Results matching “how to deal wit”

After much delay, a deal is said to be on the horizon for the sale of The Independent and The Independent on Sunday to Alexander Lebedev.  Although The Times claimed on March 5th that its sources said a sale would happen that day, a finalized contract has yet to be seen.

Today, the UK's Office of Fair Trading declared that it would not be necessary to investigate the deal for competition issues, offering another green light to a deal that has been in the works for months.

Though The Guardian claims talks between Independent News and Media (INM) and Russian billionaire Lebedev have been going on since March of last year, The Independent only admitted to these talks in December.  Since then, the deal has hit many roadblocks, partly because, as Steve Busfield of The Guardian has said, "Lebedev drives a hard bargain."

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund, the journalism nonprofit launched by Ariana Huffington in September 2009, has produced roughly 50 stories since its inception.

Nick Penniman, executive director of the fund, estimated that his editorial staff of nine publish between three and five stories a week. Some are "deep-dive" pieces, requiring months of reporting, while others are "quick-strike" articles that are less in-depth.

The fund's articles are posted on their website and can be distributed by other news outlets free of charge under a Creative Commons license.

When newspapers aren't grappling with the question of how to monetise online content, they are most likely battling against the hostile economic climate and advertising revenue downturn. Then, there is the age-old question of how to deal with competitors: Newspapers may be united in the preservation of print, but as the following story illustrates, each newspaper is its own separate entity:  

The SF Weekly will be forced to pay rival publication San Francisco Bay $21 million in damages, after a court ruling found the former guilty of lowering the costs of its advertising space with the intent of putting its rival out of business, The San Francisco Chronicle has reported.

A recent survey of Facebook user habits by DanZarrella found that users are more likely to share articles with friends over the weekend than the week, even though less news is typically published during this time.

The Walt Disney Company paid roughly $700,000 to the Los Angeles Times for a front page ad for its upcoming "Alice in Wonderland" movie, a source at the newspaper confirmed to The Wrap.

Readers of the LA Times last Friday morning had to flip to the second page to read the day's headlines, while a multicolored picture of Johnnie Depp, dressed as the Mad Hatter, obscured two stories on health care and the war in Afghanistan.

The editorial board at the LA Times opposed the ad, but the decision was ultimately made by the newspaper's business executives, according to anonymous sources at the paper who spoke to The New York Times.

"Obviously, it was not my decision," said Russ Stanton, the top editor at the newspaper.

"We worked very closely with Disney to come up with an exceptional and distinctive way to help them open 'Alice in Wonderland,'" said the Times' spokesman, John Conroy. "It was designed to create buzz, and to extend the film's already brilliant marketing campaign."

Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev is stepping up his search for a new editor at the Independent after talks with Rod Liddle collapsed early last week, MediaGuardian reported Wednesday.

With a deal for the daily newspaper expected to be reached with Independent News & Media by the end of the week, Lebedev, who also owns the London Evening Standard, has now set his sights on some of the heavyweights in the industry, including Greg Dyke, former director general of the BBC.

Payment of £1 will see the owner of London's Evening Standard and ex KGB agent Alexander Lebedev at the helm of the ailing Independent, the Sunday Times reported yesterday - that's the same price as one copy of the newspaper from any newsstand, and as the token price he paid for the Standard.

Since its launch in 1986 the Independent has lost more than £10m year upon year.  Billionaire Lebedev is expected to plunge millions into the operation, trying to resuscitate the publication into generating a sustained profit, although the first move is predicted to be a slashing of the cover price.

Source: Sunday Times

The South Florida Times, a weekly newspaper serving the counties of Miami, Broward and Palm Beach, has announced that it is to collaborate with students from Florida International University's J-School in an effort to improve media coverage of the northwest corner of Miami, known as the "Liberty City community", frequently the subject of negative reports.

The project, Liberty City Link, will see students illuminate "family businesses and community leaders," as well as "examinations into how failing schools can be improved, after-school programs that keep young people off the streets and mentoring groups that pair people from older generations with youth and events at the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center" reports South Florida Times' Juliana Accioly.

The BBC is to halve its number of web pages, as well as closing two radio stations and cutting spending on imported TV shows, the Times reported. The changes will be announced next month by director-general Mark Thompson, according to the Times, and Thompson will admit that the corporation has become too large and must shrink to allow its commercial rivals more room to operate.

