Tag Archives: us

NYTimes: US startup to launch weekly niche magazine for mobile

Leave a reply

A new US-based digital magazine will feature the work of freelance journalists in mini-editions, produced and designed for mobile phones, reports the New York Times.

Subscribers to Nomad Editions, produced by a startup company of the same name, will receive a weekly edition focused on their area of interest and delivered via a mobile application. Each issue will take between 20 and 30 minutes to read. Writers will earn up to 30 per cent of revenue subscription from each edition with different shares for editors.

A niche, mobile, and freelance model? A new launch worth watching when it goes live in October.

Full post on NYTimes.com at this link…

FT: Washington Post to sell Newsweek to Sidney Harman

1 Reply

The Washington Post has agreed to sell Newsweek to businessman Sidney Harman, the founder of one of the world’s largest audio equipment companies, reports the FT.

Harman said he is interested in “the publication’s mission” and was not investing in Newsweek to make a profit – just as well, given recent declines in the title’s ad pages and reported $30-million losses last year.

Full story on FT.com at this link…

According to the Guardian, Harman bought the title for a nominal amount “reported to be just a single dollar”.

Arkansas Business: US TV journalists fired over YouTube news spoofs

Leave a reply

Arkansas Business has the story on four employees – three reporters and a photographer – at Central Arkansas TV station KARK, who have been fired after posting two spoof behind-the-scenes videos of life in their newsroom.

The “profanity-laden” videos have since been removed from YouTube, but Arksanas Business has one at this link.

Full story on Journalism in the Americas at this link…

E&P: Editors and directors take biggest cuts as wages across US newspapers fall

Leave a reply

Wages in the US newspaper industry fell 1.42 per cent on average last year, according to new figures from the Inland Press Association, which surveyed more than 400 newspapers and their pay data.

Pay for entry-level and experienced reporters fell between one and two per cent, while editors’ salaries fell by 4.6 per cent. Creative directors working online faced the biggest decline at 7.4 per cent.

Full story on Editor&Publisher at this link…

Orders to US newspapers to delete archived stories raise censorship concerns

Leave a reply

Censorship concerns were raised in Pennsylvania recently by court orders issued to several newspapers instructing that archived stories and other information about certain defendants be deleted.

The expungement orders, issued to Centre Daily Times and the Daily Collegian student newspaper at Penn State, have now been rescinded by a second central Pennsylvania judge, Thomas King Kistler.

According to the Centre Daily Times: “It’s common for attorneys to draw up legal documents such as expungement orders for judges to consider. Centre County judges usually sign 30 to 50 such orders at a time once or twice a week.”

These kind of court order are, however, “typically demanded of public agencies” and were “an unusual provision in this case”.

The Times reports that judges are investigating a total of 41 cases in which newspapers were named in expungement orders.

Full story at this link…

Daily Intel: Lessons for other publishers from the Times paywall

Leave a reply

With the New York Times expected to introduce paid access to its website from 2011, the Daily Intel looks at what lessons publishers can learn from the implementation of the UK Times’ paywall, including:

  • make it RSS-friendly;
  • make the price suprisingly low;
  • mind your talent;
  • and deal with the payment transaction early on.

Full post at this link…

Related listening: Podcast from the Association of Online Publishers event on paywalls and diversifying revenue streams with the Times’ assistant editor and head of online, Tom Whitwell.

MediaWeek: Trade group discusses quality guidelines for syndicated content

Leave a reply

The Internet Content Syndication Council, whose members include Thomson Reuters and the Tribune Company, are reportedly discussing a public set of quality guidelines for online content, which could include an accreditation process for syndicated content.

The plans are in response to the growth of companies such as Demand Media and Associated Content, whose link-heavy, search-optimised articles, the council believes, make online publishing less valuable.

They specifically want to call more attention to the ability of these content generators to seed their articles through search, which in their eyes squeezes out professionally produced content.

Full story on Mediaweek…

CJR and the Texas Tribune: Is data both journalism and a business?

1 Reply

The Columbia Journalism Review takes an in-depth look at news start-up the Texas Tribune, which launched in November last year “billing itself not only as an antidote to the dwindling capitol press corps but also as a new force in Texas political life”. CJR considers how sustainable the venture is editorially and commercially:

The Tribune’s biggest magnet by far has been its more than three dozen interactive databases, which collectively have drawn three times as many page views as the site’s stories (…) The Tribune publishes or updates at least one database per week, and readers e-mail these database links to each other or share them on Facebook, scouring their neighborhood’s school rankings or their state rep’s spending habits. Through May, the databases had generated more than 2.3 million page views since the site’s launch

Full story on CJR…

Techdirt: The problem of reporting on your own paywall

Leave a reply

Interesting round-up from Techdirt on how newspaper companies and titles report on their own paywall plans. The post follows news that US company Gannett, which owns a number of regional US newspapers and the UK’s Newsquest group, is beginning a paywall experiment.

Argues Mike Masnick for Techdirt:

They give misleading headlines, they pretend that paywalls are some huge journalistic advance (rather than just a business model choice – and one that’s been tried and failed a bunch), and most importantly, they all totally bury the lede, and don’t bring up the paywall until many paragraphs into the article.

(…)

What we’re seeing is the implicit realization that these newspapers know a paywall won’t work. If it was something their audience wanted, they would be upfront and honest about it. Or if they had a good rationale for the decision they would be upfront and honest about it. Instead they have to be misleading, defensive and hide the important point. Quite an “experiment” by Gannett…

Full story at this link…

Related reading: From news:rewired – the nouveau niche, the Times’ Tom Whitwell, Reed Business Information’s Karl Schneider and MSN UK’s Alastair Bruce on the future of paid-for news.

Editors Weblog: US newspaper and TV websites launch Craigslist-rival boocoo

Leave a reply

A group of US newspaper and broadcast TV news websites have launched boocoo.com – a listings and auction site to compete against eBay and Craigslist.

As well as charging for listings, the revenue plan for the site is to licence listings by zip code to individual newspaper publishers.

Tony Marsella, president of boocoo’s parent company Ranger Data Technologies, tells the Editors Weblog:

On Craigslist the model is “put the ad up and people work the price down”, whereas our model is just the opposite.  Put the item on and bid the price up.  We will also not allow “adult” materials, services, etc.  Our standard will be the high standards that newspapers have maintained for years in their local markets.  We will in the proper fashion make all of these points in our ad campaigns.

eBay is extremely vulnerable in the area of general merchandise auctions.  They have moved far from those people as they continue to move toward big box retail and fixed price selling.  Items that are difficult to ship, (lawn mowers, large furniture, snow blowers, etc) work very well in a market that has a local emphasis. Local focus also gives consumers the added advantage of shopping for services.

Full story at this link…