WILL 2009 see a revival for serious journalism? The former Daily Express editor Richard Addis thinks so. On his engaging blog, he writes: "More people want to understand; fewer people want to be titillated ... when things go wrong, you look for wisdom." Precedent suggests this is the opposite of the truth. We last heard of the new seriousness seven years ago, in the wake of 9/11. The then Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan told the Society of Editors that it had "redefined tabloid newspapers". Yet on the morning after 9/11, the rise in Mirror sales was only half of that after Diana's death. Morgan now makes his living out of encounters with celebrities.
If the early 90s recession helped serious journalism at all, the effect was short-lived. The Independent, then a paper so upmarket it risked giving readers altitude sickness, prospered during the late 1980s boom. Its circulation began to slide during the recession when, it seems, what people want most is glamour and escapism, not wisdom.
During recessions, newspapers get slimmer as advertisers withdraw their custom. Most usually weather the storm, looking forward to renewed expansion in a couple of years. That probably won't happen this time. When the recovery starts (2010? 2011? 2012?), the likelihood is that some advertisers will not return, or at least not return to their previous spending habits. They will be more selective about where they place their advertising. Newspapers, in turn, will become more selective about the readers they are trying to attract.
Here, I think, Addis hits the nail on the head. "There's no future," he argues, "for 126-page papers filled with a mix of heavy, light, UK, foreign, business, arts and sporting news." We forget that such papers are quite recent, dating back a mere two decades. Under one journalistic roof, you can now get politics and celebrity, business and sport, high culture and low. But as budgets are stretched more and more thinly - and editors try harder to be simultaneously comprehensive, speedy, exhaustive and original - newspapers become less authoritative and more error-prone. No paper dare stay out of the fabled water cooler conversation, whether the subject be the McCanns or Mumbai.
This year, such an approach will run out of road. Even the papers most strongly placed to survive the recession will cut budgets and staffing levels. They will not prosper by lopping off an assistant section editor here, a junior reporter there, and dumping subeditors in the name of "efficiency". They will have to decide what they do well, and what their readers really want from them. The paper that has come closest to that in recent years is the Financial Times, abandoning its attempts to reach out to a wider audience and refocusing on its core business readership, to an extent that sometimes makes the content, and even the headlines, impenetrable to outsiders. Conversely, the Independent continues trying to appeal across the market with, for example: "Can jumpsuits ever be flattering?" flagged above a front page on the plight of albino people in Tanzania.
If the future lies with authoritative journalism for niche markets, Addis is right. Mass-market journalism - short, snappy news items alongside gossip, glamour and articulate prejudice - is by definition doomed. Redtop papers remain skilfully packaged products but they add little of substance to what is available on the web. You don't need expensively remunerated hacks to add anything. Serious journalism will triumph by default.
How papers deliver and pay for it is another matter. Some may become web-only publishers, others may move to publishing in print only one or two days a week (probably at weekends). Yet others may cut their print runs and distribution networks and focus almost exclusively on pre-paying subscribers or e-paper editions. Rupert Murdoch's papers will probably stick with traditional publishing patterns, but then switch to something new with bewildering speed. For years, newspapers have been putting off those decisions, cushioned by a booming economy and a buoyant market for advertising. The internet barely existed when the last recession came to an end - 2009 will be the first year in which newspapers compete with digital media in a contracting economy. By the end of it, their future will be very much clearer.
Source: Peter Wilby, Guardian.co.uk
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The shape of things to come
A self-confessed 'pretty unlikely early adopter', the digital guru Clay Shirky still proved to be uncannily prescient about the impact of the web - which is why Tom Teodorczuk is getting his media forecast for 2009.
Clay Shirky, with his bald head and composed manner, bears a resemblance to REM's frontman, Michael Stipe, and his prognosis for the future of the media industry could be encapsulated in the titles of two REM songs - Monster and Shiny Happy People. On the one hand, the leading web thinker and adjunct professor of New York University predicts further gloom for traditional media: "2009 is going to be a bloodbath." Yet he foresees that a recession may produce greater industry clarity by forcing radical action, which he explains as a boss saying to staff: "'Bonfire, this is Hail Mary time!', instead of: 'This year we made as much money as last year but we're still restructuring dramatically.'"
Much of the success of Shirky's recent book, Here Comes Everybody, about internet technologies and the effects of mass democratisation of the web, came from its simplicity and the absence of jargon. "As with the printing press, the loss of professional control will be bad for many of society's core institutions," he writes. In conversation he is just as plain-speaking, saying, for example, that "Management has a hard time destroying parts of its business unless the alternative, obvious to everyone, is that there is no choice." Based in the unlikely environs of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, a stone's throw from a fusty independent bookstore in downtown Manhattan, rather than Silicon Valley, Shirky, 44, is unburdened by traditional media ties. After Yale, he worked as a painter and theatre director before becoming ensnared by the web in the early 90s thanks to his mother, a research librarian. He has consulted at News International and lists the BBC as a current client. "The advantage I had over people in the traditional media industry is precisely what I didn't know," he says. "I was a pretty unlikely early adopter."
No one, of course, can know what a future media landscape will look like. But, given that Shirky was among the few to have forecast 15 years ago that classified advertising would be sold online rather than via a newspaper ad, his crystal ball is more estimable than most others. This is his forecast:
Newspapers
The great misfortune of newspapers in this era is that they were such a good idea for such a long time that people felt the newspaper business model was part of a deep truth about the world, rather than just the way things happened to be. It's like the fall of communism, where a lot of the eastern European satellite states had an easier time because there were still people alive who remembered life before the Soviet Union - nobody in Russia remembered it. Newspaper people are like Russians, in a way.
