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Thursday, November 12, 2009

New York Times Freezes Pension Plan for Management

The only news here is that it took this long: The New York Times, which is trying to figure out how to boost revenue and cut costs, is freezing its pension and benefit plans–for management–at the end of this year.

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Strength in Numbers? News Corp. May Join Time Inc.’s “Hulu for Magazines.”

rupert-murdochWhile 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.

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Friday, October 30, 2009

Bad News From the Washington Post: Ad Sales Slide Again

newspaperlessMany newspaper publishers say the ad sales slump has stopped, but not at Wapo: Both print and Web ad declines accelerated over the last quarter. Newsweek, meanwhile, saw its ad sales drop by half.

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

All The News We’ll Pay For: Why Newspapers’ Shrinking Circulation Isn’t All Bad

newspaperlessNo surprise that Americans are dropping their newspaper subscriptions, as a new batch of numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations showed yesterday. But before you file this under “death of newspapers,” something to ponder for a second: This might not be the worst news in the world.

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Friday, October 2, 2009

Publishers Like Time Inc.’s “Hulu for Magazines” Pitch. What Will Apple and Amazon Say?

genieTime 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?

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Thursday, September 17, 2009

Pay Up: The Wall Street Journal Tries Charging Web Subscribers for Mobile Access

rupert-murdochRupert Murdoch has been pushing The Wall Street Journal to raise its prices. Here’s one way to try it: Levy an additional fee for subscribers who want to use the paper’s iPhone or BlackBerry apps.

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Thursday, August 13, 2009

Kindle Nation Could Be 10 Million Strong. But What Happened to Amazon’s “Save the Newspaper Business” Plan?

weegee-crowdHave you bought a Kindle? Do you plan on buying a Kindle? If you answered yes to either question, you’re part of a not-that-small group: JP Morgan estimates that some 10 million Americans either own one of Amazon’s e-book readers or plan to get one soon. Meanwhile, whatever happened to Amazon’s plan to bundle newspaper subscriptions with its DX reader?

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Tuesday, June 9, 2009

New York Times: We Probably Won’t Shutter the Boston Globe

boston-globe

Good news, Boston Globe fans: Your paper is going to remain extant. Probably. Bad news, Boston Globe editorial workers: You’re getting a 23 percent pay cut.

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For Newspapers Publishers, the Kindle-iPhone Race Is Already Over

horse

We all know tomorrow’s newspapers won’t be printed on paper, but delivered via the Internet. The question for today’s publishers is whether consumers are going read them on iPhones or Kindles. But it shouldn’t be a question–smart phones like Apple’s are winning this one hands down.

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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Google: We’re Still Not in the Newspaper Business

Just to be clear: Google still doesn’t plan on bailing out the New York Times or any other paper. As a buyer, at least. CEO Eric Schmidt reiterated that position, which he’s already made a couple times this year, in an interview with the Financial Times. Schmidt did allow, though, that Google had at least mulled the idea at one point.

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Monday, May 18, 2009

Meet Maureen Dowd’s Favorite Writer: Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall

josh-marshallMany of you are just hearing Josh Marshall’s name for the first time, following the New York Times’s admission that columnist Maureen Dowd “failed to attribute” some of her column to him. But that’s a shame because Marshall’s site is noteworthy on its own merits: It’s a self-funded, profitable new-media site that does both blogging/aggregation and real reporting.

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Monday, April 13, 2009

Gannett’s Good News Comes And Goes, Very Quickly

newspaperlessThis is what passes for good news in the newspaper business these days: Someone bought some shares of one of the industry’s biggest companies. Alas, even that story is old news. And the headlines coming out of Gannett later this week won’t be pleasant either.

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Monday, April 6, 2009

AP Shakes Fist at Google, Tells Internet to Get Off Its Damn Lawn

beale

The Associated Press is fed up with… the Internet, apparently. And it’s going to do… something about it. At the news-gathering co-op’s annual meeting today, AP chairman Dean Singleton let rip a sort of hellfire-and-brimstone speech in which he announced the AP’s vague plans to stop unnamed scoundrels from making money from their work.

Unstated but obvious public enemy number one: Google.

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Monday, March 30, 2009

Huffington Post Pays for Content After All, Via $1.75 Million “Investigative Fund”

ariannaIt won’t fill the gaping hole opening up in American journalism, but it’s better than nothing. The aggregator has earmarked the money for a handful of staff journalists and a network of freelancers. Hope it’s ready for a crush of resumes.

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Thursday, March 12, 2009

AOL Gets a New CEO: Google Sales Boss Tim Armstrong (Plus the Whole Press Release)

tim_armstrong_lg

Everyone who wondered why Randy Falco and Ron Grant were still running AOL finally got an answer today: Time Warner was lining up their replacement. Google sales chief Tim Armstrong becomes chairman and CEO of the troubled Web property, effective immediately.

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About Peter

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 »

Ethics Statement

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

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