Newsonomics: The New York Times Puts Personalization Front And Center — Just For You

  Remember The Daily Me? Not just the startup that came and went trying to provide a personalized product — I mean that original dream/nightmare of the golden news site that gives the reader what she wants, first voiced ages ago by MIT’s Nicholas Negroponte. In the archives of news dreams ...

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Newsonomics: The Potential GateHouse/Gannett Merger Shows “More Scale!” Is Still The Newspaper Industry’s Top Strategy

Call it megaclustering. If a GateHouse/Gannett merger — rumored for weeks, today reported as a deal in some stage of progress by The Wall Street Journal — becomes reality, about 1 of every 6 daily newspapers in the United States would be owned by a single company. Totaled up, 267 dailies would ...

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Newsonomics: GateHouse Makes Lemonade Out of Big Layoffs and New Investigative Teams

Today’s editorial managers find themselves in the lemonade business. Their assembly line of lemons keeps gaining speed, and they have to constantly find new recipes to make lemonade out of thinner and thinner ingredients. On Thursday, GateHouse — a.k.a. New Media Investments, or NEWM — ...

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Newsonomics: Gannett Turns Back Alden, But It’s Just A Hiccup Before The Big Rollup In The Sky

It seems like a return to status quo ante. But the ante may have changed. No surprises: Today, Gannett shareholders officially rejected Alden Global Capital’s amateurish efforts to win board seats and push the country’s biggest newspaper chain by revenue to sell itself. RELATED ARTICLE ...

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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: Can The New York Times Avoid A Trump Slump And Sign Up 10 million Paying Subscribers?

Be sure to read the Mark Thompson Q&A that accompanies this story. RELATED ARTICLE The New York Times’ Mark Thompson on how he’d run a local newspaper: “Where can we stand and fight?” February 22, 2019     Mark Thompson’s nautical and military metaphors have generated some ribbing ...

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“Newsonomics: In The Consolidation Games, Enter The Bankers”

The bankers are now hired. Is the early 2019 newspaper chain M&A face-off now getting serious? It’s reminiscent of an earlier brand of warfare. Newspaper chains — all cutting desperately, each facing a shortening deadline to make a “digital transition” — line up their dealmaking armies, ...

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Newsonomics: Amid Screaming Alarms, Consolidation Mania Turns Feverish

Alden’s going to snatch Gannett! No, Gannett’s going to turn the tables and buy Alden’s Digital First Media! But wait, Gannett will reject Alden — is that a real offer? — and turn its attention to merging with Tribune! No, Tribune — having dispatched its CEO Justin Dearborn to clear the way for ...

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Newsonomics: Newspapers In Name Only & Who’s Going To Build What Comes Next In Local?

Neil Chase knows the painful realities of managing and motivating a daily newsroom in 2018. “You can’t ask dedicated, veteran career journalists to completely change the way they work without explaining why,” the Mercury News executive editor said at a panel discussion I moderated at Stanford ...

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Newsonomics: “Digital defeats print” Is The Headline As Gannett Steps Away From Printed Election Results

Editors have long had to battle deadlines on election nights across America — pushing press runs to the last possible moment in order to get the most complete results into the next morning’s paper. Print is many things, but it isn’t a great real-time medium. Now, though, Gannett is throwing the ...

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