Jeff Jarvis said it beautifully: "If you can't imagine anyone linking to what you're about to write, don't write it." The things that the Huffington Post or the Daily Beast have are good storytelling and low costs. Newspapers are going to get more elitist and less elitist. The elitist argument is: "Be the Economist or New Yorker, a small, niche publication that says: 'We're only opening our mouths when what we say is demonstrably superior to anything else on the subject.'" The populist model is: "We're going to take all the news pieces we get and have an enormous amount of commentary. It's whatever readers want to talk about." Finding the working business model between them in that expanded range is the new challenge.
Why pay for it at all? The steady loss of advertising revenue, accelerated by the recession, has normalised the idea that it's acceptable to move to the web. Even if we have the shallowest recession and advertising comes back as it inevitably does, more of it will go to the web. I think that's it for newspapers. What we saw happen to the Christian Science Monitor [the international paper shifted its daily news operation online] is going to happen three or four dozen times (globally) in the next year. The 500-year-old accident of economics occasioned by the printing press - high upfront cost and filtering happening at the source of publication - is over. But will the New York Times still exist on paper? Of course, because people will hit the print button.
Books and magazines
If you pick a magazine at random, it will not interest you. For people who care about quality, it's easier to find it online. If it's a highly qualified niche magazine, something aimed at surgeons or firefighters, it's going online. There's no reason those things should exist.
The great advantage magazines have is glossy pictures. It's better to read on paper than on the web but it's much better to look at pictures on paper than on the net. Brides magazine is going to be the last one standing.
The book world is more secure. I think the big revolution is going to be print on demand. Imagine only having one browsing copy of every book in a bookstore. You could say "Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers looks good", and out pops a brand new copy. Why does a bookstore or a publisher have to be in the shipping and warehousing business?
TV
The big fight will be between passion and mass appeal but I don't think it's a question of who will win. It's not a transition from A to B, it's one to many. The question is who figures out the business model that says it's better to have 6 million passionate fans than 7 million bored ones? That is going to be the transformation because what you see with these user groups, whether it's for reality TV or science fiction, is that people love the conversation around the shows. The renaissance of quality television is an indicator of what an increased number of distribution channels can do. It is no accident that this started with cable.
And the BBC iPlayer? That's a debacle. The digital rights management thing ...let's just pretend that it was a dream like on Dallas and start from scratch. The iPlayer is a back-to-the-future business model. It's a total subversion of Reithian values in favour of trying to create what had been an accidental monopoly as a kind of robust business model. The idea that the old geographical segmenting of terrestrial broadcasts is recreatable is a fantasy and a waste of time.
What does the next decade hold? Mobile tools will certainly change the landscape, open spectrum will unleash the kind of creativity we've seen on the wired internet, and of course there will be many more YouTube/Facebook-class applications. But the underlying change was the basic tools of the internet. The job of the next decade is mostly going to be taking the raw revolutionary capability that's now apparent and really seeing what we can do with it.
Source: Guardian.co.uk
Clay Shirky, with his bald head and composed manner, bears a resemblance to REM's frontman, Michael Stipe, and his prognosis for the future of the media industry could be encapsulated in the titles of two REM songs - Monster and Shiny Happy People. On the one hand, the leading web thinker and adjunct professor of New York University predicts further gloom for traditional media: "2009 is going to be a bloodbath." Yet he foresees that a recession may produce greater industry clarity by forcing radical action, which he explains as a boss saying to staff: "'Bonfire, this is Hail Mary time!', instead of: 'This year we made as much money as last year but we're still restructuring dramatically.'"
Much of the success of Shirky's recent book, Here Comes Everybody, about internet technologies and the effects of mass democratisation of the web, came from its simplicity and the absence of jargon. "As with the printing press, the loss of professional control will be bad for many of society's core institutions," he writes. In conversation he is just as plain-speaking, saying, for example, that "Management has a hard time destroying parts of its business unless the alternative, obvious to everyone, is that there is no choice." Based in the unlikely environs of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, a stone's throw from a fusty independent bookstore in downtown Manhattan, rather than Silicon Valley, Shirky, 44, is unburdened by traditional media ties. After Yale, he worked as a painter and theatre director before becoming ensnared by the web in the early 90s thanks to his mother, a research librarian. He has consulted at News International and lists the BBC as a current client. "The advantage I had over people in the traditional media industry is precisely what I didn't know," he says. "I was a pretty unlikely early adopter."
No one, of course, can know what a future media landscape will look like. But, given that Shirky was among the few to have forecast 15 years ago that classified advertising would be sold online rather than via a newspaper ad, his crystal ball is more estimable than most others. This is his forecast:
Newspapers
The great misfortune of newspapers in this era is that they were such a good idea for such a long time that people felt the newspaper business model was part of a deep truth about the world, rather than just the way things happened to be. It's like the fall of communism, where a lot of the eastern European satellite states had an easier time because there were still people alive who remembered life before the Soviet Union - nobody in Russia remembered it. Newspaper people are like Russians, in a way.
Jeff Jarvis said it beautifully: "If you can't imagine anyone linking to what you're about to write, don't write it." The things that the Huffington Post or the Daily Beast have are good storytelling and low costs. Newspapers are going to get more elitist and less elitist. The elitist argument is: "Be the Economist or New Yorker, a small, niche publication that says: 'We're only opening our mouths when what we say is demonstrably superior to anything else on the subject.'" The populist model is: "We're going to take all the news pieces we get and have an enormous amount of commentary. It's whatever readers want to talk about." Finding the working business model between them in that expanded range is the new challenge.
Why pay for it at all? The steady loss of advertising revenue, accelerated by the recession, has normalised the idea that it's acceptable to move to the web. Even if we have the shallowest recession and advertising comes back as it inevitably does, more of it will go to the web. I think that's it for newspapers. What we saw happen to the Christian Science Monitor [the international paper shifted its daily news operation online] is going to happen three or four dozen times (globally) in the next year. The 500-year-old accident of economics occasioned by the printing press - high upfront cost and filtering happening at the source of publication - is over. But will the New York Times still exist on paper? Of course, because people will hit the print button.
