Results matching “the demise of m”

Editor & Publisher will cease publication after 125 years in the business. Both the print and online versions of the publication will be shut down at the end of the year.

The announcement was made yesterday by parent company, The Nielson Co., after the magazine failed to be included in a deal with e5 Global Media Holdings, LLC., a new company formed by Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners. The two companies had organized the sale of eight brands in the Media and Entertainment Group.

Jose Galang has reported on the current state of Philippine media entities for the Asia Media Forum, which he has described as being "in a state of flux". According to Galang, in light of rising production costs no longer covered by the now declining readership, newspapers are now looking for other ways to generate revenue.

Publications around the world have recognised the Internet's potential to attract a wider audience as well as boost profits: In February 2007, fortnightly magazine Newsbreak, specialising in in-depth, investigative reports, did away with its regular printed copy in favour of operating as an online publication (Newsbreak.com.ph). Editor-in-chief, Marites Dañguilan Vitug said of the decision: "We're reaching a wider audience now that we're on the web and we operate on less funds".

The Internet is not to blame for the demise of newspapers, says Michael Hickins of The Faster Times. Rather, he believes there are two reasons: the overinflated salaries of editors and online content-makers, coupled with "fraudulent circulation numbers." Articles which have appeared both in print and online blaming free content of the web have often suggested that "even before the recession hit, the newspaper industry was facing a mortal threat from the rise of the internet," (Paul Starr, for The New Republic) and that "the Internet is killing newspapers," (The Economist, May 2009 print edition).

Hickins argues that the news has always been free, citing Jeff Sonderman's theory that the public has never actually paid for the content of a newspaper. Therefore, the fact that consumers are not paying for online news should not be a problem, he claims.

The BBC is to share video news with major British newspapers, in what the Guardian described as a "landmark deal." The first papers involved are the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Independent and the Telegraph, but the publicly funded corporation plans to make the video news content available to other UK-based news websites also.

The BBC will provide a limited range of video news content in four public service areas: UK politics, business, health and science and technology. The material will be given to the papers at no cost and is intended to supplement their own work. According to the Guardian, the BBC has been clear that it has "no intention" of extending the range of content to genres such as entertainment and sports news. 

The backwards-thinking yet futuristic idea of taking content from the Internet and reproducing it in printed form has not been the overwhelming success The Printed Blog hoped it would be. Founder Joshua Karp announced in a blog post yesterday that the publication would be put on hold indefinitely after running out of capital and failing to attract investors.

"Creating a new breed of newsprint publication from scratch was an amazing experience," Karp wrote, "and it was humbling to have been so prominently included in the global discussion on the future of journalism and the print media."

When the Ann Arbor News ceases printing in July, Ann Arbor will become the first US city with no daily newspaper. The publication as it exists now will disappear completely, although a new venture, AnnArbor.com, is set to take over local news on the web and will produce a print product two days a week.

In a column for Poynter's The Biz Blog, Rick Edmunds postulates on what factors led to the decline of the News in Ann Arbor, whose vibrant, educated community would appear to be the ideal location for a newspaper. Edmunds even goes so far as to suggest starting over with AnnArbor.com might not be such a bad idea.

Parliament will next Tuesday witness the testimonies of the chiefs of four regional newspaper publishers, as they deliver their views on the condition of the British local media.  The issue will be slanted towards the financial situation. 

The meeting will unite the Culture, Media and Sport select committee and the regional representatives, who have been named as Carolyn McCall from Guardian Media Group, Sly Bailey from Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press chief executive John Fry and Christopher Thomson from DC Thomson.  Also present will be Claire Enders, the founder of media research firm Enders Analysis.

From today, a new partnership between Associated Newspapers' free titles and PageSuite will see the group's online newspapers including Metro, Metro Ireland, London Lite and 7Days published by the digital publishing solutions company.

The Metro's operations director, Stuart Wood, said: "Our electronic editions provide a convenient way of accessing our content. We are focused on delivering a first-class customer experience and PageSuite's market-leading product helps us achieve that."

According to an investigation conducted by Princeton economists Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and Miguel Garrido, print journalists can bask in the knowledge that their work is sill important, the American Journalism Review maintains.  

