Newsonomics: The Next 48 Hours Could Determine The Fate Of Two Of America’s Largest Newspaper Chains

The next 48 hours may decide the fate of two of America’s largest newspaper chains that collectively serve almost a fifth of all American local newspaper readers. And what happens in those hours could prompt a wave of other moves across the rest of the industry. The dates June 30 and July 1 ...

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Newsonomics: The New York Times Is Opting Out Of Apple News

The New York Times has decided to opt out of Apple News. On its own, that may seem like just one more move in the chess game between major news companies and the platforms. But it could also be an indication of a more geologic movement. Will the rest of 2020 bring tectonic shifts in... Read More

Newsonomics: How Will The Pandemic Panic Reshape The Local News Industry?

McClatchy’s bankruptcy is barreling to a conclusion. Tribune’s quietly trimming its board to prepare for a merger. Google and Facebook face unprecedented calls to pay up on at least three continents. And all the while — wait for it — Alden Global Capital’s Heath Freeman is joining the fray, ...

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Newsonomics: Tomorrow’s Life-Or-Death Decisions For Newspapers Are Suddenly Today’s, Thanks To Coronavirus

As local newspapers’ businesses hit the skids, they’re finding themselves careening right now into a future they’d thought was still several years away. “We are all going to jump ahead three years,” Mike Orren, chief product officer of The Dallas Morning News, suggested to me last week. At ...

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Newsonomics: What Was Once Unthinkable Is Quickly Becoming Reality In The Destruction Of Local News

As words like “annihilation” and “extinction” enter our news vocabulary — or at least move from debates over the years-away future to the frighteningly contemporary — it’s helpful to start out with the good news. Maybe even an old joke. What’s black and white and now deemed “essential”? ...

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The Newsonomics of the Mnuchin Money And The Bailout’s Impact On America’s Press

  Is that a light at the end of the tunnel? Or just the Mnuchin Express coming for the newspaper industry? The $2.2 trillion CARES Act will likely become law at some point today. It’s a bailout that has got local news publishers and their trade groups scurrying; they’re eyeing two big ...

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Newsonomics: In Memphis’ Unexpected News war, The Daily Memphian’s Model Demands Attention

At first blush, it looks a bit like an old-fashioned newspaper war. (For our younger readers: Long ago, some cities had two or more strong newspapers that fought each other for scoops, talent, readers, and advertisers. Really.) In Memphis, two newsrooms — each with about three dozen journalists ...

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Newsonomics: Six Takeaways From McClatchy’s Bankruptcy

What McClatchy’s Thursday bankruptcy filing lacked in suspense, it makes up for in our ability to game out the next skirmishes in the Consolidation Games, now ramping up its second season. That massive movement within the newspaper industry — equal parts financialization and consolidation — has ...

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Newsonomics: Here Are 20 Epiphanies For The News Business Of The 2020s

It is the best of times for The New York Times — and likely the worst of times for all the local newspapers with Times (or Gazette or Sun or Telegram or Journal) in their nameplates across the land. When I spoke at state newspaper conferences five or ten years ago, people would say: “It’ll... ...

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Newsonomics: By Selling To America’s Worst Newspaper Owners, Michael Ferro Ushers The Vultures Into Tribune

Is it the apocalypse, or just an unreasonable facsimile? In a week of newspaper industry drama — GateHouse’s expected takeover of Gannett and McClatchy’s unexpected move in the direction of bankruptcy — who could write a better next act than that old newspaper vaudeville duo of Michael ...

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