New Hollywood Sequel: Aaron Kushner’s L.A. Register

Why, I asked, Aaron Kushner, is he announcing the new L.A. Register as we’re winding down toward the end of the year? Given that the big questions about it — when will it launch, how will it be staffed — are as yet unannounced, why put the news out now? “We were ready to ...

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The Newsonomics of Scripps’ TV Paywall & the Last Man Standing Theory of Local Media

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab   How much would you pay for online access to Ron Burgundy — or at least the Ron Burgundys of Cincinnati? In an industry-shaking move, E.W. Scripps’ WCPO.TV — that’s the website of Cincinnati’s ABC affiliate — is putting up a paywall ...

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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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The Newsonomics of the New York Times’ Paywalls 2.0

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab Listen to Mark Thompson and you hear echoes of early 2011. “We have the theory. We’ve done the research. We’ve done the modeling,” the New York Times Co. CEO told me last week. “Then there’s ...

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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 the Shopping of Press+ and The Coming of Paywalls 2.0

First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab   In April 2009, when Journalism Online began operations, its business — providing the backend for websites offering different kinds of paywalls — was largely derided. Two years later, when the company — having largely assumed the ...

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The Newsonomics of the New Chattanooga (Events) Choo-Choo

Aim as much at non-advertisers as advertisers. The remodeler is like most local businesses: a non-advertiser. Taylor says the events business has exposed the paper to a large new set of businesses, a number of whom are now also buying ads as well as event sponsorships. That means new ”indirect ...

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The Newsonomics of Jeff Bezos’ (and Warren Buffett’s) “Runway”

What do all of these newspaper buyers have in common? They don’t have to look back at loss and what used to be. They’ve bought strong brands with tens or hundreds of thousands of reader/customer relationships and thousands of advertising relationships. Those are the kinds of assets that a ...

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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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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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