Categories: Newspapers

Newspapers: Less Liked Than Airlines?

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 19

I posted here on Friday about a shred of good news for newspaper companies. Consumers appear to be willing to pay for their papers—that is, the paper version of the...

Sighted: Faint Encouraging Glimmer For Newspapers

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 15

People are still paying for the print newspaper. In fact, in almost all cases, people are paying more for the print newspaper: circulation revenues rose, if slightly, at almost all...

Polish Designer Jacek Utko Describes Way For Newspapers To Win On Quality

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 07

How great is this quote? “I’m not gonna tell you stories about teamwork or cooperation. My approach was very egotistic. I wanted my artistic statement. My interpretation of reality. I...

The Underlying Reality Of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. And The New York Times

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 02

The New York Times Co’s market cap is down to $720 million, as I write this, and the day’s tides of media and commentary bring in, virtually every day, pre-obituaries...

AND WE STILL HAVE A DAY TO GO

Posted by: Jon Fine on February 26

Think your industry is having a rough week so far? Take a look at the newspaper business. Sat. Feb 21 – Newspaper chain Journal Register files for bankruptcy protection Sun....

Hearst Lays Down Gauntlet For San Francisco Chronicle, Threatens Sale Or Closure Without Significant Cuts And Union Concessions.

Posted by: Jon Fine on February 24

My half-bright idea from the early summer of 2007 was that Hearst should shutter the San Francisco Chronicle's print edition and go all digital, at some point in the next...

In Which I Aggregate Too Many Partially-Related Thoughts About Paying For News Online, Micropayments, And Newspapers

Posted by: Jon Fine on February 19

At times I have way too many things--whether they're wise or wooly-headed--to say about any given topic to cram into the space allotted for my column. This is one of...

News Corp Posts First Quarterly Loss In Three Years; 14 Laid Off At Wall Street Journal, And The Relative Performance of The WSJ and the New York Times

Posted by: Jon Fine on February 05

A grand coincidence? Well, yeah, actually. Judging from the dynamics for virtually any comparable major media outlet (and especially one that gets the bulk of its revenues from print), you...

Arguments Why Journalism School Professors Should Not Be Quoted Regarding The Business Of Newspapers

Posted by: Jon Fine on January 13

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's own (excellent) reporting on the news that its parent company Hearst Newspapers is alloting but 60 days to sell it: Tim Pilgrim, a journalism professor at...

Dan Savage Offers Simple, Candid, NSFW Way For Daily Newspapers To Save Themselves

Posted by: Jon Fine on November 12

David Hirschman of Mediabistro (which--disclosure time!--was founded by my wife, Laurel Touby) just put online an excellent interview with Dan Savage, noted sex colunist and editorial director of the Seattle...

Weird Newspaper Story Of The Day, Part Two: Street Hawkers Spot Potential Reader, Freak Out

Posted by: Jon Fine on August 06

A pal who resides in Manhattan texts me: Yesterday both sides of my cab got attack-accosted by dueling Post and Daily News salesmen actually offering free papers. In one case,...

Weird Newspaper Story Of The Day, Part One: Wall Street Journal Cuts Service To Some Rural Subscribers

Posted by: Jon Fine on August 06

A reader who lives in Wyoming, around 30 miles away from the nearest decent-sized town, recently sent me the following email about his Wall Street Journal subscription: >>> i got...

More On That Speech Given By Dean Singleton: An Interesting Perspective From A Commenter Who Used To Work For Him

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 16

Commented DDDenver, who identifies him- or herself as a former newspaper new media type, posted a frank and sharp response to this post concerning MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton's recent...

Spotted: New Revenue Stream For Newspapers?

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 25

Dutch designer Greetje van Tiem has an intriguing idea. There must be a Murdoch joke in here somewhere. (Hat tip: alert reader and emailer Dave Smith)...

Kevin Martin: Savvy Political Operator. Less Savvy When It Comes To Policy

Posted by: Jon Fine on November 13

When he was running the FCC, Michael Powell did not lack for grand plans to deregulate most of everything. He did not succeed in doing so. But his successor, Kevin...

Burying The Lede. And Burying The News Just Before A Holiday Weekend

Posted by: Jon Fine on August 31

The Newspaper Association of America issued a press release today,the Friday before Labor Day, which hit my inbox at precisely 12:43 PM, Eastern time. First paragraph: Arlington, Va. – Advertising...