The halving of the number of pages on the BBC website will be accompanied by a 25% cut in staff numbers and a 25% cut of its £112m budget. To appease rival publishers, it will pledge to include more links to articles from other news outlets, and not to produce news services at a more local level than it does currently. These latter elements do not signify a dramatic change in policy: last month, the BBC's director of news Helen Boaden asserted that the organisation was not looking to go more local, and the corporation's news website already provides a "from other news sites" section alongside each story where it displays links to similar articles on newspaper websites.

The Associated Press' six-month pilot project to distribute content from four nonprofit journalism outlets has so far proven to be a disappointment, Nieman Journalism Lab reported Friday.

Through interviews with the participating nonprofits as well as the AP, Laura McGann of Nieman Journalism Labs found that AP members had used very little of the content provided by the nonprofits.

"We're not really seeing that many reprints and we're not really sure why," Mike Webb, director of communications for ProPublica, told McCann. "We don't know what it is," he said.

Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle will not be the new editor of the Independent after its acquisition by Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, the Guardian reported last Friday.

The decision to look elsewhere for new leadership was taken by Lebedev and Simon Kelner, editor-in-chief and managing director of the Independent, last Thursday after more than nine months of negotiations with Liddle.

"What's happening?" asks Twitter. "What's on your mind?" asks Facebook. A question that's fast becoming more important to smartphone users, though, is simple: "Where are you?" And that's exactly what a new social network, Foursquare, aims to answer.

Foursquare might be relatively new on the scene, having launched just under a year ago, but it has recently made deals with a long list of major media companies. The New York Times and the Canadian freesheet Metro are on board, as well as HBO, Warner Brothers, the History Channel, Bravo, Lucky Magazine and restaurant guide Zagat.

Redundancy terms for staff at The Independent may have to be cut to ensure the newspaper's sale to Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev goes through, The Guardian reported.

Terms are currently considered generous at four weeks' pay for every year of service but their legal status is unclear as the terms were never placed in writing.

The packages appear to be an obstacle to Lebedev's purchase of The Independent and Independent on Sunday. "We have had a gun held to our heads - if we don't agree to reduce our terms from four weeks to two weeks per year of service the deal with Lebedev is off," an unnamed journalist told The Guardian.

The arrival of the iPad has generated much optimism in media circles that hope it will revitalize a struggling industry, but so far, there has been much talk over what the device could do, but little evidence that shows newspapers will actually benefit from the device.

In fact, newspaper and magazine publishers have not yet agreed upon the key issue of sharing subscription revenue, as they consider deals to offer digital versions of their publications on Apple's newly released tablet, the Financial Times reports.

This vital piece of the puzzle will decide whether publishers will succeed in cashing in on the iPad.

The Manchester Evening News website is to be relaunched with a greater emphasis on social media and live reporting, Journalism.co.uk reports.

Its parent company MEN Media plans to have all its reporters signed up to Twitter in the next few months. The Manchester Evening News and its sister titles currently have around 20-25 journalists on Twitter, head of online content Paul Gallagher told Journalism.co.uk.

"It means that when we have an event like the recent royal visit, being covered by six different journalists, we can easily pull it together in a live blog at short notice because they are all set up to tweet," Gallagher said. A liveblog was recently used to cover eight different visits made by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.

Sunday newspaper The Observer is set to relaunch this week with a greater focus on news analysis as well as culture and lifestyle.

The slimmed-down four-section paper will drop its separate Escape, Cash and Business sections. Instead, it will contain four sections: an expanded main newspaper, a Berliner-size New Review supplement, Sport, and Observer Magazine. The New Review will continue to focus on arts and culture with increased coverage of film, music, architecture and books. A new Discover section within the review will be devoted to science, nature and technology. Observer Magazine will cover food, fashion, relationships, gardening, ethical living and travel.

The main news section will include a new round-up of the week's news, called The Week, and the Focus section will be expanded for more news analysis and international affairs. Sport will be expanded as well. Three of its four monthly magazine supplements, Observer Sport Monthly, Observer Music Monthly and Observer Woman have ceased publication. Observer Food Monthly will continue to be published.

