The Media Business: THE OVERBLOWN JOURNALIST EMPLOYMENT CRISIS April 29, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentIt is not the mere number of journalists that matters; it’s the choices that editors and publishers make about how to use the journalists available to them. [...] Few newspapers have cut sections or types of coverage, choosing instead to cut throughout the newsroom and not to reassign journalists to the kinds of journalism that matters most to society.
It should also be noted that decisions where to cut employment in newsrooms have not been equally spread among employment categories either. According to ASNE statistics the number of newsroom supervisors has declined only seven tenths of one percent since 2000 [...] the numbers seem unusually lopsided to me. If there are fewer reporters and photographers to be supervised and edited, one would expect that fewer editors and supervisors would be required and warranted.
Maybe it’s about time that journalists stop whining about their troubles and initiate some internal discussions about how their own newsrooms are structured and operated.
Local newspapers will not recover from recession, says former Express editor | printweek.com | Business News and Jobs from the Business, Finance and Mergers and Acquisition Sector March 20, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentSo says Richard Addis, former editor of the Daily Express, as reported in Print Week:
" He made the comment as regional newspaper groups sought government help to save further title closures and Kent media company KM Group announced plans to quit printing its own newspapers and concentrate on publishing.
Addis announced plans in 2007 to launch an "ultra-local newspaper" in London. However, he told PrintWeek that plans had changed and he is looking to launch a series of local news websites across the UK.
He said: "Print will never recover from this recession. And regional newspapers are the worst hit of all. Regional publishers are all looking at digital and how to improve their website. Over the next three years, we will see a huge failure of regional print businesses." "
Focus on your target readership March 20, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentFocusing on your target reader — here, morning free paper Metro:
"We used the term 'urbanite' to describe our readers – between the ages of 18 and 44, in the ABC1 bracket, white-collar workers," says Steve Auckland, managing director of Associated Newspapers' free newspapers division.
"It's a demographic which has been on the rise in the last 10 years, these young affluent workers who really like to live in the city and enjoy the city. We came up with the term first and it's been used primarily by advertising agencies and clients."
Each year Metro recruits 4,000 readers to a panel and conducts seven major surveys with them, plus mini-polls, to find out in detail about their attitudes, opinions and lifestyles.
Google abandons Print Ads newspaper ad sales service after disappointing results | Media | guardian.co.uk January 21, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a comment"The Print Ads scheme let advertisers buy space in newspapers and magazines in the same way that Google auctions space through its other services: advertisers picked their ideal spot then submitted bids for space in the publications they had been matched with.
More than 800 publications in the US signed up to the scheme, including The New York Times, the Tribune company, Gannett and the Washington Post.[…]
But it never delivered the level of returns required – particularly for cash-strapped newspapers which had lost vast amounts of classified advertising to websites such as Craigslist and Google itself."
Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev to buy London Evening Standard | Media | guardian.co.uk January 14, 2009
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentInteresting times. We can probably expect lots of predictions of what this might mean for the Standard:??"The billionaire and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev is to buy London's Evening Standard tomorrow, in a dramatic move that would see him become the first Russian oligarch to own a major British newspaper, MediaGuardian.co.uk can reveal."
Paid-for-free papers: the mirage of the hybrid models | Monday Note November 5, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMore than 56% of the IHT's circulation is free, says, Frédéric Filloux (Schibsted), analysing the free/hybrid model and some key questions it raises:
"How to reach a bigger chunk of high value audiences using the same technique? “Than can be summed up in one idea”, says Bruno Patino, former CEO of Le Monde Interactive, who likes to pitch the concept of paid-for-free newspapers: “The audience I do want, as a publisher, gets the paper for free; the rest have to pay for it”. […]
"The hybrid model bumps against two limits, though. The first one is the fit of the product to the target audience(s). […] The second limit is the social approach of the news business."
How the numbers (don’t) add up for newspapers if they axe print October 26, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Journalism, Newspapers, Online, USA , add a commentAlan Mutter (aka Newsosaur) picks up on a point from the ‘New Business Models for News’ summit at City University of New York, arguing that scrapping print isn’t a solution, given that 90% of US papers’ revenue comes from ads sold in the print product.
Assuming it would cut costs by 60%, scrapping the print paper would mean the following, he suggests, for a $100m-revenue publishing company with a 15% operating profit:
If the company abandoned print but were able to double its online sales to $20 million, it would lose $14 million in a year, for an operating margin of a negative 70%. To break even, the prototypical publication would have to more than triple its sales from the current levels. To make a profit of 15%, the company would have to quadruple it sales.
A particularly tough target, Mutter adds, because around two-thirds of online revenues typically come from add-on sales to advertisers who are buying space in the print edition.
But this kind of online-only operation is not a pipe-dream, maintains Tim Windsor. Responding in comments on Cory Bergman’s post, he says making it work would need a much smaller newsroom with one or two community managers to make the most of user-generated content, plus linked/licensed content. A core staff of 20 multimedia reporters, he suggests. (Those comments via Mark Hamilton.)
How will newspapers make money in future? Shopping? Travel? Sponsored editorial? October 24, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentMartin Moore catalogues some of the ways The Times is trying:
"Many of them [newspapers] are, and have been for some time, looking for ways to 'monetize' their reading public (i.e. milk readers for more cash).
You can get a pretty good idea of what this means by reading todays Times. I counted 21 ads for ways in which the paper could make additional revenue (not including encouraging people to buy the paper tomorrow or Saturday or one just promoting the brand). […]
And, one of the strangest, an ad for a weekly Times online 'streamlined' series with Tony Hawks – sponsored by VW Passat C (see 'A Life More Streamlined'). The remarkable thing about this is the deliberate melding of editorial and advertising – the tagline for the VW Passat is 'See the new streamlined coupe'. "
WAN: Traditional media has five years growth left – Press Gazette October 20, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a commentHave predictions of the death of traditional media been exaggerated? From the World Association of Newspapers conference:
"…Marcel Fenez [of PWC] said that although digital advertising will continue to soar over the next five years it will still only globally represent 10 per cent of total advertising for newspapers by 2012.
He forecast that global print advertising will grow 1.8 percent to $123.3 billion in 2012, while global digital advertising will grow 19.3 percent to $13.4 billion.
He said: "One of the things we need to get into context here is that traditional media isn't dead yet and won't be for the next five years."
"It's very important to think why. The over-50s are helping to sustain traditional media, and also in many of the emerging markets there is still plenty of room for traditional media. The death of traditional media is exaggerated, at least in a five-year context." "
How to boost your paper's web traffic by 928% … October 20, 2008
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : delicious links , add a comment… if you're in Anchorage, Alaska: the Palin effect (Nielsen figures reported by E&P):
"The Web site of the Anchorage Daily News zoomed up to make it in the list of top 30 online newspapers. The Web site enjoyed a 928% spike to 2.1 million monthly uniques in September, no doubt due to the paper's excellent coverage of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin."