’s 3Q, 2014: Inside the Digital Acceleration of the Business

Call it acceleration of the digital transition. Those are the words that best describes this morning’s 3Q New York Times financial report and conference call. Take this month of October, the biggest ad revenue month of the year for the Times. Digital advertising will be up about 15% this ...

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The Newsonomics of the Sun-Times National/Local Network Play

Coming, officially today, to your hometown: A templatized, national/local, ready-to-go network of 70 news sites and apps that aim to make use of all the au courant digital news business knowledge of the day. It’s called the Sun-Times Network, and it’s the latest attempt to try to do local news ...

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