Scripps Cuts Out The Middle Option In Cincinnati

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 17

So I've been blathering and blogging about which major market newspaper will be the first to go online only, not today, but someday soon . . . .and today the...

Newspaper Triage: Which American Paper Will Be The First To Kill Its Print Edition?

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 12

I spent several days last week asking a bunch of newspaper execs and other assorted smart folk variant of the following question: “Which American newspaper will be the first to...

Murdoch, Burkle, the Bancrofts, and . . . David Geffen?

Posted by: Jon Fine on June 05

Regarding Rupert Murdoch’s meeting with Dow Jones’ Bancroft family yesterday, ably recounted here by my colleague Ron Grover: What is playing out is a very old and familiar ritual that’s...

On Aggregation

Posted by: Jon Fine on May 29

I've been thinking a lot about the power of aggregation on the Web--how a bunch of stuff from lots of different companies is much more powerful than a standalone site...

Whoa. Just: Whoa.

Posted by: Jon Fine on March 20

The New York Times Co. reports its February revenues. It is not pretty: The New York Times Company announced today that in February 2007 advertising revenues from continuing operations decreased...

The Music Business Is Unbundling The Song. Now The Newspaper Business Unbundling The Paragraph

Posted by: Jon Fine on March 08

The Washington Post's Frank Ahrens' writes today about how the tiny local newspaper remains a good business. (My BusinessWeek colleague Tom Lowry previously did an excellent piece on the same...

Newspapers And Yahoo, Their Star Reporters, And The Future Thereof

Posted by: Jon Fine on November 20

Today in the news we have: --A very broad hook-up between Yahoo and over 170 newspapers, encompassing help-wanted classifieds and local news and search. These talks had been brewing for...

It's Not Just MySpace. How Soon Before Everyone Is Partnering And Competing With Google?

Posted by: Jon Fine on November 06

Judging from the news about Google Print Ads, maybe sooner than we thought. Here's one thing I am wondering: Is the prospect of Google allowing advertisers to place ads in...

Scanning The Headlines

Posted by: Jon Fine on October 26

Three random media media headlines of the past 24 hours or so, lightly edited for clarity: Welch, Others, Mull Private Bid For NYT’s Boston Globe (Parenthetically: The Boston Globe may...

Newspapers and Search Engines: The Sequel, But Not The Last One

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 31

The San Jose Mercury News’s Elise Ackerman has an interesting story here about newspapers and search engines reworking some aspects of their relationship, in ways that look to allay some...

The Downside of Local Newspaper Ownership: A Cautionary Tale

Posted by: Jon Fine on July 06

Wendy McCaw, ex-wife of cell-phone tycoon Craig McCaw, bought her local paper--the Santa Barbara News-Press--in 2000 from the New York Times Co. Of late, things have gotten very colorful. LAObserved...

Newspapers and Online: The Revolution Is Coming Very Slowly

Posted by: Jon Fine on June 23

Boy, did newspaper companies talk a lot about the Internet at this week's Midyear Media Review gathering. For the obvious reasons: Wall Street, and advertisers, are a hell of a...

"You're Full Of It, Dean."

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 26

It's pretty unusual for the preternaturally sunny McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt to be as testy as he's described herein....

The Knight Ridder 12: Down To Eight?

Posted by: Jon Fine on April 20

The union bid for the twelve Knight Ridder newspapers McClatchy plans to sell has gotten an awful lot of ink--and not because the guy who runs the backer, Yucaipa Cos.,...

The Local Paper of the Future?

Posted by: Jon Fine on January 18

Is this the new local newspaper? The Caveats: This kind of approach will only in work for readers and citizens of certain towns--affluent, plugged-in, in-on-the-joke. Of course, these towns are...

Perhaps You Just Put Your Finger On The Problem

Posted by: Jon Fine on January 05

From a just-released press release put out by Mort Zuckerman's New York Daily News (emphasis mine): NEW YORK, N.Y., Jan. 5, 2006 -- Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Chairman and Publisher of...

But That's Not The Funny Part

Posted by: Jon Fine on December 30

Most read story on the Seattle Times' Web site this year, by a mile, was about unsavory and disastrous congress with a horse. The punchline, though, is this weirdly serious...

Discussing the Future of Newspapers

Posted by: Jon Fine on December 29

It’s almost always a mistake when a columnist—that is, someone who types opinions for a living—dares to get into prescriptives for running a business. Nevertheless: This week’s column contains prescriptives...