The negative news about newspapers is deafening. The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, San Jose Mercury News, and now the San Francisco Chronicle are all battling for their very existence. Some might make it, others might not. Everyday this drama plays out, side by side with the dramas in our financial markets, in Detroit and on Main Streets throughout the …
Cash Is King
John Malone, the media mogul living in Colorado, has cash. That makes him king. According to The Wall Street Journal, Malone used that cash to swoop in at the last minute and save Sirius XM from the clutches of bankruptcy. By lending Sirius $530 million, Liberty receives a 40% stake in the satellite-radio operator, plus at least two board seats. The loan will also bear an interest rate of 15%. A cable executive for …
Traditional Media, Not The Google’s Thing
First, The Google stepped off it's print buying excursion. Now, just two weeks later, the search titan is backing away from the radio table. According to The New York Times: Google said it was ending its radio project, Google Audio Ads, because it had failed to live up to expectations. Up to 40 people are expected to lose their jobs. Google Audio Ads had faced challenges since it began in 2006, when Google acquired …
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1981 Was Another Era
Cue theme from The Twilight Zone... Some intersting tidbits from the above video: it took two hours to download the newspaper in 1981 and only 2000 to 3000 people in San Francisco owned a computer. [via ad broad] …
Your Core Customers Are Everything
Mass marketing. That's our game. But it's a game with fewer fans in seats today. Those fans have wandered off to other more intimate settings. They may never come back. The New York Times shows us one company coming to grips with these new terms and how it is adjusting itself. "Mass for us is a business that doesn't work," said Tom Ascheim, Newsweek's chief executive. "Wish it did, but it doesn't. We did it for a …
Graphic Design Is Now A Commodity! ? ;-(
CrowdSpring is "crowdsourcing" graphic design. It's a business model that makes sense on the The Internet, in that it connects people with services to offer with people who want to buy those services. A writer from Forbes looks the company's progress and the "snooty" response from industry pros. CrowdSpring.com, allows buyers to run competitions for company logos, Web sites, T-shirts and the like. For buyers of …
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MySpace Is Money
Catharine P. Taylor, aka the Social Media Insider, watched Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson answer Charlie Rose's questions about MySpace last night. It's a 32-minute tape, well worth watching in its entirety. When asked about competing with Facebook, Anderson says they're not, that FB isn't primarily interested in making money, whereas they are and always have been. Taylor adds some depth to the MyFaceSpace …
People Will Pay For Mission Critical Information. It’s Time To Provide That Content and Charge For It.
Steve Brill authored two books, founded American Lawyer magazine and took the leap into cable television. He's the creator of the now-defunct Court TV, but he may be best known in journalism circles for the publication that carried his name, Brill's Content. American Journalism Review asked Brill what newspapers need to do to survive. "The central economic challenge of a newspaper is printing and delivering the …