The spring report, "Do Newspapers Matter? Evidence from the Closure of The Cincinnati Post" found that "even underdogs such as the Post, which had a circulation of just 27,000 when it closed - can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life."  The researchers qualify that the results are "statistically imprecise", but conclude that local newspapers have an important role in the civic life of a community.

Fort Collins (Colo.) is set to lose its investigative weekly paper, Fort Collins Now, the most recent paper to perish in the current economic climate, reports Editor&Publisher.

Dwight Brown, the paper's publisher announced the closure on Monday on its website "the slump that has hit the newspaper industry in recent years has swallowed yet another newspaper: The one you are currently reading."

It would seem that student newspapers in the UK are beset by the same problems as their mainstream counterparts - perhaps even more so. According to a survey by the Leeds Student newspaper, over 45% of UK student newspapers have had to cut their print run or cancel issues, 60% haven't hit their advertising target for the year, and over 25% of their editors "have serious concerns about their financial future."

A similar situation from a different perspective on the other side of the Atlantic: a Bloomberg report claims that the outgoing writers and editors of student publication the Harvard Crimson rarely end up at newspapers. Moreover, those current employees with journalistic ambitions "avoid mentioning it in front of classmates, wanting to avoid expressions of concern, if not ridicule" according to Abigail Phillip, 20, a junior editor at the Crimson.

Writer Beth Teitell doesn't think the serious impact the (theoretical) demise of newspapers would have upon society is being communicated to the public in quite the right way. Citing a Pew survey which found that just 33% of Americans would personally miss reading their local newspapers "a lot", she writes in the Boston Globe that, "No one cares about the sanctity of the news. We need to make the case on grounds that actually matter to people." How does Teitell propose to alert people to the problem? By letting them know how their lives would really look without newspapers.

How would kidnappers write ransom notes, she muses? Or how would people wrap up valuable china during a house move? "Let the papers die, and your tableware goes down, too." Try covering your head with your iPhone during a rainstorm, she challenges - let alone the impact on papier-mâché "when your kid's homework assignment calls for making a model of Earth or an erupting volcano." It is doubtful how successful these arguments would be as part of a campaign to save newspapers, but they are entertaining nonetheless - along the same lines as a newspaper using flavoured ink and front page nudity to win back readers perhaps...

Source: Boston Globe

In response to criticism from some of the UK's leading journalism pundits, editorial staff who
work on East End Life, a weekly newspaper based in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, have penned a passionate letter defending their right to work for council-run newspapers, according to the Guardian's Roy Greenslade referring to a post on blog site FleetStreetBlues, which in turn says the letter was originally sent to the National Union of Journalist's (NUJ) Journalist magazine.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations has released its figures for US newspapers, for the six months ending March 31st - and they've created quite a stir. Data for 395 American newspapers was recorded, displaying an overall decline in circulation of 7.4% compared with the same period in 2007-08. Of the 25 top newspapers in the US, all bar one have seen drops in circulation.

It is the Wall Street Journal which has bucked the trend and managed an overall increase, albeit of just 0.6%. The WSJ has recently been displaying signs of a change in its editorial direction, leaning towards a slightly more mainstream news role and increased competition with newswires via Dow Jones. In a recent interview, managing editor Robert Thomson explained the WSJ's success was in part due to the demise of some US newspapers, which "creates a tremendous opportunity for us to gain readers".

INDenverTimes announced its intention to launch a subscription based news site, following the demise of Denver's Rocky Mountain News - on the condition that it reached 50,000 subscribers April 23rd, which would have been the 150th birthday of the Rocky. Today is that deadline, and as INDT has not reached its goal, the co-founders "will not pursue the original business model past today's self imposed deadline".

Speaking to the Editors Weblog last week, co-founder Kevin Preblud said that the decision would now be based upon a combination of subscribers, users and page view figures - although this still did not throw up what the co-founders considered to be a viable business opportunity. Preblud now, however, insists that they "have confidence in the future of online journalism and will continue to explore alternative business models.

