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Saturday, November 21, 2009

Another (Loud, Fuzzy) Peek at Wired’s Tablet Edition

tablet wired storeWant to see Condé Nast’s not-so-secret plans to produce tablet-friendly editions of its magazines? Get yourself to New York’s Meatpacking District. Or check out this grainy YouTube clip.

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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Condé Nast’s Offering for Apple’s Mystery Tablet: Wired Magazine

cover_wired_190Here’s yet another content creator that’s convinced Apple has a tablet device in the works: Condé Nast says it will have a digital version of Wired magazine ready for the purported gadget by the middle of next year and will eventually create similar versions for all of its 18 titles.

But Condé, like other publishers, says Apple won’t actually talk to the company about its plans for the device–or even acknowledge that it has plans.

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Friday, October 30, 2009

BusinessWeek’s Future Is Cloudy, but Better Than It Could Have Been: The Grim Non-Bloomberg Scenario

clint-escapesBusinessWeek employees are waiting to hear if they’ll have jobs once Bloomberg takes over the publication, and I’m told that staffers expect to hear their fate shortly after Thanksgiving. That has to be unnerving, but I can at least offer a little bit of comfort in the worst-case scenario employees would be facing had they been purchased by private equity firm ZelnickMedia. The short version: Almost everybody gets fired.

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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

What Does the New York Times Really Know About Apple’s Tablet? “I Ain’t Sayin’,” Says Editor Bill Keller.

bill-kellerAll the news we can’t tell you about? Most publishers can’t even get Apple to acknowledge that it’s working on a tablet, but maybe the newspaper of record has more pull. In any event, its top editor is staying mostly mum.

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Friday, October 23, 2009

The New York Times Explains the Ad Market: Banks Bail, and So Does Hollywood. But Big Pharma Steps Up, and “Modest” Improvement Coming

light-tunnelThe publisher delivered a pleasant earnings surprise yesterday by cutting costs. Now it’s hoping for a revenue bump, if advertisers will play along.

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Thursday, October 22, 2009

New York Times Delivers Some Not Terrible News: Earnings, Ad Sales Better Than Expected

new-york-times-buildingThe New York Times announced plans to cut eight percent of its newsroom payroll this week, citing “economic thunderstorms,” which suggested that this morning’s earnings results were going to be particularly unpleasant. Surprise! They’re not that awful, at least by the diminished standards of the newspaper industry.

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Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Condé’s Cuts Come to Vogue

conde-nast-buildingAs expected, Condé Nast executives are swinging the layoff ax around the fabled magazine publisher. Today’s cuts are at Vogue, where I’m told at least six people have been let go from one of the company’s best-known titles. There will be more to come from the publisher, which shut down four magazines last week and is trying to bring down costs at its remaining titles by 25 percent.

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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Ad Giant Publicis Tells Publishers to Throw Bodies at the Fake Web Ads Problem

the-sting-soundtrackLast month, the New York Times was attacked by hackers who bought fake Web ads from the publisher. And one of the world’s biggest ad companies says that won’t be the last assault. But the solution runs counter to industry trends.

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Friday, October 9, 2009

Condé Cuts Continue: 15 at Digital, More to Come

conde-nast-buildingCondé Nast, which shuttered four magazines this week, said it won’t be cutting any more titles. But that won’t be the last of its cuts: The publisher is looking to cut costs by roughly 25 percent at all the magazines it publishes, likely leading to layoffs in many cases.

Today’s example doesn’t come from a magazine per se, but from the company’s digital group, which let go of “more than” 15 people, Expect more to come from Condé, and from other publishers, in coming weeks.

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Monday, September 14, 2009

The New York Times Explains How It Got Hacked: It Sold an Ad to a Hacker

the-sting-soundtrackHow did the New York Times end up serving a fake–and potentially dangerous–ad from its NYTimes.com site over the weekend? It got paid to do it by someone masquerading as a legitimate ad buyer.

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Friday, July 24, 2009

What Happened to the New York Times’s Web Ads?

newspaperlessThe paper’s Internet operations used to be a bright spot. But last quarter Web advertising dropped more than 15 percent. What gives?

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BusinessWeek Explains Why BusinessWeek Is for Sale: It’s a Money Pit

dark-knight-burningEarlier this year, a top BusinessWeek editor assured me that McGraw-Hill wouldn’t part with the publication–because even if it was losing money it was still a trophy asset for the publisher. But perhaps my source didn’t comprehend how much money his employer was actually losing.

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Thursday, July 23, 2009

A Mixed Bag From the New York Times: Q2 Costs Got Better, Ads Got Worse, and Web Dollars Disappeared

We saw a mini-rally in newspaper shares yesterday, based on the notion that the worst may be over for the industry. But the New York Times’s Q2 results are pretty inconclusive:
The publisher was able to take a big chunk out of costs, but revenue kept plunging, and Web ads dropped by more than 15 percent. The paper did say, though, that things got less bad as the quarter progressed, and that they’ll get slightly less bad next quarter, too.

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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Here’s Why McKinsey’s Coming to Condé Nast: The Coming Black September

conde-nast-buildingHere’s why Condé Nast is bringing in McKinsey & Co. for an emergency overhaul: The publisher’s lousy year isn’t getting any better. New numbers out today show that Condé’s September issues will be miserable across the board, with ad pages down anywhere from 17 percent to 47 percent. And that’s if you interpret the data favorably.

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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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