What a Quartz Sale Might Look Like, and Why

Companion article: What Are They Thinking: Quartz Redesign Lays Out a New Home Page ‘Welcome Mat’     Is Quartz the next digital-news start-up to be bought? In the continuing roll-up and old media investment in digital news start-ups, Atlantic Media’s Quartz may be next in line. ...

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The Newsonomics of How and Why

Follow Newsonomics on Twitter @kdoctor   First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab Try this: Make a list with two simple columns. On the left, write Who, What, When, and Where. On the right column, write How and Why. Then, go to any news site — local, national, or global — ...

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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 Rupert Murdoch’s Long Game

So Thomson’s ascension is no surprise (“Nine Questions as Murdoch Splits The News Corp. Baby”). Sure, he’s an editor — but he’s a News Corp. editor, and has been for a decade. Robert Thomson has been well schooled in the College of Murdoch. He’s a strategic news executive with a good sense of ...

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Nine Questions on the News Corp Split: The Rise of Twenty-First Century Fox and The Daily’s Demise

Why did The Daily fail? I think the short answer is that it missed the first law of media: Make it interesting. The Daily was attractive, even sometimes stunning, in its visual appeal, but too empty-headed to attract a daily readership. If you are going to call something The Daily, you better ...

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The Newsonomics of the Quartz Business Launch

This is the biggest unanswered question about Quartz, until we actually read it. Is this the same business news others have, but differently covered, written, or presented? Or is business news that others aren’t offering? ... It’s the content, silly, that will make or break a news product. The ...

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The Newsonomics of a New York Times/CNN Combination

Both CNN and The New York Times fill in numerous of the other’s weaknesses. At this digital moment when “mobile” and the tablet are tossing old habits up in the air and forcing consumers to re-form new ones, it’s a great time for both the Times and CNN to double down on their native advantages, ...

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The Newsonomics of the News Corp Split

The split made sense even before Hackgate. Viacom, Belo, and Scripps all split off growing assets over the last several years to investors’ cheers. This sequestering of no-growth — what the newspaper business, charitably, has become — businesses has its logic. Media ain’t what it used to be. ...

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McClatchy’s Gary Pruitt Scales the AP Mountain

Why do it? Why trade in the sleepiness of California's capital city (Sacramento is McClatchy's headquarters) for the bright lights of Broadway, a long walk from AP's NYC offices? Number one on list may be McClatchy fatigue. Pruitt and his CFO, now-successor Pat Talamantes, have rowed the ...

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The Newsonomics of Tablet Ads That Go Bump in the Night

Commercial conversation, especially targeted commercial conversation, is the Internet’s next generation of advertising. The first generation of impression-based web ads has been a low-clicking disaster. These new ads — some better executed than others, of course — insult our intelligence less ...

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