Books and magazines
If you pick a magazine at random, it will not interest you. For people who care about quality, it's easier to find it online. If it's a highly qualified niche magazine, something aimed at surgeons or firefighters, it's going online. There's no reason those things should exist.
The great advantage magazines have is glossy pictures. It's better to read on paper than on the web but it's much better to look at pictures on paper than on the net. Brides magazine is going to be the last one standing.
The book world is more secure. I think the big revolution is going to be print on demand. Imagine only having one browsing copy of every book in a bookstore. You could say "Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers looks good", and out pops a brand new copy. Why does a bookstore or a publisher have to be in the shipping and warehousing business?
TV
The big fight will be between passion and mass appeal but I don't think it's a question of who will win. It's not a transition from A to B, it's one to many. The question is who figures out the business model that says it's better to have 6 million passionate fans than 7 million bored ones? That is going to be the transformation because what you see with these user groups, whether it's for reality TV or science fiction, is that people love the conversation around the shows. The renaissance of quality television is an indicator of what an increased number of distribution channels can do. It is no accident that this started with cable.
And the BBC iPlayer? That's a debacle. The digital rights management thing ...let's just pretend that it was a dream like on Dallas and start from scratch. The iPlayer is a back-to-the-future business model. It's a total subversion of Reithian values in favour of trying to create what had been an accidental monopoly as a kind of robust business model. The idea that the old geographical segmenting of terrestrial broadcasts is recreatable is a fantasy and a waste of time.
What does the next decade hold? Mobile tools will certainly change the landscape, open spectrum will unleash the kind of creativity we've seen on the wired internet, and of course there will be many more YouTube/Facebook-class applications. But the underlying change was the basic tools of the internet. The job of the next decade is mostly going to be taking the raw revolutionary capability that's now apparent and really seeing what we can do with it.
Source: Guardian.co.uk
The Times raises weekday price to 90p
NEWS International today increased the cover price of the weekday edition of the Times by 10p to 90p.
The Times ran a small story on page 2 of its Saturday paper this week telling readers about the planned changes; another article explained that the price rise was being made against a background of rising newsprint costs and the economic downturn.
Its price rise means the paper is again the same price as the Daily Telegraph, which is published by Telegraph Media Group.
The Guardian, published by Guardian News & Media which also publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk, remains 80p, while Independent News & Media's weekday Independent costs £1.
Among the other quality papers, the Financial Times remains £1.80, while the Saturday edition of the Times remains £1.50 and the Sunday Times £2.
The move follows the Times taking the unusual step of raising its cover price to 80p in September to match the cost of the Telegraph for the first time since the price wars of the mid-1990s.
However, later that month the Telegraph raised its weekday price to 90p; the Times has now again moved to match the price of its rival.
"It gives us no pleasure to ask readers to pay more in what will be a tough year for so many people, but I am afraid it was inevitable against the background of the economic downturn and the ever-rising cost of newsprint," wrote columnist Sally Baker, in the feedback section of the Times on Saturday.
In July last year, the Times launched a free home delivery service through which readers within the M25 could order the daily and the Sunday Times. The move followed a full-colour relaunch of the paper in June
Source: Guardian.co.uk
The Times ran a small story on page 2 of its Saturday paper this week telling readers about the planned changes; another article explained that the price rise was being made against a background of rising newsprint costs and the economic downturn.
Its price rise means the paper is again the same price as the Daily Telegraph, which is published by Telegraph Media Group.
The Guardian, published by Guardian News & Media which also publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk, remains 80p, while Independent News & Media's weekday Independent costs £1.
Among the other quality papers, the Financial Times remains £1.80, while the Saturday edition of the Times remains £1.50 and the Sunday Times £2.
The move follows the Times taking the unusual step of raising its cover price to 80p in September to match the cost of the Telegraph for the first time since the price wars of the mid-1990s.
However, later that month the Telegraph raised its weekday price to 90p; the Times has now again moved to match the price of its rival.
"It gives us no pleasure to ask readers to pay more in what will be a tough year for so many people, but I am afraid it was inevitable against the background of the economic downturn and the ever-rising cost of newsprint," wrote columnist Sally Baker, in the feedback section of the Times on Saturday.
In July last year, the Times launched a free home delivery service through which readers within the M25 could order the daily and the Sunday Times. The move followed a full-colour relaunch of the paper in June
Source: Guardian.co.uk
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
It's owners, not papers, that are the problem
WHEN three of America's greatest dailies - the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun - plus the rest of the mighty Tribune Group fold into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, then obituaries for newspaper publishing itself flow fast and glib, generating gloom that washes as far as Fleet Street. Added to that comes news that the New York Times itself is to mortgage off its spanking new building to deal with next year's debt dilemmas.
But (courtesy of Forbes magazine and sundry statisticians) consider what Sam Zell, the Tribune Company's latest owner-cum-wizard-financier, blames on this 'perfect storm' of a credit crunch. In the third dire quarter of 2008, the Tribune company still had an operating cash flow of $90m on $1bn in revenue. And, within that, the 10 papers it owns made $13m on $654m revenue.
That's not fatal. That's still tolerable trading business in the teeth of recession. Except that the $8.2bn media empire Zell took private control of 12 months ago for only $300m of his own money is $13bn in debt, largely made up of leveraged wheezes from Old Sam's almanack of amazing takeovers. So its creditors are in the soup, alongside pensioners who won't get their money and employees who ploughed good dollars after bad. It's a horror story full of human misery. But it has very little to do with curse of the internet or similar standard rationales of decline.
