Greenslade: Change of direction for Guardian Media Group?

Roy Greenslade reports on the Sunday Times’ coverage of a new direction for Guardian Media Group. According to the Times’ print edition yesterday, GMG is planning to separate its newspapers and their website from the rest of its multimedia assets.

The report follows previous claims by the paper that Andrew Miller, new GMG chief executive, is looking at a sale or stock market listing for its Trader division.

Full post on Roy Greenslade’s blog…

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Guardian and Apax begin talks over future of Auto Trader

Guardian Media Group and Apax Partners have begun discussions with banks about the future of Trader Media Group (TMG), owner of Auto Trader, the Guardian reports.

A trade sale or a flotation of TMG, which could value the owner of Auto Trader at up to £2bn, are the likeliest options. But a debt-funded dividend payment to the two shareholders is also a possibility, as is bringing in another investor to buy a minority stake of between 20 per cent and 40 per cent.

According to the report, it could be until late 2011 or early 2012 before a deal on TMG is done.

Full story on Guardian.co.uk at this link…

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Stephen Glover: The Guardian can’t go on like this

Interesting take on the Guardian’s business model from Stephen Glover in the wake of Trader Media Group (TMG) writing off £463 million of the value of its magazine – TMG is part owned by Guardian Media Group.

Maybe GMG will be able to bankroll its national papers for ever. Personally, I wouldn’t count on it, especially if more of its investments go wrong. The trouble is that there seems to be no one in the Scott Trust or Guardian Media Group or on the papers themselves able or prepared to stand up and say what is blindingly obvious to everyone else in Fleet Street – that these newspapers are continuing to live dangerously beyond their means.

Full piece on Independent.co.uk at this link…

Update: A GMG spokesman has told Journalism.co.uk: “The write down Stephen Glover refers to is an accounting adjustment with zero impact on the overall value of TMG or its main brand Auto Trader (…) The write down reflects a transfer of value from print to digital rather than a drop in the actual value of the company. The net book loss arises simply because accounting rules don’t allow you to ‘write up’ the part of the business that has grown.”

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Journalism Daily: AutoTrader tips, Technorati’s ‘original content’ and the online anonymity debate

A daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site. You can also sign up to our e-newsletter and subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

News and features:

• New partnership for Al Jazeera Network and A24 Media
• Blog search engine Technorati to publish ‘original content’
• Kate Day takes communities editor role at Telegraph’
• Trader Media Group: Can news organisations learn from AutoTrader?
• Smart Moves: Kurt Edwards moves to Future as digital commercial director

Ed’s picks:

• ‘Access Denied’: Frontline Club discussion on global media coverage (video)
• Ryan Sholin’s five tips for hiring developers
• Huffington Post seeks headline help on Twitter
• The Internet Manifesto translated by its critics
• Journalism Online paid content venture to take 20 per cent commission
• Times of India: Protests in journalism department over ‘commercialisation of education’

Tip of the day:

• Searching UK newspaper articles

#FollowJourn:

• @martinstabe/online editor

On the Editor’s Blog:

• Online anonymity: Journalism.co.uk joins the debate on Al Jazeera English
• Linking data and journalism: what’s the future?
• This week’s new jobs from Journalism.co.uk
• You must not embed the Telegraph’s embeddable video
• First web editors appointed to American Society of News Editors’ board

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• Journalism Daily: More on online sub-editing and public interest journalism
• Journalism Daily: BBC video plans, Trinity Midlands strike and perfecting the press release