The Huffington Post has launched an application for Yahoo!, Media Bistro reports. The app will allow Yahoo! users to browse the popular opinion and aggregation website without leaving their homepage, use their Yahoo! account to log into HuffPost and join HuffPost Social News, and to share their comments with other contacts on Yahoo! as easily as sharing to Facebook.

An editorial partnership between the two parties will lead to more HuffPost stories featured on Yahoo! News.

The application features sections for front page news, most popular stories, blog posts and general news. Users can flip between different sections including politics, media, business, entertainment, sports, technology and others.

New stories from the Associated Press (AP) have started showing up on Google again, after a seven-week hiatus, The Wall Street Journal reports.

New AP stories have not been hosted on Google since just before Christmas. The two companies have been in negotiations to continue the publication of AP articles on Google News, an arrangement that has been in place since 2007. It is understood that AP's efforts to more closely monitor the flow of articles to and through Google and other portals have impeded progress.

The Guardian Media Group (GMG) today sold its regional media business to Trinity Mirror in a £44.8 million deal, it was widely reported. Of the price, £7.4 million comes in cash and Trinity Mirror is releasing GMG from a £37.4 million print contract.

The deal is due to be completed by March 28. The Guardian, which was previously known as the Manchester Guardian before moving its main office to London in the 1960s, will still have a Manchester-based reporter.

In what seems to be the latest move in the battle of the e-readers, Amazon has acquired Touchco, a start-up based in New York that specializes in touch screen technology, to possibly update its Kindle e-reader so it can better compete with Apple's iPad.

The New York Times reports that Amazon will merge Touchco's technology and staff members into its Kindle hardware division, Lab126, based in Cupertino, California, a source briefed on the deal said on Wednesday.

Egyptian billionaire Samih Sawiris has denied that he is in talks with Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev over the purchase of the Independent newspapers, The Guardian has reported.

Editor of the Lebedev-owned newspaper the Evening Standard, Geordie Greig, has also denied that Sawiris was a part of the talks.

The Guardian yesterday reported that the two businessmen were in discussions about forming a partnership to purchase the Independent and the Independent on Sunday. Lebedev is in exclusive non-binding talks over the purchase of the two papers, with a deadline of 15 February, although that is likely to be extended to mid-March. 

Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, in exclusive talks to purchase the Independent newspapers, may attempt to bring an Egyptian partner into the deal, according to reports in The Guardian.

Lebedev is trying to persuade Egyptian billionaire Samih Sawiris to join him in investing in The Independent and Independent on Sunday, according to sources close to the deal. The details of the proposed agreement are unknown.

The Associated Press (AP) and Yahoo have renewed an agreement for AP stories, photos and videos to appear on the Yahoo website, it was widely reported. This is in contrast to the AP's negotiations with Google and Microsoft, which have not yet concluded. New AP content has not been hosted on Google News since December 24.

Neither party has offered details of the agreement, so it is unclear whether they have achieved their financial objectives. The deal had previously been expected to set a higher price for AP's stories and impose tighter restrictions on them.

The AP has previously argued that agreements providing relatively inexpensive access to a broad range of its content only devalue its news offerings. The New York Times reported that the AP was asking news websites for more money, but that aggregators have been arguing that news content is less valuable than it used to be because advertising is down.

The past few years has seen the explosive growth of social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, and a dramatic downturn in advertising revenue that has set about ravaging the newspaper industry. PoynterOnline has now reported new enterprises between the two industries however, which could prove profitable for both.  

Few news outlets are without their own Twitter account these days, using the site's micro-blogging capabilities as a means to distribute stories and attract a wider audience. The Austin American-Statesman is using theirs to sell tweets to local business, which can advertise their enterprises on the newspaper's Twitter account.

Twitter has introduced a 'Local Trends' filter, which allows users to see what others are posting about on the site in their area.

The official Twitter blog explained that the trends function began as a way to see what was popular on a global scale in real-time, but this would create another way for members to discover relevant topics to them.

"The big events that come up around the world will always become a global conversation," a spokesperson writes, "but what about the big events that only happen in your world that only matter to those around you? Or the slight differences in the way Californians perceive an event, like Obama's election victory, versus those (in) São Paulo, Brazil?"