Simply, here is a fine collection of famous-name titles and TV franchises run slap into Lake Michigan by panicky sellers and optimistic buyers. There'll surely still be papers in Chicago, Baltimore and LA when it is all over, and they'll still make money. But the road to Zell was paved with lousy calculations. He bought, and has now essentially sold out, the Tribune company as though it were another a plot of land to plonk his rented caravans on.
The central problem isn't the internet (a dampener on profits and spreader of uncertainty, at worst; not the end of everything). The problem is newspaper ownership flawed by misplaced ambition and short-sighted management.
Sam Zell may be the hardest case on the block, but dozens more share his pathway to the pits. Why is the New York Times having to turn its new home into a crutch? Because it has a $400m debt repayment due next spring, and this is the only way left to meet it. Why are the Denver Post and 53 other MediaNews-owned dailies in such straits? Because their debt is eight times earnings, before tax. Why did Trinity Mirror, Britain's biggest chain, drop out of the FTSE 250 last week? Because its shares have tanked - down to a seventh of recent value.
It's easy, in such dire circumstances, for satire merchant Jon Stewart to ask 'What's black and white, and completely over?' The death of the newspaper itself has never seemed nearer. Yet keep hanging on to those exceptional circumstances of exceptional idiocy. Keep remembering that it's not one damned thing that has caused this crisis, but one damned thing after another.
And remember, too, what a little old-fashioned journalistic nous can still achieve. Newsweek magazine looked at the Wall Street Journal post-Rupert Murdoch the other day and pronounced it 'a fusty paper revitalised'. Cue Mr M himself, delivering a familiar lecture. 'The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It just may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today.'
Now that, of course, may be wrong, too. But there's no telling at this point who's right. You can say that the chains have made a hash. Yet you can also say that, even now, some papers - take the FT, Guardian and Sunday Times from November's ABCs - are gaining rather than losing circulation. And the Sun trumpeted its biggest ad revenue issue ever a few days ago.
Which analysts saw that coming? Not Deloitte, whose prophecy of one in 10 US papers and magazines going to the wall made headlines last week. Not any of the high-priced gurus who advised Sam Zell, either. Call it, rather, an imperfect storm: and don't rush for the lifeboats.
Unseasonal greeting for the BBC's gifts
Pause, as the BBC offers a sackload of presents to its public-service rivals, and scratch your head over the process. Here's the know-how to make your own iPlayer, plus regional newsrooms to share with ITV, and Worldwide partnerships to keep Channel 4 happy. Newspapers won't need to pay for TV listings any more, and - in the wake of a quiet Telegraph deal - they'll be able to use BBC video on their own websites. Santa, you might suppose, has arrived a little early this year.
But no... C4 sees no 'immediate and financial sizeable upside here'. Other newspaper groups grumble about what the Telegraph's getting. The BBC Trust points out that it hasn't even blessed the plan yet.
There's general cynicism over the perception that Auntie is desperately trying to stop her licence fee being top-sliced away in the public service review that Ofcom has set in motion. And so a big offer turns into another sour shouting match.
There's the process problem. In any kind of sane commercial deal, the interested parties wouldn't be snarling at each other outside Ofcom's office. They'd be talking quietly in private. Newspapers would find they could have what the Telegraph's got, too. ITV might discover real prospects of newsroom sharing. And C4 could put its thinking cap on, rather than reach for the cold water bucket.
There could, in short, be careful negotiation, with the chance of partnerships properly explored: and maybe a deal at the end for Ofcom to sanctify, rather than impose.
Alas, though, all we seem to have is a shrill bidding session with instant appeals to the umpire. Partners in the so-called 'broadcasting community'? Not while all open roads lead to the regulator, and any true business discussion lands you straight in the ditch.
Worldwide news, local tragedies
The good news, as the year winds down, is that only 86 journalists around the globe died in the cause of duty. Only? Remember 2007, when 173 were shot, stabbed, blown up or otherwise killed. But there is bad news alongside such modest relief.
The journalism department at Cardiff University has begun producing extremely valuable analyses of International News Safety Institute figures, recording who's died where in what circumstances - and, more and more, the slaughter seems local. The 15 (and still counting) dead in Iraq this year are all local journalists.
Indeed, as you move round danger spots - India, Afghanistan, Somalia, China, Russia - you see clearly who's first in the firing line: largely, not Western correspondents with proper training, return air tickets and a circumspect editor, but local men and women serving local media, murdered in the alleys they call home. (The figures after eight months were 57 locals to five internationals, and that balance doesn't seem to have shifted.)
Anna Politkovskaya was not alone. From Mexico to Pakistan, it's brave men and women who turn over society's stones who then lose their lives. They die trying to tell the truth - 1,360 of them in the last 12 years, on INSI's reckoning. Carve their names with a salutary pride.
Craig Brown 'wittiest writer in Britain'
Craig Brown 'is the wittiest writer in Britain', according to Stephen Fry. He is also the most recently unemployed, after an utterly bizarre Telegraph decision to dump him. Lose 50 more journalists in a crunch? Re-summon Charles Moore to the colours and get him columnising twice a week? Such things may be reasonably understood when the devil drives. But Brown (who probably says nice things about Fry, too) is a pearl beyond price, a funny man of infinite resource. On any rational view, he's the last chap you should push overboard. But 'he was very expensive,' says a defensive Telegraph hand. Or perhaps he meant this was a very expensive mistake.
Source: Guardian UK
But (courtesy of Forbes magazine and sundry statisticians) consider what Sam Zell, the Tribune Company's latest owner-cum-wizard-financier, blames on this 'perfect storm' of a credit crunch. In the third dire quarter of 2008, the Tribune company still had an operating cash flow of $90m on $1bn in revenue. And, within that, the 10 papers it owns made $13m on $654m revenue.
