The New York Times and the Thompson Effect: Blow Over or Blowback?

Is the conflating of Hackgate and this BBC scandal fair? We'll see. Let's be clear though. This one will quickly push Hackgate to the background. So, instead of the New York Times playing the white knight, aiding the Guardian in its disclosure of Hackgate, it now gets sucked into the scandal of ...

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For New York Times’ Sake, Mark Thompson Should Step Aside

For the Times, though, it's not a foreign scandal. It's a scandal, like Superstorm Sandy, that will arrive on its doorstep Monday morning. Today, Mark Thompson isn't the head of the Times. Today, the Times has the ability to sidestep the storm. Today, the Times has the ability to move forward, ...

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The Newsonomics of the Newspaper Industry as the Republican Party

Of all votes cast for Romney, 88 percent came from white voters. Yet the white vote declined to 72 percent of the total vote, down two points in four years and 11 points in 20 years. A Politico headline: “GOP soul-searching: ‘Too old, too white, too male?’” Around noon Wednesday, I started ...

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The Newsonomics of Rupert Murdoch, American Publisher

Tribune’s own market assessment of all its eight newspaper properties, part of the bankruptcy proceeding, came in at $623 million, compared to $2.85 billion for the broadcast business. Without competitive bidders, that amount may be optimistic. With competitive bidders — especially in L.A. and ...

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The Newsonomics of Near-Term Numerology

Quite literally, significant newspaper nameplates (and, more significantly, the real estate those nameplates rest uneasily on) are going for the prices of mansions in many communities. So why buy? Sometimes, it’s simple: You get a great deal. That’s what Warren Buffett got in his purchase of ...

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The Newsonomics of Advance’s New Orleans Strategy

The grand math: 11 percent more cost savings than revenue losses. It could be high or low, but at 11 percent it would double or triple the profit margins of many metro papers. It would also buy time, but only if those revenues hold at estimated levels and don’t take a deeper, self-inflicted ...

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The Newsonomics of Pricing 201

Circulation has turned from a means (getting ad-rich papers to shoppers) to an end unto itself, actually getting readers to pay a significant share of the journalism costs. It’s a simple proposition: You ask the people who really value you and your journalism to pay you more. Surprisingly to ...

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The Newsonomics of All-Access Delight

Remember the first time you got cross-platform delight? For me, it was when I started a second look at “Lost in Translation” on my TV, happened to click on my Netflix app while working out the next day, and was astounded to see the film paused precisely and ready to start where I’d left off, ...

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The USA Today Redesign: Too Little, Too Early?

My guess: in a rush to do something to reverse the USAT's flagging fortunes, Gannett and/or new publisher Larry Kramer decided to take one big public step. Change the look first -- and then get to the deeper, underlying questions of identity, purpose, storytelling and content, all of which are ...

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The Newsonomics of the Quartz Business Launch

This is the biggest unanswered question about Quartz, until we actually read it. Is this the same business news others have, but differently covered, written, or presented? Or is business news that others aren’t offering? ... It’s the content, silly, that will make or break a news product. The ...

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