Stressed about making tomorrow morning’s deadline to submit a bid for the Boston Globe? No worries! The New York Times, which is selling the paper it bought in 1993, is telling prospective buyers to take their time. Goldman Sachs, which is running the auction for the Times, had originally told bidders to submit their offer by July 8. But as of last night, that deadline has been pushed back, with no new deadline to replace it.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

At some point, this will no longer be a coincidence: Once again, Amazon’s newest e-book reader has sold out shortly after launch. This time, it’s the Kindle DX, the super-sized reader with the super-sized price tag. Amazon started selling the DX three days ago, and by yesterday afternoon the e-commerce giant said it was cleaned out. The next batch won’t arrive until next week.

Read More »

You’ll be hearing about this most of the day, so best to take five minutes and watch it now: “The Daily Show” visits the New York Times.

Read More »

More fuel for the “Google didn’t kill newspapers, Craigslist did” meme: A report that says the listings service has seen revenue jump 23 percent this year and will end up booking $100 million–even as the newspaper classifieds business falls off a cliff. Craig Newmark’s online classifieds site is mostly, but not entirely free–it charges for a handful of listing categories, like real estate and employment. But that’s enough to create a very healthy business, says AIM Group, which has been estimating Craigslist numbers since 2003, when it said the company booked $7 million.

Read More »

After years of training people to expect that whatever you can find on the Web will be free, media companies are trying — desperately — to reverse the trend, and figure out how to get people to pay up. Or at least some of the people, some of the time, for some stuff. This assumes that there’s unique stuff that people are willing to pay for, and I don’t know about that thesis. But if it does pan out, the guys behind Journalism Online want to handle the backend.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

The New York Times turned down a chance to borrow money from Hollywood mogul David Geffen last winter and went with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim instead. So says the New Yorker, which also reports that Geffen tried to buy the paper outright in September.

Read More »

I’m still not exactly sure why Google has become the chief suspect in the “Who Killed Newspapers” investigation playing out before our very eyes. Because it’s quite clear to me that the real baddie here is bespectacled, mild-mannered Craig Newmark, whose eponymous free service blew up the industry’s most profitable line of business: classified advertising. Here’s the argument in line-graph form.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

The New York Times has already tried charging people to read part of its Web site. Now, like everyone else in the publishing business, it’s trying to figure out how to charge for online access again. The Times is reportedly mulling two options: A Financial Times-style “metered” approach and a Salon/NPR/PBS version whereby everyone gets free access to the site, but subscribers/donors get bonus goodies.

Read More »

A new series of reports argues that billionaire David Geffen doesn’t want to make money by investing in the New York Times–he wants to save it. Fair enough. But how exactly does he plan to do that?

Read More »

The online classifieds Web site is shutting down its “Erotic Services” section under pressure from state and local officials from around the country. In its place, Craigslist will open an “adult” category. It promises to keep said area cleaner by having employees sweep it periodically for ads that are obviously soliciting prostitution, etc. It won’t keep Craigslist free of bad stuff, but it may make it harder to find.

Read More »

Remember last week when Google was forced to explain why it wasn’t single-handedly destroying American newspapers? Turns out the company is in talks with some of the country’s biggest newspapers to…well, save them. But that isn’t the right phrase either. In fact, it’s not clear how to describe the talks. But we do know that Google is chatting with both the Washington Post and the New York Times, because that’s what employees of the Washington Post and the New York Times are reporting today.

Read More »