While Rupert Murdoch is busy thumbing his nose at Google, he is making more friendly overtures to other media players. Sources tell me his News Corp. may join the digital e-reader storefront that Time Inc. and other magazine publishers are putting together.
Hearst’s dude-centric UGO site, which has been without a permanent CEO since June, is still looking for a new boss. But in the meantime, it has some new blood: The company has brought in Hearst veteran Christopher Johnson to run programming and product strategy and hired Julie Shumaker to run 1UP, the gaming site it bought earlier this year.
Time Inc. has spent the past few months convincing other publishers to join a new joint venture aimed at a market that doesn’t really exist yet–magazine-like publications to be delivered via e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s rumored tablet. Publishers like the idea. What will Apple and Amazon say?
Is Time Inc. building a Kindle Killer? Nope.
A report suggests that Time Inc. wants to get into the hardware business and produce its own e-reader.
That’s something other publishers, like Hearst and News Corp., are actually doing or have at least mulled. But multiple sources familiar with the Time Warner unit’s thinking say that’s not the case here.
The owner of The Wall Street Journal tries to convince other publishers join up and charge readers for online news. Tough job! Even tougher: Creating news worth paying for.
UGO, the dude-centric videogame site that Hearst bought for $100 million two years ago, needs a new CEO.
J Moses, who co-founded the company in 1998, left in June, as did Michael McCracken, his longtime COO. The company is currently being run by Hearst Interactive president Ken Bronfin.
Comcast was mum about other cable networks it has persuaded to join its “OnDemand Online” program, which will offer TV shows over the Web to its customers. But word is getting out anyway. The people who bring you Food Network and AMC, for instance, have signed on.
Conventional wisdom is that if today’s newspapers want to survive, they’re going to have to ditch their printing presses and most of their staff and learn to do more with less in an online-only world.
OK. But exactly how much less?
I’ve been asking Mark Josephson that question for months, and now he has an answer: Josephson, the CEO of local news platform Outside.in, figures the local, online-only newspaper of tomorrow for a decent-sized city has a staff of 20 people. That’s 20 people, period: Perhaps six of those people are “news gatherers.” Here’s his math.
So what exactly were the 24 newspaper publishers who gathered in suburban Chicago yesterday talking about? We don’t know, because the meeting was held off the record and participants like the New York Times, Gannett and Hearst aren’t talking about it. Except we do know, sort of.
I’m still on record predicting the demise of seattlepi.com–the online-only zombie version of the erstwhile Seattle Post-Intelligencer. My gut is that even though the Hearst-owned site has an edit staff 80 percent smaller than its predecessor paper, it still won’t be able to generate enough traffic and advertising to cover its costs. But while Hearst isn’t ready to declare victory, it does say that the first two months of seattlepi.com’s life have been “encouraging.” Via a press release, Hearst offers up a bevy of traffic stats that show the site has grown even as its staff has shrunk. Hearst doesn’t offer up any info about revenue, but does say that its “sales and marketing team is highly energized.” Good start.
Here’s yet another fan of the Kindle, Amazon’s much-hyped e-book reader: News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who likes the device enough that he’s considering investing in a Kindle rival.
As expected, Hearst is pulling the plug on its Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In its place, starting tomorrow, will be seattlepi.com, which will kind of be like an online version of the old newspaper — if it was put out with a fraction of the staff.
George Kliavkoff, who left his job as NBC Universal’s chief digital officer last year, has a new, similar-sounding gig: He’s going to work at at Hearst, where he’ll run digital operations for entertainment head Scott Sassa.
Hearst isn’t going to shut down the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, after all. But the online-only version it plans will be much, much leaner. Think skeleton-thin.
It’s a classic seller’s gambit: Increase prices by cutting supply. The online publishers’ version: Make your ads more valuable by selling fewer ads. That ought to be tough to do on the Web, where the more ad inventory gets created every day. But SmartMoney.com says it’s figured out how to do it.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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