News Byte
Peter Kafka in Media on May 8 at 1:12 pm PT
Ongo, a newspaper-backed startup that tried to sell digital subscriptions to a variety of publications, is shuttering after less than two years. The New York Times, the Washington Post and Gannett each put a reported $4 million into the company, but it never got traction with subscribers. Nieman Journalism Lab has a good exit interview with CEO Dan Haarmann, who blames Apple’s subscription policy, among other factors, for the company’s failure.
The reason for the change is that articles are no longer written only for the newspaper. Breaking news is posted immediately on the Globe’s websites; stories are then fleshed out, posted again, then put into the process for the next day’s paper and the next day’s web entries. With all that traffic, a reliance on “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow” is an invitation for error.
– Charles Mansbach, Page 1 editor of the Boston Globe, on why the paper will no longer use the words in stories
News Byte
Peter Kafka in Media on May 5 at 2:24 pm PT
Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, who owns the Buffalo News, the Omaha World-Herald and a big chunk of the Washington Post, told shareholders today that he may buy more newspapers. “I think there is a future for newspapers that exist in an area where there is a sense of community,” he said. “I think the economics will be ok, but it will be nothing like the old days.”
Peter Kafka in Media on May 4 at 9:16 am PT
Last month the New York Times said its digital sales shrank. Today: a 7 percent drop for the Washington Post.
Arik Hesseldahl in Media on March 18 at 6:06 am PT
Now we have to start the conversation about Apple and Foxconn and workers’ rights all over again, this time with real, verifiable facts at our command. Is that so much to ask?
Voices
Richard J. Tofel, General Manager, ProPublica in Voices on February 8 at 9:27 am PT
Maybe the extinction of newspapers was inevitable once digital publishing moved from proprietary services and the slow speeds of dial-up delivery to the open access of the worldwide Web.
News Byte
Peter Kafka in News on December 15, 2011 at 2:15 pm PT
New York Times CEO Janet Robinson is stepping down after a seven-year run. The company says it will conduct a job search for her replacement and that, in the interim, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. will handle her duties as well as his own. The Times will pay Robinson $4.5 million over the next year for “consulting services,” the company disclosed in an
SEC filing.
Peter Kafka in Media on November 30, 2011 at 6:00 am PT
Expensive content on the cheap: A start-up that licenses stuff from the likes of Reuters, Bloomberg and Forbes.
Tricia Duryee in Commerce on November 9, 2011 at 9:00 pm PT
WhaleShark Media has raised $150 million in venture capital to continue buying up coupon-oriented sites around the globe.
