Print-to-online publisher PageSuite has put over 520 titles from 60 newspaper publishers online at a single source with Mydigitalnewspaper. The site enables users to search digital newspapers from the United Kingdom, North America and the “rest of the world.”
Mydigitalnewspaper allows searches by country, publication, date or the type of title, such as daily, weekly, monthly, free and paid titles, supplements and archived.
(from WebNewser)
An online ad modeled after coffee shop bulletin boards has caught on with Hearst Newspapers and others, says ClickZ.
The ads, developed by PaperG, “appear on the left side of the page and contain an array of small ads within them (example here). When clicked, the small ads expand into a larger unit that provides detailed information on the business, a link to its Web site, and a map. There’s also a ’send’ box in the lower right hand corner that viewers can use to send the ads to friends, post them on their Facebook and MySpace pages or embed them on their blogs.”
PaperG offers Flyerboards to newspapers and other publishers on a rev-share basis, so there’s no cost until they sell ads, according to Roger Lee, PaperG’s chief operating officer.
They were launched last fall, and used first by Boston.com and Chron.com, the Houston Chronicle’s site. Last week, Hearst Newspapers, which owns the Chronicle, announced it will deploy Flyerboards across its 15 newspapers.
McClatchy’s Kansas City Star is requiring one-week furloughs for most employees before the end of the year and is offering a voluntary separation program to the majority of its regular, full-time employees, the Kansas City Business Journal reports.
Other McClatchy newspapers, including The News & Observer in Raleigh, instituted furloughs earlier this year and have offered buyouts in the last year.
“We are doing this because many employees continue to express interest in a voluntary program during this time of industry transition, and because we want to put The Star in the best financial position possible going into 2010,” Star Publisher Mark Zieman said in a memo to staff. There is no targeted number for the buyouts.
The Business Journal also quotes McClatchy Treasurer Elaine Lintecum confirming that the company-wide salary freeze has been extended through the end of the year.
McClatchy newspapers will extend a wage freeze instituted last year which, on top of pay cuts and furloughs instituted this year, ensures that its employees’ earning power continues to erode.
“We plan to extend the current wage freeze for all employees (including corporate) at least through December of this year, with the hope of restoring merit increases sometime in 2010, as business conditions warrant,” Publisher Orage Quarles III of The News & Observer tells his employees in an e-mail sent today. “As we finalize budget plans this fall, each McClatchy newspaper will determine when the freeze will end.”
“We remain committed to lifting the salary freeze as soon as financial conditions allow,” he adds, after opening the note by saying that despite more than doubling its profits in the second quarter, the company “continue(s) to experience a challenging revenue environment and must remain disciplined in our cost control efforts.”
Here’s a “no kidding” story from The New York Times: The Seattle Times, now the only newspaper in town and privately owned, after cutting hundreds of positions, is turning a profit.
“On a month-to-month basis, we are starting to operate in the black,” Frank A. Blethen, the publisher and chief executive of The Seattle Times Company, told The NYT. The Times is one of the last family-run papers in the country, controlled since 1896 by the Blethens. They own 50.5 percent of the company (the McClatchy Company owns the rest).
The Times had a joint operating agreement with The Seattle Post Intelligencer, which closed in March. The Hearst Corporation kept the P-I’s Web site alive as a news operation with a small staff at SeattlePI.com.
The Seattle paper has cut more than 200 newsroom positions and raised its prices in March, increasing circulation revenue. With most P-I readers on board, Times executives say they have been able to maintain the ad rates they charged for space in both papers. The volume and revenue were down sharply, but Blethen said the decline was consistent with what had happened across the industry.
Twitter earns a big thumbs down from advertisers, Media Life magazine said Monday.
More than half of the media planners and buyers who responded to a recent Media Life survey on new media advertising and the areas of promising growth said Twitter holds little promise.
Only a quarter saw any promise in the site, which allows users to update their daily doings in very brief statements, the magazine says.
On the other hand, more than half of planners and buyers see advertising on social media emerging at some point. The new media that continues to be seen as the most promising is search advertising, with video not far behind.
E.W. Scripps Co. shows a profit in its second quarter earnings reports and says TV ad revenue is doing better, according to Business Courier of Cincinnati.
“In the near term, we are seeing some slight improvement in the flow of advertising in our markets, particularly at the television stations, which have increased their revenue projections – albeit very modestly – during each of the past seven weeks,” said Rich Boehne, president and CEO.
Like other media companies, Scripps profited by cutting jobs and salaries and other expenses.
Scripps’ television station segment saw second-quarter revenues fall 24 percent while the newspaper segment fell 22 percent and licensing and other media also fell 22 percent.
The media company posted second-quarter net income of $2.3 million, or 4 cents per share, compared to a net loss of $531.2 million, or $9.78 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Operating revenues were $193.9 million, versus $250.9 million. Analysts, on average, had expected a net loss of 11 cents per share, and revenues of $203.2 million.
Scripps, based in Cincinnati, operates daily and community newspapers in 14 markets, including the Daily Camera (Boulder, Co.) and Knoxville News Sentinel, and 10 broadcast TV stations. It also operates Scripps Howard News Service and United Media.
Here’s the earnings call transcript.
The “Cash for Clunkers” program is making money for local TV stations, says Broadcasting & Cable magazine.
Local stations have “flooded the airwaves from Atlanta to Las Vegas with campaigns urging viewers to schlep down to the dealer, luring them with catchphrases like ‘Obama-Rama’ and ‘Uncle Sam Wants Your Car.’ … Station managers describe the CARS-related advertising as somewhere between an uptick and a windfall for their outlets.”
“With the program a proven success, at least as far as car sales are concerned, and ‘Cash for Clunkers’ having become part of the national lexicon, many believe the potential ad spend from car dealers will dramatically surpass what they coughed up during the first round,” B&C says.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), as Cash for Clunkers is formally titled, dispensed credits of $3,500 or $4,500, depending on fuel efficiency, toward new automobiles. The program had $1 billion to give out toward the new cars, and burned through the stash in about a month. A $2 billion extension of CARS won Senate approval late last week after the House approved it earlier.
One analyst says newspapers will find their niche and rebound next year, with an ad revenue gain of 2.4 percent to $36.8 billion in 2010.
Bloomberg says a report from Borrell Associates Inc. has the optimistic outlook. The projection runs against estimates from other researchers, including Magna Global, which said last month ad revenue for newspapers would fall 9.3 percent in 2010.
“We’re expecting U.S. newspapers to see a decline in 2009, then a mild rebound over the next five years,” Borrell says on its Web site. “Our latest projections call for a 2.4% increase in newspaper advertising in 2010, and low single-digit increases for several more years.”
“Borrell sees ‘newspapers redefining their products and maintaining a strong marketplace niche,’ President Colby Atwood said in a report, according to Bloomberg. ‘Larger papers will continue to experience layoffs, abbreviated publication schedules and outright closures.’