That's not fatal. That's still tolerable trading business in the teeth of recession. Except that the $8.2bn media empire Zell took private control of 12 months ago for only $300m of his own money is $13bn in debt, largely made up of leveraged wheezes from Old Sam's almanack of amazing takeovers. So its creditors are in the soup, alongside pensioners who won't get their money and employees who ploughed good dollars after bad. It's a horror story full of human misery. But it has very little to do with curse of the internet or similar standard rationales of decline.
Simply, here is a fine collection of famous-name titles and TV franchises run slap into Lake Michigan by panicky sellers and optimistic buyers. There'll surely still be papers in Chicago, Baltimore and LA when it is all over, and they'll still make money. But the road to Zell was paved with lousy calculations. He bought, and has now essentially sold out, the Tribune company as though it were another a plot of land to plonk his rented caravans on.
The central problem isn't the internet (a dampener on profits and spreader of uncertainty, at worst; not the end of everything). The problem is newspaper ownership flawed by misplaced ambition and short-sighted management.
Sam Zell may be the hardest case on the block, but dozens more share his pathway to the pits. Why is the New York Times having to turn its new home into a crutch? Because it has a $400m debt repayment due next spring, and this is the only way left to meet it. Why are the Denver Post and 53 other MediaNews-owned dailies in such straits? Because their debt is eight times earnings, before tax. Why did Trinity Mirror, Britain's biggest chain, drop out of the FTSE 250 last week? Because its shares have tanked - down to a seventh of recent value.
It's easy, in such dire circumstances, for satire merchant Jon Stewart to ask 'What's black and white, and completely over?' The death of the newspaper itself has never seemed nearer. Yet keep hanging on to those exceptional circumstances of exceptional idiocy. Keep remembering that it's not one damned thing that has caused this crisis, but one damned thing after another.
And remember, too, what a little old-fashioned journalistic nous can still achieve. Newsweek magazine looked at the Wall Street Journal post-Rupert Murdoch the other day and pronounced it 'a fusty paper revitalised'. Cue Mr M himself, delivering a familiar lecture. 'The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It just may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today.'
Now that, of course, may be wrong, too. But there's no telling at this point who's right. You can say that the chains have made a hash. Yet you can also say that, even now, some papers - take the FT, Guardian and Sunday Times from November's ABCs - are gaining rather than losing circulation. And the Sun trumpeted its biggest ad revenue issue ever a few days ago.
Which analysts saw that coming? Not Deloitte, whose prophecy of one in 10 US papers and magazines going to the wall made headlines last week. Not any of the high-priced gurus who advised Sam Zell, either. Call it, rather, an imperfect storm: and don't rush for the lifeboats.
Unseasonal greeting for the BBC's gifts
Pause, as the BBC offers a sackload of presents to its public-service rivals, and scratch your head over the process. Here's the know-how to make your own iPlayer, plus regional newsrooms to share with ITV, and Worldwide partnerships to keep Channel 4 happy. Newspapers won't need to pay for TV listings any more, and - in the wake of a quiet Telegraph deal - they'll be able to use BBC video on their own websites. Santa, you might suppose, has arrived a little early this year.
But no... C4 sees no 'immediate and financial sizeable upside here'. Other newspaper groups grumble about what the Telegraph's getting. The BBC Trust points out that it hasn't even blessed the plan yet.
There's general cynicism over the perception that Auntie is desperately trying to stop her licence fee being top-sliced away in the public service review that Ofcom has set in motion. And so a big offer turns into another sour shouting match.
There's the process problem. In any kind of sane commercial deal, the interested parties wouldn't be snarling at each other outside Ofcom's office. They'd be talking quietly in private. Newspapers would find they could have what the Telegraph's got, too. ITV might discover real prospects of newsroom sharing. And C4 could put its thinking cap on, rather than reach for the cold water bucket.
There could, in short, be careful negotiation, with the chance of partnerships properly explored: and maybe a deal at the end for Ofcom to sanctify, rather than impose.
Alas, though, all we seem to have is a shrill bidding session with instant appeals to the umpire. Partners in the so-called 'broadcasting community'? Not while all open roads lead to the regulator, and any true business discussion lands you straight in the ditch.
Worldwide news, local tragedies
The good news, as the year winds down, is that only 86 journalists around the globe died in the cause of duty. Only? Remember 2007, when 173 were shot, stabbed, blown up or otherwise killed. But there is bad news alongside such modest relief.
The journalism department at Cardiff University has begun producing extremely valuable analyses of International News Safety Institute figures, recording who's died where in what circumstances - and, more and more, the slaughter seems local. The 15 (and still counting) dead in Iraq this year are all local journalists.
Indeed, as you move round danger spots - India, Afghanistan, Somalia, China, Russia - you see clearly who's first in the firing line: largely, not Western correspondents with proper training, return air tickets and a circumspect editor, but local men and women serving local media, murdered in the alleys they call home. (The figures after eight months were 57 locals to five internationals, and that balance doesn't seem to have shifted.)
Anna Politkovskaya was not alone. From Mexico to Pakistan, it's brave men and women who turn over society's stones who then lose their lives. They die trying to tell the truth - 1,360 of them in the last 12 years, on INSI's reckoning. Carve their names with a salutary pride.
Craig Brown 'wittiest writer in Britain'
Craig Brown 'is the wittiest writer in Britain', according to Stephen Fry. He is also the most recently unemployed, after an utterly bizarre Telegraph decision to dump him. Lose 50 more journalists in a crunch? Re-summon Charles Moore to the colours and get him columnising twice a week? Such things may be reasonably understood when the devil drives. But Brown (who probably says nice things about Fry, too) is a pearl beyond price, a funny man of infinite resource. On any rational view, he's the last chap you should push overboard. But 'he was very expensive,' says a defensive Telegraph hand. Or perhaps he meant this was a very expensive mistake.
