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Reflections of a Newsosaur
Cuts kill traditional news-staff ratio
The deep cuts planned at the Los Angeles Times are yet the highest-profile example that newspapers are scrapping the long-held standard for the minimum number of journalists deemed necessary to staff a newsroom.
The unwritten but widely honored rule of thumb in the industry always has been that a newspaper should employ one journalist for every 1,000 in daily circulation.
But plans to lighten
Categories: Media blogs
Deeper staff cuts likely at newspapers
Tens of thousands of additional jobs may have to be eliminated at newspapers because the staff reductions that have taken place to date have not kept pace with the accelerating erosion of advertising.
Even though 48.7% of the 102,120 jobs eliminated in the newspaper industry since 1990 were lost in the last three years, publishers since 2006 have failed to reduce headcount as aggressively as
Categories: Media blogs
Newspaper shares slid $23B in 6 months
The value of 11 newspaper companies traded on the public market since 2005 dove a combined $23.7 billion in the first half of this year, falling almost as much in six months as they had in the three prior years put together.
Wall Street’s intensifying repudiation of the industry means that the companies in the group have lost a cumulative $49.7 billion in market capitalization in 3½ years,
Categories: Media blogs
S.J. Merc staff gutted by 62.5%
The lightning-round layoffs due to cut the newsroom of the San Jose Mercury News by another nine employees by tomorrow night means the staff will have been pared by fully 62.5% from its peak strength in 2000.
The newspaper was perhaps the primary beneficiary of the Internet Bubble, when aggressive competition for dot-comers pumped its want-ad revenues to stratospheric – and, as it proved –
Categories: Media blogs
Little ado over Orlando's redo
Fewer than 0.05% of the readers of the Orlando Sentinel are fussed about the bold redesign of their newspaper, according to statistics provided by management three days after the debut of the new look.
The response could mean any of the following:
:: 99.95% of the readers like the colorful overhaul, which would be great news for the newspaper.
:: 99.95% of the readers didn’t notice, which not
Categories: Media blogs
How close to default is your paper?
The newspaper industry shuddered last week when Bloomberg News warned that several publishers are in danger of default. And some are. But there are many degrees of defaultness and not all publishers are in equal danger of going down the drain.
So, I have created not only the word “defaultness” but also a simple tool called the “Default-O-Matic” to help you see at a glance the degree of financial
Categories: Media blogs
The case for a JOA in Miami
As odd a couple as they might be, Gary Pruitt and Sam Zell may want to buddy up to figure out how to reduce expenses to make the most of the sagging revenues at their struggling newspapers in south Florida.
If they can modify their loan covenants, appease federal antitrust-regulators and navigate the myriad other details associated with an undertaking of this sort, the heavily leveraged owners
Categories: Media blogs
Shared presses will squeeze deadlines
Plans to print two McClatchy titles in the plants of neighboring newspapers almost certainly will force earlier deadlines in the newsrooms of all four papers, which could compromise the quality of their coverage.
In a development likely to become increasingly commonplace among publishers eager to reduce operating costs, MNI and privately held Pioneer Newspapers announced plans to shift the
Categories: Media blogs
MNI cuts may not be deep enough
The savings McClatchy hopes to achieve by trimming 10% of its work force will not save enough money to offset even a quarter of the likely drop in the company’s advertising revenues this year, suggesting that more cuts may lie ahead.
Barring an upturn in the newspaper business in the second half of this year that no one foresees, MNI’s ad sales for 2008 are likely to be $295 million lower than
Categories: Media blogs
Jocks plan shock for Trib Co. readers
Thanks to a terrific new blog published anonymously by someone who identifies herself or himself as an employee of the Los Angeles Times, we have the first reported sighting of the radical new format planned for the Tribune Co. newspapers. And it’s scary.
Not because it represents an abrupt change, though it does. And not because it is unconventional, though it is. But because the combination of
Categories: Media blogs
A high-water mark in crisis coverage
The staffers of the Cedar Rapids Gazette brilliantly rose to the occasion this week when record flooding inundated not only much of the city but also the very building where they work.
Resisting pleas from city officials to evacuate their downtown office, the staff produced an amazing body of multimedia work while cobbling together a generator grid that powered everything from laptops to bilge
Categories: Media blogs
ROP ads poised for a comeback?
In a potential bit of good news for newspapers, run-of-paper advertising may be making a comeback after a sustained period of decline.
Large national retailers like Macy’s and Best Buy, which had shifted much of their budgets to free-standing color inserts over the years, are taking a fresh look at in-paper advertising as a way of eliminating the growing cost of producing the ad inserts they pay
Categories: Media blogs
Murdoch has a plan. Zell doesn’t.
While Rupert Murdoch has gotten busy building the Wall Street Journal into an even more powerful global brand, Sam Zell seems to have no plan at all for Tribune Co., unless you count flogging the hands until morale improves.
The two companies have gone down distinctly divergent paths in the six months since Mr. Murdoch bought Dow Jones and Mr. Zell almost simultaneously acquired Tribune. Dow
Categories: Media blogs
$4.7B ad drop feared for newspapers
Print newspaper sales this year appear to be on track to drop by some $4.7 billion to less than $37.5 billion, a level not seen since the mid-1990s.
The prediction comes from Paul Ginocchio of Deutsche Bank at a time of growing dismay among media executives who, for the most part, have watched sales weaken every month this year.
“We keep throwing more and more rope into the well, but we never
Categories: Media blogs
Get me an ethnographer, sweetheart
Forget rewrite, sweetheart. Get me an anthropologist.
The crisis of confidence in the media business has gotten so bad that the Associated Press revealed today that it sent a team of ethnographers around the world to see if young folks consume news differently on their laptops and iPhones than their parents did in print and on TV. And, by golly, they do.
After months of research in such exotic
Categories: Media blogs
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Categories: Media blogs
Lies, damned lies, and SEO
A few weeks ago, a story ricocheted around the Internet about a 13-year-old boy who stole his father’s credit card to hire hookers to play videogames with him in a Texas motel. The problem is that the story wasn’t the least bit true.
But the reaction to the widely discussed hoax was not outrage from many of the publishers and marketers who ply the web for fun and profit. Much to the contrary,
Categories: Media blogs
Newspaper war in Silicon Valley
An old-fashioned newspaper war is about to break out among a trio of free publications in the heart of one of the least print-centric places in the universe, Silicon Valley.
The free-for-all may, repeat may, momentarily motivate some residents of the ultra-wired community to pry themselves away from their laptops, Blackberries and iPhones. If so, that would be great for local merchants seeking
Categories: Media blogs
Newspaper shares -35%, CEO pay -11%
Things were so tough last year that the top executives of eight of 12 publicly held newspaper companies suffered a pay cut. But things were even tougher for their stockholders.
That’s because the shares of the dozen newspapers dived an average of 35.7% in 2007 at the same time the average compensation of the chief executives fell by a more moderate – but not insignificant – 11.7%.
The
Categories: Media blogs
CNET, a welcome SOS for CBS
It took a decade and a half to get there, but CNET finally is making it big in the TV business. Now, the $1.8 billion question is whether CNET can help CBS make it bigger in the Internet business.
On track to have its shares acquired for a juicy 45% premium by CBS, CNET originally was formed as CNET-TV in 1993 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie to create a technology channel for cable television
Categories: Media blogs
Copyright 2008 Steve Yelvington
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