Posts under ‘News Business’

Here’s the Dow Jones “Special Committee’s Statement” about its helplessness — which has been entirely evident from the beginning — in the wake of Murdoch’s ridding himself of the Wall Street Journal’s managing editor, a journalist who was part of the old regime.
Again, it’s his company’s paper now, and he and his team get to [...]

Portfolio: How Murdoch Cheated ‘WSJ’ Independence Pact. Only the very naive didn’t expect Rupert Murdoch to find some sly way around the agreement he made to respect The Wall Street Journal’s editorial independence once it was his. But when the time came, there was nothing very sly about it at all: Murdoch just did exactly [...]

Jon Garfunkel: Easy Mark: The Elephant in the Locker Room. (I)t’s still immensely foolish as it is to ban someone from the lockerroom because they call themselves a blogger. If a cutoff is needed, I’d suggest one based on the old standby, circulation.

“Mark” is Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks franchise, and he’s decided [...]

UPDATED
The Dallas Morning News implores its readers, “Help us examine the lost JFK files.” Why?
Given the volume, we haven’t been able to review most of the files. That’s why were calling on you. Here’s your chance to review never-seen-before materials related to the JFK assassination.
This is a breakthrough in the traditional media — though as [...]

Marc Andreessen has inaugurated “the New York Times Deathwatch” — and the data he cites should be giving the Times-folk nightmares. But then, the company’s board of directors is a particularly inept group considering the absolute need to move, fast, into the digital world for real, with all that means.
Marc writes, with utterly appropriate snark, [...]

There are plenty of reasons to wonder about citizen media’s business model. One, which I’ve talked about many times here and elsewhere, is the tendency of site owners to rely on free labor. The method goes roughly this way: “You do all the work and we’ll take all the money, thank you very much.”
People [...]

I’m on my way to the DLD Conference — it stands for Digital Life, Design — in Munich. The gathering is held each year by the folks at Hubert Burda Media, one of the most forward-looking media companies on the planet.
The conference is always fascinating, and this one has the look of an especially [...]

Jeff Jarvis ably deconstructs a NYT op-ed in which:
A herd of journalism-school deans wrote a predictable but also naive and possibly dangerous — and certainly not strategically forward-thinking — attack on media cross-ownership and the FCC’s loosening of its rules in today’s Times op-ed page.

They do mean well, and they are not off base on [...]

Times Online: News Corp to tap US faith market with takeover of Beliefnet website. News Corporation, parent company of The Times, bought the leading American religious website Beliefnet yesterday in an effort to tap the faith market in a country where 88 per cent of the population say that they pray regularly.

Is he smart enough [...]

Steve Outing offers “An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media” — a chronicle of the demise of his company, the Enthusiast Group, which created sports sites. He gave it his best effort, but in the end, as he explains, he and his colleagues couldn’t sustain a business.
Steve’s venture (I was an early investor) was one of [...]