Advertising is down $10.9 billion, or 11.5 percent, through the first nine months of the year but, says Peter Kafka at MediaMemo, “Something you may not know: Those newspapers no one reads or advertises in anymore? They’re increasingly filled with coupons, or “free-standing inserts,” in industry parlance. Those are up 11.2 percent this year.”
The one vehicle doing better? Spanish-language cable TV, up 36.7 percent.
Anyone who studied journalism in college or hoped to find a job in journalism coming out of college can tell you that their want ads is what Editor & Publisher was all about. And, says MediaJobsDaily, the reliance on classifieds revenue is what killed the 125-year-old publication (see the post below).
“Beyond the fact that classified ads in this specific industry have disappeared, though, job ads — just like everything else that’s a classified ad — have been migrating to the Web. Just another Craigslist casualty. ”
Meanwhile, the news media is all over the death of its most significant trade publication. “The news made the home page of The New York Times, received lengthy reports in The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and other leading papers, along with NPR, CBS News, and other leading outlets, along with hundreds of Web sites and blogs,” says E&P.
“E&P staffers received 1,000 or more emails — many from well-known media figures — expressing shock and/or support, some pledging to send money for print or online subscriptions to keep the magazine going. E&P Editor Greg Mitchell was quoted by numerous outlets declaring that the wide show of support gave him hope that someone or some company would step forward and maintain the operation in some form.”
Update: From Editor & Publisher: “… staffers were informed that E&P, in both print and online, was shutting down.
“The expressions of surprise and outpouring of strong support for E&P that have followed across the Web — Editor & Publisher has even hit No. 4 as a Twitter trending topic — raise the notion that the publication might yet continue in some form. …
“Staff members will stay on for the remainder of 2009. …
“Editor & Publisher was launched in 1901 but traces its history to 1884 — it merged with the magazine The Journalist, which had started on that earlier date.”
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The Nielsen Co. said today that it has agreed to sell eight brands belonging to Nielsen Business Media, and in a separate announcement says that it will cease publishing Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews, MediaWeek reports.
E&P’s Fitz & Jen blog says staff members got the news this morning. “It’s early in this process, so it’s not clear yet whether there will be another print issue of magazine, or what will happen to the Fitz & Jen blog.
“What we can say is that at least for some interim period Mark Fitzgerald and Jennifer Saba will continue to report on the business of newspapers. With luck it will be at this site.”
A new company, e5 Global Media, LLC, is acquiring AdweekMedia (which includes Adweek, Mediaweek and Brandweek), The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Backstage, The Clio Awards and Film Journal International, MediaWeek says.
Here is the Nielsen release about the sale. The notice about E&P and Kirkus Reviews was not on the site.
A full-color, touch-screen digital magazine being developed by five major publishers is expected to “grab not just readers but also advertisers, allowing publishers to charge higher rates for digital ads, which now are much cheaper than print ads,” The New York Times says.
Time Inc., Conde Nast, the Hearst Corporation, Meredith and the News Corporation unveiled plans for a “digital newsstand” Tuesday after weeks of speculation. It is to be “an industry-standard platform to present their work on the Web, phones and e-readers” that is “more advanced than anything now on the market, [along with] e-readers far more sophisticated than today’s mostly static, black-and-white devices,” The Times says.
A video from Time shows how it might work.
“The five partners own the venture – they have not disclosed how big an investment they are making in the project – but they hope to recruit other publishers to use the software they develop,” according to The Times.
More than half of the former L.A. Times journalists surveyed by, well, themselves, say they expect their former employer to fold “and nearly as many think newspapers in general have been mortally wounded.”
The survey was conducted by The Journalism Shop, a Web site run entirely by former Los Angeles Times staff members. It calls itself “an easy-to-navigate site for finding highly skilled newspaper veterans interested in taking on freelance assignments.”
“Even if newspapers survive, several expected a much lower quality product,” the survey report says. “’Most papers will evolve into local rags with a heavy emphasis on entertainment and other “news you can use” and time-wasting blogs to keep people entertained,’ wrote a former male staffer, whose job was cut.”
“The poll was conducted among former Los Angeles Times staffers who are members of a support message group,” the site says. “Seventy-five out of 124 members responded.” Nearly two thirds said they’d like to remain in the news business.
Google has upped the ante for life in the fast lane, delivering “a page where breaking news, Twitter feeds, blog entries and other content automatically refreshes every few seconds,” the San Jose Mercury News says.
Google is not the first to offer real-time search, but it is “trying to go a step further by having the new results appear automatically, without refreshing the page,” says The Wall Street Journal’s report.
“Real-time search began to roll out for users Monday and will become fully available to everyone by the end of the day [Tuesday],” the Mercury News says. “Google said the real-time capability … in the next several weeks will also include public status updates from Facebook and MySpace.”
By early 2010, Google plans to enable smart-phones to easily translate speech between languages.
But wait, there’s more …
Google also introduced Living Stories on Tuesday, which bundles newspaper articles about specific topics on a single page. “Complete coverage of an on-going story is gathered together and prioritized on one URL,” the Web site says. “You can now quickly navigate between news articles, opinion pieces and features without long waits for pages to load.”
So far, The New York Times and The Washington Post are the only papers participating. According to the Associated Press, which calls the service an “attempt to help out the ailing newspaper industry,” “Google isn’t paying the newspapers to feature the content, and there aren’t any immediate plans to sell advertising alongside the material, said Josh Cohen, a Google product manager overseeing the project.”
