Source:poynter.org
Last year circulation revenues inched ahead of advertising for the world’s newspapers, according to a report out today from the trade group WAN-IFRA.
For 2014, circulation generated $92 billion compared to $87 billion for advertising, according to a world press trends survey released as WAN-IFRA begins its annual World Congress meeting in Washington.
Source: poynter.org
This is another in a series of articles by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press covering legal issues that affect journalists. RCFP’s First Look Media Technology Fellow Jenn Henrichsen wrote this article.
Threatening journalists over their reporting is not a new concept, but the age of electronic media has brought a new method of intimidation and harassment known as doxxing.
Doxxing – named for docs or documents and also called doxing or d0xing – starts with publishing someone’s personal information in an environment that implies or encourages intimidation. Typically done online, the information then is used by others in a campaign of harassment, threats and pranks.
Source: http: huffingtonpost.com
This is the first installment in our series on mental health in the newsroom. Here are the second, third, fourth and fifth installments.
When Hurricane Katrina swirled onto the Louisiana shore and residents of New Orleans clogged highways to flee, John McCusker stayed behind.
A photographer for The Times-Picayune for more than two decades, McCusker paddled through the city’s muddy waters in a kayak, day after day, documenting the destruction. Like many of the city’s residents, he had lost his home and all of his possessions. His family had relocated to Birmingham, Alabama, five hours away.
Source:https://freedomhouse.org
Source: niemanlab.org
Yelp’s for sale, and the news has generated the usual, now-tiresome lists of potential buyers: Google, Amazon, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook. It’s like all the money in the business world slid off one end of the table and sluiced down to Silicon Valley. Forget the old spend-a-week-without-the-Internet experiments; is it possible to spend a week without talking about one of those companies?
Speculation has it that the asking price of $3.5 billion might be too rich for any of those players, or anyone else. Yelp’s audience is still growing — up 7.5 percent year-over-year to 142.5 million in the first quarter — but its revenue and audience growth is slowing. Total revenue will come in at about $580 million this year. It’s lost 40 percent of its market cap in less than a year, as investors have decided it’s lost its growth mojo.
I’m a fitness enthusiast and a poker player. While I’m better at the former than the latter, I’m always looking to improve my game. Before stepping onto the elliptical machine for some cardio recently, I downloaded a favorite poker podcast. The subject: folding your cards too early can be a mistake and cost you money.
The message was essentially this: fear and failure to commit can lead to a loss of opportunity as circumstances evolve.
Or something like that.
As an owner of and a supplier to newsmedia companies, I related this lesson to the legacy newspaper—specifically, to the traditional print product.
I question whether many of us are “folding too early” on our print business. Are we relinquishing opportunity for audience and revenue growth by moving too far too fast away from print?
Many prognosticators suggest that the opposite is true—that if we fail to move away from print ASAP, our business is a risk. I’m not so sure.
Let me be clear—I am NOT a print apologist. While I believe the future of the newsmedia is bright, I am “platform agnostic.” I don’t believe we must decree how audiences consume our content. Thus, I have been critical of an uncompromising “digital first” mandate for the legacy newsmedia company. Instead, we must think CUSTOMER FIRST—and be relevant in content, in timing and in channel.
To get to the point, here are four reasons for integrating print as an essential component of a diverse, multi-platform strategy:
Print audiences are vital sources of data and revenue—data that enables relevance, and revenue that funds other strategic initiatives.
Print audiences are a source of customers for other offline and online products.
The ability to offer advertising solutions that can be integrated and optimized across multiple platforms offers a compelling proposition to advertisers vis-à-vis single channel providers.
Print advertising works.
Regarding this last point, I am an admirer of Alan Mutter (newsosaur.blogspot.com; Editor’s note: Alan also writes a monthly column in E&P). I don’t always agree with him, but he makes me think. Alan recently referenced a study by eMarketer citing an interesting statistic: the amount of ad dollars by medium divided by the amount of time spent with each. The result: In 2014, advertisers spent $.83 per minute to reach print readers—and only $.07 per minute to reach mobile users. Alan argues that “markets abhor this sort of inefficiency”—and that further migration of ad dollars from print to mobile is imminent.
I agree that the downward trend in print spending is likely to continue—but I certainly disagree with the characterization of the print/mobile dichotomy as “inefficient.” The fact is that for today at least, print works. There are advertisers willing to tolerate the higher investment associated with print because the ROI is superior to what they would get elsewhere. As Alan implies, the markets are rationale, and people will spend their money where the return is highest.
The situation will continue to evolve. Mobile advertising—particularly location-based applications—will become more sophisticated and, ultimately, more effective. But for today—and for the near future—print produces a superior result for many advertisers. Perhaps most importantly, an integrated communications portfolio that includes a variety of print, digital, mobile and other multichannel solutions for advertisers offers a competitive positioning that is unique in the media.
In conclusion, putting any platform first—whether print, digital or other—is, IMHO, misguided unless the business is built ground-up for that specific platform. Such a proviso is not the case for the legacy newspaper company. Instead, a thoughtful, progressive transformation to an agile, platform agnostic media enterprise that delivers relevance and value to consumers, and optimized, multichannel solutions to the merchant community, is the path to a sustainable future.
Tom Ratkovich is the managing partner of LEAP Media Solutions and can be reached at tom.ratkovich@leapmediasolutions.com.