Source: Guardian UK
New York Times Freezes Wages
Non-union employees at both the newspaper and the Web site will receive no raises in 2009.
The New York Times Company told print and Web employees of its flagship New York Times newspaper this afternoon that non-union staff would receive no pay raises next year.
"Advertising revenues at both the paper and the Web site remain weak and the financial outlook for 2009 is daunting," the staff was told in an internal e-mail from publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., obtained by Forbes.com.
Newspaper companies have seen massive revenue declines this year as a result of a weak ad market and continued erosion of their traditional business by the Internet. In October, advertising revenues from its New York Times Media Group, which includes properties such as the Times and the International Herald Tribune, dropped 15.3% over the same time last year. At the time, the company said advertising revenue for the group was down 10.6% over last year for a total of some $900 million.
As a result, the organization has been aggressively trying to cut costs. Earlier this month, the Times announced it was planning to borrow as much as $225 million against its new Manhattan headquarters because of a cash flow squeeze.
In September, it said it would close its wholesale newspaper and periodical distributor, City & Suburban, which delivered the Times and more than 200 other publications to newsstands and other locations in the New York area. And the Times newspaper has consolidated some print sections, such as mashing its sports section into its business section.
Nevertheless, Sulzberger told employees today that efforts are falling short. "We felt it was essential to take this step to further control our costs during these hard times."
Source: Forbes.com
The New York Times Company told print and Web employees of its flagship New York Times newspaper this afternoon that non-union staff would receive no pay raises next year.
"Advertising revenues at both the paper and the Web site remain weak and the financial outlook for 2009 is daunting," the staff was told in an internal e-mail from publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., obtained by Forbes.com.
Newspaper companies have seen massive revenue declines this year as a result of a weak ad market and continued erosion of their traditional business by the Internet. In October, advertising revenues from its New York Times Media Group, which includes properties such as the Times and the International Herald Tribune, dropped 15.3% over the same time last year. At the time, the company said advertising revenue for the group was down 10.6% over last year for a total of some $900 million.
As a result, the organization has been aggressively trying to cut costs. Earlier this month, the Times announced it was planning to borrow as much as $225 million against its new Manhattan headquarters because of a cash flow squeeze.
In September, it said it would close its wholesale newspaper and periodical distributor, City & Suburban, which delivered the Times and more than 200 other publications to newsstands and other locations in the New York area. And the Times newspaper has consolidated some print sections, such as mashing its sports section into its business section.
Nevertheless, Sulzberger told employees today that efforts are falling short. "We felt it was essential to take this step to further control our costs during these hard times."
Source: Forbes.com
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Government should step in to save press, analyst says
THE chief executive of media research firm Enders Analysis is calling on the UK government to relax the competition rules to allow media companies to diversify and survive, according to Press Gazette.
Claire Enders predicts "catastrophic" results if something is not done. In five years, a third of the country's newspapers, two national newspapers and half the jobs of the regional media will be gone.
The local press will have "substantially" declined by 2013, Enders said at a Westminster Media Forum conference. They have been facing the brunt of the economic crisis, and experiencing the worst setbacks with investors as "everybody's been trying to get out of the local press."
Regional newspaper titles, which "keep communities alive," are currently closing at a rate of 10-15 a week, Enders said.
Although closures will most likely continue, Enders said, the way to ensure that titles would survive is permitting cross-media ownership, which the UK government currently forbids. If newspaper groups were allowed to buy each other, print, TV and radio companies would be "diversified further," Enders said.
Removing the barriers to consolidation "is the only way to keep those jobs alive," Enders said.
Source: Press Gazette
Claire Enders predicts "catastrophic" results if something is not done. In five years, a third of the country's newspapers, two national newspapers and half the jobs of the regional media will be gone.
The local press will have "substantially" declined by 2013, Enders said at a Westminster Media Forum conference. They have been facing the brunt of the economic crisis, and experiencing the worst setbacks with investors as "everybody's been trying to get out of the local press."
Regional newspaper titles, which "keep communities alive," are currently closing at a rate of 10-15 a week, Enders said.
Although closures will most likely continue, Enders said, the way to ensure that titles would survive is permitting cross-media ownership, which the UK government currently forbids. If newspaper groups were allowed to buy each other, print, TV and radio companies would be "diversified further," Enders said.
Removing the barriers to consolidation "is the only way to keep those jobs alive," Enders said.
Source: Press Gazette
Monday, December 15, 2008
Hong Kong's SCMP cuts staff in restructuring
HONG KONG'S leading English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, laid off 30 employees Friday, amid belt tightening by global media companies struggling to weather the global economic downturn.
The layoffs were the result of company restructuring that made some positions redundant, said a spokeswoman who would only give her surname Chan, citing company policy.
It is not immediately clear how many editorial jobs were cut. Chan said the company could not rule out additional layoffs to come.
"Every company is trying to broaden sources of income and cut costs ... layoffs are our last resort," Chan said.
The South China Morning Post (other-otc: SCHPY.PK - news - people ), which has about 900 staff, is one of two English-language dailies in this former British colony.
Source: Associated Press.
The layoffs were the result of company restructuring that made some positions redundant, said a spokeswoman who would only give her surname Chan, citing company policy.
It is not immediately clear how many editorial jobs were cut. Chan said the company could not rule out additional layoffs to come.
"Every company is trying to broaden sources of income and cut costs ... layoffs are our last resort," Chan said.
The South China Morning Post (other-otc: SCHPY.PK - news - people ), which has about 900 staff, is one of two English-language dailies in this former British colony.
Source: Associated Press.
Media: Don't Cut Jobs, Cut Bad Business Model
Behind the current flood of job cuts are broken companies requiring a more enterprising fix.
The recession is prompting massive layoffs in all media sectors, even at the biggest players. The sheer magnitude denotes a scramble for survival that masks the urgent need for major restructuring. However, the intense focus on cutting rather than building is unlikely to leave media players as they prepare for digital growth.