The latest figures from Nielsen Online indicate that, following its switch to online-only, the number of unique users on SeattlePI.com dropped by 23% in March when compared with the previous year. The Nielsen figures push the PI out of the top 30 US newspaper websites - and in a further blow to the publication, former print rival the Seattle Times recorded 2.2 million unique visitors: year on year growth of 70%.

SeattlePI.com's owner Hearst has, however, contradicted the figures. Vice president Paul Luthringer revealed that Hearst's data from Omniture displays a 9.6% increase in unique visitors, and labelled Nielsen's methodology "flawed". Interestingly, Kathy Best, managing editor for digital news at the Seattle Times also questioned Nielsen's figures putting its unique visitors at 5.3 million for March; a 33% increase on the previous year.

The Rocky Mountain News published its final edition on Friday 27 February, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's last print edition before its move online was printed on Tuesday 17 March. The demise of these two publications, despite the P-I's continued existence online, left a hole in both Seattle and Denver. However, in both cities, online only publications have emerged. Both staffed by writers for the respective former newspapers, INDenverTimes and the Seattle PostGlobe are now up and running. The Editors Weblog spoke to INDT co-founder Kevin Preblud, and Kery Murakami who is leading the Seattle PostGlobe's effort, to find out more.

Funding

The two publications have taken very different routes in terms of funding. Fighting back against the mentality that information is free online, INDT is charging for subscriptions. Whilst much of the news will in fact be free, "it's really the premium content that we want our subscribers to pay for", explains Preblud. Initially, an target of finding 50,000 subscribers by April 23 was set, in order for the full launch to go ahead on May 4. However, the decision will now be based upon a combination of subscribers, users and page view figures.

Subscribers will have access to the INsider Channel, "where you can have a direct, real time conversations with our editors and writers" as well as a number of other applications and tools. "Insight, perspective, live blogging, live chatting, commenting, interactivity with writers and other readers" are amongst the benefits offered to paying readers.

Preblud believes that "business model is currently not working", largely due to the drop in advertising revenue and the decline in print readership. It is for these reasons that INDT is trying something different, and in terms of its model Preblud believes that "the cost structure is reasonable, the revenues are up, and with advertising and subscriptions I think we could make this work."

The Seattle PostGlobe, on the other hand is aiming to run as a non-profit, free to access publication funded by donations. Murakami presents the project as "for the broader civic good, as opposed to trying to make money." He added that "Seattle has a rich history of community efforts." Discussing INDT's decision to sell subscriptions, Murakami thinks that "it could work" - but his reluctance is attributed to the fact that he does not like the idea that only the people who could afford to pay would have access to information.

Citing the VoiceOfSanDiego and MinnPost as influences for the project, Murakami laments that "the big difference between us and them is that they were lucky enough to find some big pocket donors". He explains that the largest single contribution the Seattle PostGlobe has so far received is just $500. To increase revenue, the SPG has reached a deal with the Seattle Weekly, whereby the Seattle Weekly sells the SPG's advertising space and split the proceeds 50/50.

"We hope it will make the community feel empowered and they will respond - it's going slow so far but we'll see."

Murakami explains that they are giving readers the choice; "What we have done is said, 'We're going to volunteer and we're going back to you, the community, to put this in your hands. If you want us to do the work that we do, then support us. But really it's your choice.' We hope it will make the community feel empowered and they will respond - it's going slow so far but we'll see."

Coverage

Both the SPG and INDT have chosen, somewhat inevitably, to narrow their coverage from that of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News respectively, and place more of an emphasis on local coverage than statewide reporting. Murakami points out that "with a much smaller staff we have to be much more focussed, in terms of what we do," whilst Preblud concedes that "because we're an online-only news resource we just can't cover everything that the Rocky was covering."

"The Seattle P-I didn't go under because of a lack of interest or of readership, which is ironic."

Murakami hopes that the SPG will recapture the market that the P-I once held - because, as he explains, "the Seattle P-I didn't go under because of a lack of interest or of readership, which is ironic." There isn't, however, necessarily a call for a more hyperlocal approach to the news in Seattle because of several blogs already in existence which focus on specific neighbourhoods.

