Global News challenge:
Newspapers which once aspired to Pulitzer prizes for their international or financial reporting are now looking at outsourcing foreign or business desks to wire services such as Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters, to focus on areas in which they can be specialists, such as local news.
Problem...then, you just get the global news, but lack the interpretation...of how that news is important for your local community, of how the global trends affect the local. If all news comes from the global wire, then you get good news, but poor meaning.
The Challenge:
With the rise of Web2.0 technologies such as RSS, many people now pull news into newsreaders such as iGoogle, or myYahoo!. But, the ads dont go with the text.
What is needed is a way to send the ads with the text.
Also, if this were possible, they should allow "embedding" of news articles on anyother site (like YouTube does with video). Why dont they do this now? Because of the challenge that this would give their ad-based business models. But, if the ads went with the text, that might change the motivation, and allow the news to open up to a more distributed model.
Newspaper business models
by daniel.primack@thomson.com PE Week
WSJ is not representative of the overall newspaper market because it has a more targeted audience and does not rely on classified ads for used cars and apartment rentals. WSJ vs. NY Times might not be apples to oranges, but it’s at least apples to a very different type of apples. In fact, I’d liken the WSJ’s biz model much more to that of magazines than to that of newspapers.
What I did not have time to respond to was the profit margin issue. First, a quick search on Yahoo Finance seems to dispute his 20% figure. The New York Times Co. has a profit margin of 5.16%, and an operating margin of 11.10 percent. The Tribune Co. reports an 8.85% profit margin, and a 20.41% operating margin. If I’m wrong, I’m sure one of you analysts will correct me. If Gasparino was wrong – as it seems he was – this will serve as his correction.
Spiral Death Watch: Newspaper Ads In The Can
Posted: 21 Nov 2007 11:09 AM CST
Newspaper ad sales continue their long, sad decline, down 7.4 percent in the third quarter. The shift to online is not going to save the industry. (And neither is the Kindle).
While online ads keep growing at a healthy clip, up 21 percent to $773 million industrywide, it is not enough to make up for the decline in print ads. Print ads in the third quarter were $10.1 billion. That is $1 billion less than they were in the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, online newspaper ad sales rose only by $135 million. After six straight quarters of decline, print ad sales are at 1997 levels—lower if you adjust for inflation.
(Photo via Appleheartz. Chart via Reflections of a Newsosaur)
The Los Angeles Times has partnered with Mixx, a social news website, to give readers more input in the news they read.
The publication has also said it will start using technology from Aggregrate Knowledge, a Silicon Valley company, to deliver user-driven content suggestions to its web site, starting with its travel section. It lets users see what other users like them have also viewed.
These are the latest moves by a large newspaper to try to include more social or open features into its Web site. Strategies vary widely. Recently, for example, the New York Times started linking to other sites from its Web site, for example — though that effort still lets editors control what stories are pointing to.
The LA Times calls itself the largest metro newspaper in the country, with 2.2 million daily readers. The company said it also invested in Mixx, though the amount was undisclosed (see statement). The company said the stake was small.
Mixx launched in October (see coverage), partially as a way give newspapers and other publishers their own version of the popular news ranking site, Digg. But rather than letting hundreds of thousands of young techies dictate what is popular — as Digg does — Mixx gives control to the individual user. It shows them stories based on where they live and what their self-defined interests are. Its recommendation engine is standard, offering up content, including news stories, video and photos, relating to your previously expressed interests and location.
The company sees itself as being more than a competitor to Digg. It is also a competitor to personalized start pages such as My Yahoo, iGoogle, PageFlakes and Netvibe, chief executive Chris McGill tells us. It offers a one stop place for relevant news and other information, like those sites do. It also offers group and profile features, the components of a social network.
Mixx has signed deals with USA Today, Reuters.com, The Weather Channel, Kaboose and uclick Comics. It is owned by Recommended Reading, of McLean, Virginia. It had previously raised $1.5 million round of funding, in a round led by Intersouth Partners.
The service will be integrated into LATimes’ story pages.
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