Newsonomics: The Washington Post’s Ambitions For Arc Have Grown — To A Bezosian Scale

In the blink of a digital era, The Washington Post’s Arc publishing platform has sprinted from an experiment to a full-on strategic business. Arc is now used by more than 30 clients operating more than 100 sites on four continents. It’s not the industry standard, but it’s not too early to call ...

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Newsonomics: Newsprint Tariffs Are A Black Swan Event That Could Speed Up The Death Of U.S. Newspapers

People have been forecasting the “death of newspapers” for more than a decade now. They see a kettle of vultures amid the ever-darkening clouds of print advertising collapse, slowed digital advertising, and the difficulty of signing up new digital subscribers. Now the battle is heating up on ...

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Newsonomics: GateHouse’s Mike Reed Talks About Rolling Up America’s News Industry

    The news shocked long-time newspaper observers two months ago: “Tampa Bay Times to be sold to GateHouse Media in $79M deal.” Had GateHouse devoured yet another storied publisher? No: It was a FloridaPolitics.com April Fool’s prank played out to a near-incredulous audience. Mike ...

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Newsonomics: Still Another Tronc Drama, As John Lynch Re-Enters The Business

Tronc doesn’t do anything by the book. Even as much of the company’s turbulence looks to be clearing, new questions are emerging about who will next lead the big metro chain. Softbank and Apollo Global Management have reportedly expressed real interest in buying the company, but much more ...

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Newsonomics: A (Publishing) Obit For Michael Ferro

On Friday afternoon, Tronc announced that its lead shareholder Merrick Media, led by just-resigned board chairman Michael Ferro, was selling its entire stake in the company. McCormick Media — managed by Sargent McCormick, a distant relative of the McCormick family that controlled the Chicago ...

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Newsonomics: The Denver Post’s Protest Should Launch A New Era of “Calling B.S.”

What are we to make of The Denver Post’s “extraordinary display of defiance”? As the paper’s editorial board, led by Chuck Plunkett, fired a fusillade of public protest on Sunday — publishing six pages decrying the paper’s owner, to the social congratulations of the news world — we may have ...

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Newsonomics: A Q & A With The Daily’s Michael Barbaro, Host Of NYT’s Breakout Podcast

  Companion Piece: How The New York Times Intends to Build A Franchise Around “The Daily” and How It Figures Into The Times’ Digital Transformation         He doesn’t listen to many podcasts, and he doesn’t even own an Amazon Echo or Google ...

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Newsonomics: A Q and A With Tony Haile, Building Scroll, The “TSA Pre✓” For Reader Revenue

Tony Haile learned a lot of things about news during his seven years building Chartbeat, the analytics platform used in newsrooms worldwide. One of them: “Attempts to get this industry to work together have been slow at best.” Amen to that, one of the biggest hurdles to innovation ...

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Newsonomics: Our Peggy Lee Moment: Is That All There Is To Reader Revenue?

It’s an age of ready-to-binge whodunits, exported from the Nordic cold onto our heat-seeking laptops and living room screens. So will anyone take up this mystery: Who killed the news subscriber? As print subscriptions have plummeted, digital subscriptions have slowly emerged. It’s ...

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Newsonomics: Tronc & The Daily News, What To Make Of This Out-Of-The Blue Buy

For much of the winter and spring, Michael Ferro was uncharacteristically quiet. Once he’d defeated Gannett’s hostile takeover attempt of his newly named Tronc, Ferro seemed to cease being the center of the news industry storm. Some applauded; others privately told me they missed ...

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