Of Mormons, Moguls and Murdoch: Focus on the Innovation, not the Innovators

We can't though dismiss what the Mormon Church, Rupert Murdoch and ad moguls are up to. We have to learn from it and help it power a journalism that matters.

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Rupert’s $1 Million Republican Gift: Why It Matters

Why it's a big story: 1) The size of the gift. $1 million. 2) The size of Rupert Murdoch's presence in the news world. 3) The size of Fox News in the political news landscape. 4) The size of Murdoch's influence at the Wall Street Journal.

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Nine Questions on Patch’s New Push: National Hyperlocal?, SEO Sauces, and the Case of the Besieged Florist

So who's the ad competition? Maybe we should ask, who isn't? ...The question, here, is one of sustainability. Certainly, there's the question whether Patch can sustain itself, as its parent AOL struggles to find a new identity and growing business model. Then, there's the question of the ...

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Nine Questions on Newsweek’s Future: Beltway Blues, Semi-Wonkiness and ‘What Would Arianna Do’?

Isn't it time to get a little interactive? Take Conventional Wisdom Watch (major riff on conventional wisdom over at New Republic), an enduring editorial classic measuring the political zeitgeist. It's iconic -- and readers could play along submitting their own, crowdsourcing, inventing and ...

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Nine Questions on the Tablet and the News Industry Future

The Apple model, in a sense, just sets a new cost-of-distribution. While web distribution has been free-plus, the cost of Apple distribution – if you charge for news products – is a predictable, and seemingly stable 30%. Just give me 30% off the top, says Steve Jobs. Ironically, that 30% is ...

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The Newsonomics of Online Ad Spending, and Its Costs

The problem is at least, in part, structural. The American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) has estimated that it costs twice as much to manage the placement of digital ads as compared to print and broadcast.

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AP Gateway: Learning from AP Mobile

Aggregation, as nurtured through the News Registry ingestion-and-tagging process, is the key, and that's been largely proven out. Among the big challenges is creating a compelling user experience that transcends old news conventions. Give AP Mobile a B here; what's needed is an A product;AP ...

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Business News Arms War Heating Up

* It's war for the business reader, the global business reader, the investor, the savvy consumer. It's no accident that it's been the FT and the Journal that have led paid content models. Expect to see lots more products, steals and innovations, as a half-dozen top business news brands ...

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NYT-WSJ Local Ad War Bloomin’

Every Journal dollar taken -- remember advertisers will switch dollars, not add new ones -- is a double gain.

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Arthur and the Blue People

So, as the Times reorganizes its digital business operations, add something new to the Times woes' of downsized ad spend, too great a cost structure and little way to gain other than ad revenues digitally until at least 2011 given its go-slow approach to metering. Add the forest people, the ...

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