Howard Kurtz, at The Post explains: “By grouping the stories … day after day under one Web address, the Times and Post could boost their Google rankings, which would tend to push those pages toward the top of the list when people search for that subject. After the Tuesday launch, the story pages will reside at Google Labs for an experimental period of two to three months, and revert to the papers’ own Web sites if all goes well.
“‘Over the coming months, we’ll refine Living Stories based on your feedback,’ Google says in a blog posting. If the format gains traction, Google plans to offer it to any interested newspaper, magazine or Web site, at no charge.”
In its report, The Times says, “The announcement of the “living stories” project shows Google collaborating with newspapers at a time when some major publishers have characterized the company as a threat.”
“The page you are taken toward is a rich multimedia experience, complete with a timeline outlining key events, a sidebar that breaks down coverage (for Afghanistan, it’s divided between Opinion, Casualties, U.S. Policy and other topics), and an RSS feed-like display of recent articles,” says Ben Parr at Mashable.com. “It’s clean and simple, but effectively explains key issues.”
Update: Gary Pruitt “said that advertising revenue is ‘finally, finally, improving,’ that all 30 of [McClatchy's] newspapers are profitable and that McClatchy expects to maintain, if not grow, cash flow in 2010,” Editor & Publisher reported after McClatchy’s presentation to the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference Tuesday morning.
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McClatchy’s Gary Pruitt, a day after reinstituting employee raises (see post below), said Tuesday that the company expects revenue trends to continue to improve going into the first quarter of 2010.
Pruitt’s projection is that fourth quarter revenue wll be less-bad than it has been — “down in the low- to mid-20s percent range compared to down 28.1 percent in the third quarter and 30.2 percent in the second quarter.” Also, because of mass layoffs — “our focus on permanently reducing our costs” – “we expect operating cash flow in the fourth quarter to grow compared to last year. Similarly, in 2010 we expect to at least maintain if not grow operating cash flow,” Pruitt said in a news release.
McClatchy management was to review the company’s business and strategies in a presentation at the UBS 37th Annual Global Media & Communications Conference at the Grand Hyatt New York Tuesday morning. The presentation is to be posted on its Web site.
McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt told employees in an e-mail Monday that “I’m happy to share some good news with all of you today. Beginning in 2010, we will lift the companywide wage freeze.”
McClatchy froze salaries in August 2008 and over the next 14 months instituted furloughs and layoffs companywide, including two dozen more announced in Miami just last week.
“Over the last several months,” Pruitt wrote, “McClatchy’s earnings reports have shown improving trends. … Still, we are suffering ongoing revenue declines and we must continue to carefully manage our expenses.
“It’s difficult to forecast exactly what 2010 may bring and what additional expense cuts may be necessary. What I can tell you is that we’d like to reward our employees for helping us manage through these challenging times by lifting the wage freeze.”
The various McClatchy newspapers will provide raises at different times and amounts “based upon the financial performance and challenges at each individual paper,” he said, adding that local management would have further information.
Here’s the text of the new memo:
DATE: Dec. 7, 2009
TO: All McClatchy Employees
FROM: Gary Pruitt
SUBJECT: Wage Freeze
I’m happy to share some good news with all of you today. Beginning in 2010, we will lift the companywide wage freeze.
There may be some differences in the timing of the reinstatement of merit increases at the various McClatchy papers, based upon the financial performance and challenges at each individual paper. More information will follow from your publisher and local management about the timing, but everyone will be treated fairly within his or her newspaper. In most cases, salary review dates will be adjusted forward by the number of months the wage freeze was extended beyond September 2009. For those employees represented by a collective bargaining agreement, merit increases are subject to the terms of the agreement and will be reviewed with your union leadership.
I want to spend a moment explaining this decision to all of you. I understand that there are many mixed messages about the state of the industry and McClatchy’s overall health. Over the last several months, McClatchy’s earnings reports have shown improving trends. Let me assure you, we are successfully navigating through these difficult economic times. Still, we are suffering ongoing revenue declines and we must continue to carefully manage our expenses.
It’s difficult to forecast exactly what 2010 may bring and what additional expense cuts may be necessary. What I can tell you is that we’d like to reward our employees for helping us manage through these challenging times by lifting the wage freeze. We recognize the many sacrifices you have made over the last few years and understand that cost-of-living expenses continue to rise, including the cost of health care.
Finally, I want to take this opportunity to recognize your efforts on behalf of McClatchy. Our company could not be successful without the continuing dedication and hard work of our employees. Thank you.
McClatchy will operate foreign bureaus next year in Beijing, Cairo, Kabul, Mexico City and in Baghdad, where the publisher will share staffing and expenses with The Christian Science Monitor, says a memo from John Walcott, Washington bureau chief, to McClatchy editors that is posted by Romenesko.
McClatchy and the Monitor “will rotate reporters through the Baghdad bureau, and we’ll share the costs of housing, local staff, in-country transportation, etc.,” the memo says.
Tom Lasseter is moving from Moscow to Beijing to staff a bureau that’s been vacant for more than a year now, and former Beijing bureau chief Tim Johnson will reopen McClatchy’s vacant Mexico City bureau, probably in March.