The iPad: Quick Publisher Scorecard

New marketing dollars, new marketing dollars, new marketing dollars. Yes, three plusses. I believe that the biggest impact of the tablet, in whatever six- to 11-inch forms stick will be in being a magnet for marketing dollars. I'm not saying advertising dollars. We're seeing a huge shift in ...

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Last Man Standing? NYT and WSJ Move on Metro Markets

It's hard to gauge the impact of New York Times and Wall Street Journal moves into metro markets. They could be simple, print retention strategies aimed, at holding on to valuable print readers — the magnets for still-lucrative print advertising — for as long as possible. ...

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Circ Math 101: Less is Less

Look at some of the individual results, and you understand why the New York Times just announced that it is taking another 100 jobs out of its newsroom and why other newsroom (and, of course, wider) cuts may increase -- not decrease -- as Wall Street indicates that an overall economic recovery ...

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N.Y. Times’ SF Edition Plays Inside-Out Game

Tired of playing defense and readying itself for offense, the New York Times’ formal announcement of its San Francisco “edition” this week shows us how a world is moving and how the Times and Wall Street Journal (which also will offer an SF edition soon) is taking their battle to a city near you.

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New San Francisco Independent News Site Unsettles Status Quo

Important Details:  San Francisco financier Warren Hellman has announced one of the most ambitious independent online news start-ups. He’s putting up seed money of $5 million with plans to hire “dozens of journalists” to cover the news in and around San Francisco. Hellman has ...

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Bay Area Online News Renaissance: 7 Pointers Forward

For daily newspapers, the growth of alternative journalisms is both a promise and a threat. It's a promise of getting high-quality, low-cost (California Watch charged even large metros just a few hundred dollars, though it is reviewing its business models going forward), without having to pay ...

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Nine Questions: Rupert’s Dollar Sale, Self-Service Ad Revolution, the California Watch Model and JO’s Tech Friends

Charging for non-desktop/laptop access should be a new revenue stream for news publishers. The math, though, isn't huge. Who is most likely to pay for Journal mobile? Presumably it's online subscribers, of whom there are about a million. So $12 a year, if all of them signed up, would be $12 ...

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Google’s Fast Flip Dips Publishers’ Toes in Google’s Own Ad Revenues

Fast Flip, Google's hardly secret visual news search product, just made its debut today. It's a premiere that tells us lots about the swirling tradewinds in which the company now finds itself. It also marks two important milestones, one about the slow replacement of news search 1.0 and one ...

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Oracular Vernacular? Murdoch, Paid Content and the Emergence of All-Access Pricing

If there's a better realpolitiks player in the news industry than Murdoch, please stand up. If not, Murdoch knows that News Corp putting up a pay wall would be akin to unilateral disarmament -- and that's something only pinkos do. Put on up a pay wall when many others improve their ...

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Can You Feel the Bottom? Born-Again Cost-Cutting Leads Back to Profitability

What the predictions failed to get right was how deeply newspaper companies have cut expenses. Consider these cuts, 2Q, 2009 compared to 2Q, 2008: * McClatchy: 29% * Gannett: 20% * Media General: 23% * New York Times: 20% It is these cuts -- coming on a base that has been shrunken quarter by ...

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