– See more at: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/TopStories/Columns/Shoptalk–Don-t–Fold–Too-Early-on-Print#sthash.KdKjzmyK.dpuf
IN January, the Washington Post reported on the city’s latest “scandal.”
Evidently, a union organizing drive was underway in a digital-news shop. The “threat” was so real that a right-wing anti-taxer vowed to help fight off the terrible union.
That audacious union was ours.
What the Post didn’t know is that we routinely get phone calls from digital-media employees curious about organizing. Some of those calls turn into full-fledged drives. Others don’t. Or they aren’t public yet as pro-union employees work behind the scenes building support
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that workers like the idea of democracy in the workplace. Despite all the ill-informed badmouthing of unions, surveys show that most workers would join a union given the opportunity. Grievously, the damage that corporations, anti-union politicians and the courts have done to labor law over the years limits those opportunities.
When employees at digital publications call us, they are as likely to talk about working conditions as wages. This is especially true as workers get into their late 20’s and early 30’s—when they’ve decided they want a life as well as a job.
We help these workers any way we can. If they decide to organize, they are in control of the process. They decide what’s important and what a fair contract would look like.
It should go without saying that it’s invaluable to have a signed document that states what the rules are, as well as minimum standards for wages and benefits. You’ll never find an executive who hasn’t negotiated a contract—typically a highly favorable one with a fat exit package even if he or she is fired.
In the turbulent industry that is media today, these conversations are more important than ever. While some employers are smart enough to pay for quality journalism, others see a sea of laid-off writers and editors and scheme to get as much work out of them as possible at the lowest cost. Some are so arrogant and brazen that they use the “cachet” of a byline to barter for work with no pay.
But even the worst of those employers aren’t the parasites that are Google, Facebook and other content aggregators that effectively steal revenue from news organizations.
Whether your organization is all-digital or still has a print component, Google and its ilk are taking advantage. Google would have you believe that its own genius is responsible for its wealth—nearly $5 billion in profit in the last quarter of 2014, up 30 percent from the same quarter in 2013. In fact, those billions are siphoned from your labor and others’ investment.
Fresh, quality, credible information is a precious resource. It gets more valuable every day, as once-proud and respected news organizations slash jobs and wages. As new employers attempt to fill the gaping hole in the quality and quantity of bona fide journalism, it is vital that workers have a voice.
I noted that some people feel threatened by unions and purposely distort what we do, throwing around phrases like “union bosses” and “union thugs.” They want workers to see unions as outsiders who would exploit them. We know that nothing could be further from the truth.
But they spread those lies because workplace democracy is the last thing they want. They demand no limits on their power and greed. They see unions as a threat because history proves how effective we are at improving workers’ lives. They know that unions did, in fact, create America’s now-disappearing middle class.
Unions aren’t the enemy of management. We can and do work with employers to build better products and stronger companies. In our field, no one cares more about the product—journalism—than journalists themselves. When we can negotiate fair wages, benefits and working conditions, quality journalism thrives.
The loudmouth union-haters on certain TV networks and radio shows, have done a huge disservice to the many Americans who are told nothing about the democratic nature of unions and how we function.
There’s nothing “shocking” about journalists or any other workers trying to form a union. They are ordinary people who want some control over their work lives. You may be one of those people. Give us a call. You’ll be in good company.
Source: nanaimo-info-blog.com
With the resignation of Hugh Nicholson and now Mark MacDonald it will be interestingto see what, if anything changes with Nanaimo’s oldest newspaper.
I went into the Daily to deliver a press release about my council bid and asked to speak to the editor, Mark MacDonald. The receptionist paged Mark and soon another staffer came out to inform both the receptionist and myself that Mr. MacDonald resigned his position as editor yesterday.
I presume there will be a story in tomorrows Daily News, but I just couldn’t resist being the lowly blogger-guy who scoops the local Daily.
Source: vancouversun.com
The Kamloops Daily News is closing due to declining revenues and high costs, but the industry says this does not signal distress in the daily newspaper business as a whole.
“This is the first major market paid daily that we’ve seen close in recent memory,” Newspapers Canada president and CEO John Hinds said.
Source: j-source.ca
Black Press Media has shut down the Abbotsford/Mission Times, a little more than a month after purchasing the B.C. paper from Glacier Media. The company also took down the newspaper’s website and closed its Twitter account.
When asked why the company was shutting down a newspaper it considered a worthy purchase in October, Rick O’Connor, president and CEO of Black Media, told J-Source the newspaper was losing “too much revenue” and not making enough money on advertisements.
“The losses were far greater than we had expected,” he said. “We’re not miracle workers … there is only so much we can do.”
O’Connor said most of the Times staff took the severance package offered by Glacier Media, leaving only four of the original 13 staff. “You can’t do the same work when a significant majority is gone.” Black Press will discuss future options for the remaining staff within the company.
As part of the sale from Glacier Media, Black Press also purchased the Chilliwack Times, which O’Connor said continues to operate for now alongside its competitor, Chilliwack Progress. He would not, however, comment on its financial viability.
“It was our belief that it didn’t make sense for readers to receive two community newspapers in the Abbotsford, Mission and Chilliwack markets on the same publishing days with tremendous duplication of content,” said Randy Blair, president of the Black Press Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island divisions, in a statement. “In light of this, Black Press has harmonized publication days in the Chilliwack market so that the Chilliwack Times and the Chilliwack Progress will publish on different days.”
Black Press also owns the Abbotsford News, which will continue to publish.