The Newsonomics of the Surprisingly Persistent Appeal of Newsprint

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab Tonnage. The word speaks to a different age of news media when ink, bought by barrel, and newsprint, bought by the ton, ruled. Newspapers — in print — still go out to some 40 million-plus Americans and as many as 1.4 billion worldwide. We ...

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The Newsonomics of Big Sports Money — & News

Both Axel Springer and News Corp, two of the 10 largest publishers worldwide, have merged sports and news pay strategies. Springer’s Bild — Germany’s most popular paper — has nervously launched a paywall, which charges €2.99 on top of €4.99 a month for video access (one hour after matches are ...

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The Newsonomics of Patch’s Unraveling

Overall, Patches have proven out a truism: More news coverage is better than less news coverage. Patch has added content to the mix that its competitive dailies missed. Now many of those will be gone, along with all the uncountable coverage losses driven by the loss of those 17,000 largely ...

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The newsonomics of 2013’s second half, from ad depression to day dropping to real estate as destiny

The newest News Corp sets sail. Cast adrift — but with a handy $2.6 billion in cash and no debt, making its peers oh-so-envi0us — the world’s largest newspaper company is in the midst of furious change. At the flagship Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, it’s tough to find anyone in management ...

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The Newsonomics of Why Paywalls Now?

Why paywalls now? Why weren’t paywalls put into place in 2007, or 2002, or 1997? Might such paywalls have prevented the massive loss of reporting that local papers — and local readers — have suffered? Would they have saved a good number of the more than 15,000 newsroom jobs (a 28 percent ...

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The Newsonomics of Thin Ice, from the BBC and FT to The New York Times and The Washington Post

I’ve highlighted just two data points: the number of journalists and the profit performance of four major news organizations in the spotlight. We see about 4,200 journalists employed among these four companies. One, the BBC, is an intentional nonprofit. Another, The Washington Post, is ...

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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 Newsonomics of Breakthrough Digital TV, from Aereo to Dyle and MundoFox to Google Fiber

Today, TV is no longer a box. Sure, even with all the Rokus, Boxees, and Apple TVs, it seems like TV isn’t yet an out-of-the-box experience. But with Hulu, Netflix, and Comcast’s Xfinity, it’s emerging quickly, escaping our fixed idea of what it once was — the boob tube in the living room. If ...

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The newsonomics of good news

2. Digital circulation vastly improves circulation revenue margins. Last week, faced with a Wall Street Journal renewal notice, I opted for digital-only for the first time, knowing that WSJ’s tablet format and easy right-hand navigation makes it far quicker to read than the paper version. That ...

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The Newsonomics of Google’s (Ad) Singularity

Add it up, and Google moves to its next stage. Paid search equals about half of digital advertising, and the Google absolutely dominates that business, with a still-astounding 82 percent market share. Since buying Doubleclick for a paltry $3.1 billion in 2007, it has moved to become the display ...

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