"We will be emphasising Seattle coverage as opposed to broader Washington coverage. We are focussed on issues that affect people in the city," Murakami explains. Similarly, Preblud describes how INDT believes "that our purpose is to cover the local market and the local community of Denver in a much more focused manner. We're unfortunately leaving out some of the more statewide coverage".

Both the Seattle PostGlobe and INDenverTimes will be looking at potential content-enhancing collaborations in the weeks and months to come. The SPG is investigating partnerships with public TV and radio stations, namely KCTS-TV. "We could be a demonstration project here in the state, showing how merging a public TV station, a public radio station and former newspaper reporters could work. The idea that we are pursuing is for the three entities to remain separate yet join to create a news organisation." INDT, meanwhile, could "end up partnering with some of the other local news outlets in the smaller cities".

Reception

"It seems that we really were valued and left a void that people appreciate us trying to fill."

The response to the new publications in both Denver and Seattle has been positive. "They've all been positive, keep up the good work, they're all rooting for us, and hoping that we can continue and that we can succeed," says Preblud. Murakami describes the reaction to the SPG as heartening: "It seems that we really were valued and left a void that people appreciate us trying to fill."

Personal impact

Preblud explains that his desire to launch INDT stems from his Denver roots, where he grew up reading the Rocky. He explains that he found it difficult to watch its demise, and that "nobody stepped up and was willing to buy the Rocky." It was this which prompted him to co-found INDT, "I just felt there was an opportunity there with part of what the future solution might look like," he clarified. Working on such a project is unlikely to be the same as working at an established paper, however. Murakami, discussing his new role, comments, "It's weird, I have been a newspaper reporter for 20 years. And now I am part-salesman, part fundraiser, part photo editor, part editor, part IT guy. And I haven't had time to do any stories."

How closures are affecting American cities

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News are two of the most high profile American newspaper closures, but there has been speculation that more could follow. Whilst the P-I is now published online, the Rocky in any official form disappeared completely. In reference to the situation Seattle now finds itself, Murakami says "The paper left a big hole in the community and nobody in the community was ever asked if that was OK. The community had no voice, in terms of this thing that happened".

"I think there's a risk at the moment and there are places where they are losing coverage."

There has been speculation in the New York Times over which American town could become the first to lose both of its newspapers, and Michael Wolff of Newser recently, and somewhat controversially, suggested that all newspapers could have disappeared in 18 months time. In terms of communities losing valued newspaper coverage, Preblud says "I think there's a risk at the moment and there are places where they are losing coverage. A vehicle like INDenverTimes hasn't been put in place to cover the losses. It's critical that we as an industry figure out what the right model is so that we don't lose the core of journalism, which starts with local coverage."

Whilst neither the Seattle PostGlobe or INDenverTimes are claiming to be a replacement for the newspapers whose demise lead to their creation, they are undoubtedly trying to help fill the gap that was left. In the future, will the situation in Denver and Seattle repeat in other towns and states in the US? If there are further newspaper closures, it is somewhat inevitable that sites such as INDT and the SPG will emerge - but can such sites provide a service to the community that is in any way comparable to that of a city paper?

Michael Wolff, media columnist and the head of Newser, was quite resolute on the death of newspapers at a panel discussion sponsored by Gotham Media Ventures. He said,"About 18 months from now, 80 percent of newspapers will be gone."

Although admitting that he may be exaggerating, David Kaplan said Wolff was serious in saying that "the NYT will not be owned by the same company 18 months from now. I stand by that."

Last week, Monty Cook - who took over as editor of the Baltimore Sun in January - led a press and public policy seminar at John Hopkins University. During the seminar, entitled "News and Content First: Protecting what matters most," Cook took the opportunity to tell the audience that his newspaper is "not in decline," before adding "it's in transition."

According to the Baltimore Brew, Cook began the seminar by going over the demise of the newspaper industry, mentioning some of the dead or soon-to-be-dead titles, but did not include his own paper among the list.

The Guardian's Charles Arthur wrote about concerns that the British government's new regulations on phone and email privacy might have "dealt a killer blow" to investigative journalism. The regulations require telephone and Internet companies to keep logs of what numbers are called, and which websites and email services are accessed, which could be extremely problematic for journalists who want, and sometimes need, to protect their sources.

