Posts under ‘News Business’

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 [...]

NY Times: Not All Is Gloomy in Real Estate: A Blog Network Attracts Capital. In some respects, sites like Curbed are insulated from the woes of the real estate market in a way that traditional sites may not be. “We’re not just about real estate,” Mr. Steele said. “People come to the site to talk [...]

NY Times: Murdoch, a Folk Hero in Silicon Valley. But on the left coast, Mr. Murdoch is truly among friends. The attendees at the Web 2.0 conference know him as the ultimate market timer, the guy who swooped in out of nowhere and bought MySpace for $580 million two years ago, before its audience doubled [...]

In the Business Week article I point to in the posting below, Steve Hamm quotes me (very) briefly. Here’s our full exchange (I’ve combined two emails):
Question: Could the Mercury News or Knight Ridder have done a better job of keeping their readers or gaining new ones? If so, how?
Answer: The trends — demographic, financial [...]