April 2008 Archives

Time and Newsweek struggle to remain relevant to readers and advertisers. The WSJ reports on latest Newsweeks job cuts of 111 jobs cut including older and higher-paid editorial help. The goal is to cut costs and invigorate the publication.

Newsweek is trying to recover by boosting the new hold and covering things more seriously. Time shifted is publication cycle to Friday from Monday.

The competition isn't just cable news and the internet. It's also the Economist magazine:

In 2007, the Economist newsmagazine, published by U.K.-based The Economist Newspaper Ltd., saw an 8.5% increase in advertising pages compared with 2006, according to the Magazine Publishers of America. By contrast, Newsweek's advertising pages dropped 6.7% and Time's fell 6.9%.

But long term the biggest threat is indifference.

At a recent speech at Columbia University, Mr. Meacham delivered a blistering response after he asked who reads Newsweek and none of the 100-odd students in attendance raised their hands.

Boing Boing: The Vanishing Point, a site dedicated to urban exploration and secrets of the built environment, has a page about the massive abandoned Tailrace tunnel at Niagara Falls.

The front page of businessjournalism.org is a a sad commentary on the state of daily newspapers. Here are the current front-page stories:

From Business Editor to Business Owner -- Henry Dubroff, founder and editor of the Pacific Coast Business Times, talks about making the switch and doing it successfully.

Inside the Weekly's Winning Playbook --Columnist Jonathan Higuera says weeklies have an upper hand because they clearly understand their audience.

Imitating the Weekly -- "Why don't you dailies start copying what works for the weekly business papers?" Blogger Chris Roush asks the question.

Add that to April 3 story in Columbia Journalism Review: RIP: Stand-Alone Biz Section -- They were thin, sure, but they were something. The article included this chart of the disappearing section:

One thing the chart doesn't include were all the Monday tabloid sections started by daily newspapers to combat the growing local business journals at that time. Those sections began to disappear several years to the standalone Monday sections.

NY Times: Bits: PaidContent vs. TechCrunch: Two Visions of Blogging’s Future

Two views of blogging's future from Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Rafat Ali of PaidContent.

Mr. Ali and Mr. Richardson are planning the Internet version of a trade media company with a growing series of blogs covering media, entertainment and technology. The company, called ContentNext, also added Charlie Koones, the former publisher of Variety, to its board, signaling that Hollywood was an area of keen interest.

There is money to be made, Mr. Ali argued, in conferences and advertising aimed squarely at top executives in these fields. And he dismissed criticism that the site has lagged in page views, saying advertising rates have been very high.

and

Mr. Arrington described blogging as fitting successfully into two extremes: very small or very large. On one end, he described a “lifestyle business” in which one person who might be able to attract 1 million page views a month might earn a nice living with low expenses. On the other extreme, he suggests there is an efficiency in scale.