Covering the Trump Era – with Shrinking Newsrooms

First came the election; now, for the news business, comes the reckoning. The internecine media wars – full of self-criticism and finger-pointing – dominated the online discussions about the business during the two weeks after the election. But many working journalists face a more immediate ...

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Santa Ana Showdown: Tribune’s Bid for Southern California

  Companion column: Michael Ferro immediately redefines Tribune Publishing’s chairman role   Today, in the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Santa Ana, Calif., the Orange County Register – for the second time—begins to emerge from bankruptcy. There may not be much ...

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Apollo Withdraws from D.F.M. Deal, John Paton Leaves

As of today Apollo Global Management won’t meet Digital First Media’s price. That price tag of $400 million (“What are they thinking? Apollo’s acquisition of Digital First Media”) had been wavering as Apollo did its continuing due diligence over the last two months. “We have concluded we are ...

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The Newsonomics of the November Shuffle, From Forbes to Freedom and Couric to Stelter

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab Ah, the pre-Thanksgiving bounty. Those of us who try to chronicle the business end of the news business have seen our plates overflowing lately. Not since the Bezos blitz of August have we seen so many announcements, shuffles, offers to ...

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As Digital First Media Announces Its Paywalls, 41% of US Dailies Will Soon Have Them

Even the paywall contrarians are coming around. John Paton’s Digital First Media will announce today its adoption of metered paywalls at all its Media News and Journal Register sites. That’s more than 75 papers, including big ones in Denver, San Jose, L.A., Salt Lake City (among the ...

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The Newsonomics of Big and Little, from NBC News and GlobalPost to Thunderdome

That led Balboni to look for a big brother. While he’d done various kinds of editorial partnerships with CBS and PBS over time, none had produced a game-changing business impact. What GlobalPost needed was two things: An ad partner whose ad technology stack could help GlobalPost better ...

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Nine Questions: Savior Bezos, Chronicle Debacle, Patch Undone, the Long Beach Lunge & More

Is reader revenue one of the answers to the next stage of hyperlocal? The halving of Patch ("The newsonomics of Patch's unraveling", today at the Nieman Journalism Lab) is just another curve on the long road to marry local news and digital. Like Backfence and many newspaper forays, it has found ...

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The Newsonomics of the Kochs: Impact on the L.A. News Landscape

Critics can say what they want about the diminishment about the L.A. Times. Its news presence and ability to set agendas, through its reporting and opinion pages, is certainly reduced, but it’s still got the only megaphone of its kind in town. As Gabriel Kahn, a University of Southern ...

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The Newsonomics of the Kochs Rising — and Uprising

The new board’s mandate, of course, is to maximize its take on the sale. Tribune newspaper profits run at the roughly $200 million level, maybe a third of which comes out of L.A. So, take the market multiple of 3 or 4 times that number as a price — or $600 million-plus — for the eight papers, ...

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The Newsonomics of 2013 Wizardry: Tribune, Buffett, Murdoch, Paton, Bloomberg, and more

Today, though, most of the reporting power, much of the brand power, and thepolitical power still resides in big companies and their leadership. We may well get our strongest display of that early in 2013: In Washington, the FCC cross-ownership debate may move to center stage in January. And ...

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