Following a judge's clearance, every government department and local council can have access to this data, and the worry is that less scrupulous individuals could use it to identify sources who have in some way injured them. Arthur cited, for example, the possibility that such data might "be used to find out who has been tipping off a journalist on a local paper about the misdeeds of local councillors."

Speaking to the Australian, Wall Street Journal Editor Robert Thomson has explained that the demise of America's newspapers "creates a tremendous opportunity for us to gain readers". Thomson believes that one of the reasons for the increase in the WSJ's core circulation is the "diminishing" state of US newspapers. Thomson feels that the situation leads to the WSJ gaining "readers who are increasingly internationally aware and also aware of their need to be well informed about the world."

Thomson also described how changes within the News Corp owned WSJ are having a positive effect on the publication. He cites News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch's emphasis on "leveraging (content) across platforms to generate revenue". The WSJ recently launched new Asian, Indian and European sites, each focusing on the Journal news most relevant to its respective country.

There has been much discussion of the state of regional press in the UK recently, particularly at government level, and a recent early day motion in the Commons in favour of supporting local journalism gained the signatures of over 100MPs. Much of the debate has surrounded the best way to help local newspapers and their journalists, and has centred on whether or not to relax strict merger rules. However in the Guardian, Stephen Moss has written a very interesting article more focussed on how events are unfolding at local level.

In Long Eaton, Moss demonstrates how the loss of the local paper (the Long Eaton Advertiser was closed down by Trinity Mirror in October) has had much more of an affect upon older members of the community, whilst younger members are happy to get their news online or buy the Nottingham Evening Post in its place. "The people who can least afford to be connected to the new world are also those keenest on being involved in their local communities," Mark Dodson, head of regional media at the Guardian Media Group says, in reference to a hypothetical world without local newspapers.

American Journalism Review's Paul Farhi questioned whether the Associated Press' decision to sell its news content to online portals may have had a damaging effect on the daily newspapers that actually own the wire service. Back in the 1990s, millions of subscribers to AOL or other early portals and hubs of the web such as CompuServe would get their daily news from AP's packages. And now, the wire service is the primary news provider for online giants such as Yahoo or MSN, and is used by Google. Hundreds of sites, asserts Farhi, are "in the news business because of the Associated Press."

So this essentially means that the AP, a non-profit news cooperative owned by US newspapers, has been enabling these sites to compete for traffic and ad revenue with the very newspapers that own it. Or as Farhi puts it "for years, newspapers have effectively been handing their online competitors one of their chief weapons in the fight for the news audience, the AP wire."

The European Federation of Journalists has written to the heads of all the political groups in the European parliament warning them that action must be taken to ensure the future of European journalism, in a letter seen by the EUobserver. The EFJ, which represents "the interests of journalists' unions and their members", wrote on Friday that the European Union must take action to help the struggling sector "democracy requires the provision of reliable, accurate and useful information as a public good".

In the letter, from Arne Koenig, the president of the EFJ and Aidan White, the federation's general secretary, the EFJ asks when the EU is "going to wake up to the crisis facing media in Europe". It believes that the role of journalism is so essential in democratic society that it should be "protected, nourished and encouraged to develop" by the EU. The letter calls for journalism to be the at the heart of future election campaigns, and also to ensure that the next nominee for the European Commission commits to taking measures to protect journalism.

Free Press founders John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney propose a solution to the demise of the American newspaper: give all Americans an annual tax credit for the first $200 they spend on daily newspapers. According to their plan, newspaper dailies would be required to publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial length with less than 50 percent advertising. They maintain that this way the government pays for citizens to receive a free daily newspaper subscription, but the taxpayer is allowed to pick which paper.

In an article for the Nation, Nichols and McChesney outline the importance of the printed newspaper in maintaining democracy and examine the problems facing the newspaper industry. They believe the death of the newspaper would mean the loss of independent scrutiny of the government and politicians and also of public accountability for their policy and actions. Yet, Nichols and McChesney support government intervention as necessary for the preservation of its own watchdog.