Job losses in an unreformed legacy structure only address part of the reinvention equation. It also requires the closing of some traditional operations and the launching of new operations to accommodate new skill sets and growth paradigms. It is unclear how much of the latter is occurring in a market driven by fear.
Even more overwhelming than the most recent unemployment numbers, bordering on 7% nationally, is the dearth of efforts to innovate for better times. There is a troubling lack of evidence across the domestic business landscape that funds from the federal bailout or cash reserves being hoarded by corporations are being put to work for the future.
"It's time to not just address the immediate economic threats, but to start laying the groundwork for long-term prosperity," president-elect Barack Obama said last week. It is essential to look behind the nearly 2 million jobs lost so far this year to determine what, if anything, companies are doing to competitively reposition themselves. With job losses now shifting to the service and creative sectors-- traditionally economic growth drivers--it is difficult to see how companies are managing anything more than trying to get through the next several quarters.
The 12,000 job cuts at AT&T (T) (4% of the workforce), as much a function of its fading wire line phone business as a battered economy, are just the beginning of belt-tightening throughout the $1 trillion telecom industry. After eliminating 1,500 jobs (10% of its workforce), Yahoo (YHOO) is still slashing positions while searching for a new CEO and business strategy. The 850 job cuts (7% of the workforce) at Viacom (VIA) were said to be part of a comprehensive restructuring that was not detailed. About two-thirds of an estimated $450 million pre-tax charge is related to programming writedowns; the overall result will be $250 million in 2009 pretax savings.
"Viacom's long-term health will depend on our shared commitment to adapt, to innovate and to make difficult choices. To compete and thrive, we need to create an organization and a cost structure that are in step with the evolving economic environment," Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said in a memo last week.
Although Viacom and NBC (GE) management stress the strength of their franchise brands, some of their workforce reductions are aimed at eliminating overlap between their traditional and digital online businesses. NBC is soon expected to announce as many as 500 jobs cuts (or 3% of its workforce) as part of $500 million in cost reductions, which are in addition to the 1,350 jobs lost across all divisions of parent NBC Universal.
Time Warner (TWX) has eliminated more than 1,000 positions, a majority of them from its Time Inc. publishing unit. Disney (DIS) and CBS (CBS) have not made public planned reductions in workforce or operations. None have explained how any reorganization and refocusing are geared to new business lines or future growth.
In fact, much of the cutting has been aimed at trimming core business lines--such as delaying movie releases until next year, reducing the number and size of films and television production. Networks and studios--the more marginal of which could be consolidated--are under pressure to cut operating expenses in programming and production, home entertainment and distribution.
Like Viacom, some will take one-time charges and writeoffs related to content. But without a strategic plan for new job functions, operations and revenues, there can be no meaningful rationalization of existing resources. Just look at Detroit's big three automakers. Taking huge chunks out of their workforce does not reinvent their broken business model, which lawmakers are loath to fund.
Many media concerns, such as Tribune Co., are too dogged by loan covenants and debt payment deadlines they cannot make and are riveted on deep cost cuts and asset sales. Fitch Ratings and S&P say they expect more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, close operations and be liquidated in 2009, leaving some cities without a daily print newspaper by 2010.
Advertising-dependent newspaper and magazine publishers also are bracing for a major falloff in subscriptions next year as consumers cut back. A year from now, the marketplace could be saturated with distressed print and broadcast properties, the sale of which could be the only way for some media companies to make themselves financially whole. But who is buying?
As it turns out, the job cuts so far and other cost reductions will be an insufficient response to a projected 10% decline in advertising revenue in 2009, led by the imploding automotive (about 15% of all ad spending) and financial industries, as well as retail and travel-related businesses. Weakening DVD and home video sales, fixed content costs and dramatic ad revenues losses "carry a high incremental margin" that may need to be addressed with more dramatic action.
"The industry needs to continue to make more moves to reduce variable operating expenses, and soon," says Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente. In other words, media must provide its own bailout.
Source: SeekingAlpha
The recession is prompting massive layoffs in all media sectors, even at the biggest players. The sheer magnitude denotes a scramble for survival that masks the urgent need for major restructuring. However, the intense focus on cutting rather than building is unlikely to leave media players as they prepare for digital growth.
Job losses in an unreformed legacy structure only address part of the reinvention equation. It also requires the closing of some traditional operations and the launching of new operations to accommodate new skill sets and growth paradigms. It is unclear how much of the latter is occurring in a market driven by fear.
Even more overwhelming than the most recent unemployment numbers, bordering on 7% nationally, is the dearth of efforts to innovate for better times. There is a troubling lack of evidence across the domestic business landscape that funds from the federal bailout or cash reserves being hoarded by corporations are being put to work for the future.
"It's time to not just address the immediate economic threats, but to start laying the groundwork for long-term prosperity," president-elect Barack Obama said last week. It is essential to look behind the nearly 2 million jobs lost so far this year to determine what, if anything, companies are doing to competitively reposition themselves. With job losses now shifting to the service and creative sectors-- traditionally economic growth drivers--it is difficult to see how companies are managing anything more than trying to get through the next several quarters.
The 12,000 job cuts at AT&T (T) (4% of the workforce), as much a function of its fading wire line phone business as a battered economy, are just the beginning of belt-tightening throughout the $1 trillion telecom industry. After eliminating 1,500 jobs (10% of its workforce), Yahoo (YHOO) is still slashing positions while searching for a new CEO and business strategy. The 850 job cuts (7% of the workforce) at Viacom (VIA) were said to be part of a comprehensive restructuring that was not detailed. About two-thirds of an estimated $450 million pre-tax charge is related to programming writedowns; the overall result will be $250 million in 2009 pretax savings.
"Viacom's long-term health will depend on our shared commitment to adapt, to innovate and to make difficult choices. To compete and thrive, we need to create an organization and a cost structure that are in step with the evolving economic environment," Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said in a memo last week.
Although Viacom and NBC (GE) management stress the strength of their franchise brands, some of their workforce reductions are aimed at eliminating overlap between their traditional and digital online businesses. NBC is soon expected to announce as many as 500 jobs cuts (or 3% of its workforce) as part of $500 million in cost reductions, which are in addition to the 1,350 jobs lost across all divisions of parent NBC Universal.
Time Warner (TWX) has eliminated more than 1,000 positions, a majority of them from its Time Inc. publishing unit. Disney (DIS) and CBS (CBS) have not made public planned reductions in workforce or operations. None have explained how any reorganization and refocusing are geared to new business lines or future growth.
In fact, much of the cutting has been aimed at trimming core business lines--such as delaying movie releases until next year, reducing the number and size of films and television production. Networks and studios--the more marginal of which could be consolidated--are under pressure to cut operating expenses in programming and production, home entertainment and distribution.
Like Viacom, some will take one-time charges and writeoffs related to content. But without a strategic plan for new job functions, operations and revenues, there can be no meaningful rationalization of existing resources. Just look at Detroit's big three automakers. Taking huge chunks out of their workforce does not reinvent their broken business model, which lawmakers are loath to fund.
Many media concerns, such as Tribune Co., are too dogged by loan covenants and debt payment deadlines they cannot make and are riveted on deep cost cuts and asset sales. Fitch Ratings and S&P say they expect more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, close operations and be liquidated in 2009, leaving some cities without a daily print newspaper by 2010.
Advertising-dependent newspaper and magazine publishers also are bracing for a major falloff in subscriptions next year as consumers cut back. A year from now, the marketplace could be saturated with distressed print and broadcast properties, the sale of which could be the only way for some media companies to make themselves financially whole. But who is buying?
As it turns out, the job cuts so far and other cost reductions will be an insufficient response to a projected 10% decline in advertising revenue in 2009, led by the imploding automotive (about 15% of all ad spending) and financial industries, as well as retail and travel-related businesses. Weakening DVD and home video sales, fixed content costs and dramatic ad revenues losses "carry a high incremental margin" that may need to be addressed with more dramatic action.
"The industry needs to continue to make more moves to reduce variable operating expenses, and soon," says Barclays Capital analyst Anthony DiClemente. In other words, media must provide its own bailout.
Source: SeekingAlpha
Singapore: free daily Today drops weekend circulation
SINGAPORE free daily newspaper Today, owned by MediaCorp, plans to slash its weekend circulation down to 150,000 copies. MediaCorp Press Managing Director Philip Koh says that in light of the recent economic turmoil across the industry "every cent matters."
Nearly eight months ago, Today's total circulation was boosted from 250,000 to 300,000, meaning that if the weekday circulationg remains at 300,000 the current average circulation will amount to 275,000.
Today was launched in 2000, while its weekend edition in 2002. Four years ago the paper decided to venture with its competitor Streats, also launched in 2000.
Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), which owns Streats, has a 40 percent stake in Today. In addition, the company started a Chinese language free daily two years ago called My Paper.
Publishing group MediaCorp is controlled by the state, whereas SPH is state-owned.
Source: Newspaper Innovation
Nearly eight months ago, Today's total circulation was boosted from 250,000 to 300,000, meaning that if the weekday circulationg remains at 300,000 the current average circulation will amount to 275,000.
Today was launched in 2000, while its weekend edition in 2002. Four years ago the paper decided to venture with its competitor Streats, also launched in 2000.
Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), which owns Streats, has a 40 percent stake in Today. In addition, the company started a Chinese language free daily two years ago called My Paper.
Publishing group MediaCorp is controlled by the state, whereas SPH is state-owned.
Source: Newspaper Innovation
Friday, December 12, 2008
Publishers too timid to go online
Gary Andrews asks THE questions of the moment. After noting that local papers are struggling to stay afloat, he writes: "The irony could well be that by getting distracted by fire-fighting on the print front, local newspapers get caught out by the smoke starting to come from online." Then he asks...
"Would any newspaper be brave enough to completely shut down in a physical format and move everything online, adopting a more Web 2.0 way of doing news? Would it work? And how on earth would they monetise it?... But, even if it is a desperate last throw of the dice, what does a paper have to lose if it tries it?"
Andrews adds: "Not that I'd want to see papers disappear from their communities, but if it's a choice between online-only news and no news at all..."
Yes, yes and yes again. There's the rub. However much we love print, however much we'd like to see newsprint survive, what counts is the journalism, not the platform.
Why will not publisher take the risk by transforming a print paper into an online paper? It's surely better than simply closing titles altogether? By which I mean, better for the community.
It's amazing how often we heard about the public benefit when newspaper publishers were screaming blue murder about the BBC's proposal to expand its regional coverage. What benefit is there in shutting titles?
Source: The Guardian UK
"Would any newspaper be brave enough to completely shut down in a physical format and move everything online, adopting a more Web 2.0 way of doing news? Would it work? And how on earth would they monetise it?... But, even if it is a desperate last throw of the dice, what does a paper have to lose if it tries it?"
Andrews adds: "Not that I'd want to see papers disappear from their communities, but if it's a choice between online-only news and no news at all..."
Yes, yes and yes again. There's the rub. However much we love print, however much we'd like to see newsprint survive, what counts is the journalism, not the platform.
Why will not publisher take the risk by transforming a print paper into an online paper? It's surely better than simply closing titles altogether? By which I mean, better for the community.
It's amazing how often we heard about the public benefit when newspaper publishers were screaming blue murder about the BBC's proposal to expand its regional coverage. What benefit is there in shutting titles?
Source: The Guardian UK
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