Category Archives: Media

Tunku Varadarajan says that newspapers are indeed businesses, and says that "the media business is just as vulnerable to the pressures of impatient capital as are other sorts of business". I’m not sure if that’s true, actually: it seems to … Continue reading →

Fancy some time travel? Go back to my blog entry about John Thain from January 22, and click on the first link. I promise I haven’t edited it. Amazingly, despite the fact that I was linking to a story on … Continue reading →

Jeff has the news today that US News is launching a $19.95-per-year weekly PDF. The decision comes almost exactly ten years after Slate went free, after a disastrous attempt to charge $19.95 a year for its content: Bill Bass, an … Continue reading →

When Michael Hirschorn talks nonsense about the New York Times, it’s silly, but at least it’s understood that he’s not a stock analyst by trading, and that he’s more interested in making waves than being helpful. Henry Blodget, by contrast, … Continue reading →

From Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson: The $5.6bn Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp paid in 2007 for Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal and several local papers, would now be sufficient to buy Gannett, the New York Times, McClatchy, Media General, Belo … Continue reading →

My first appearance on CNBC happened to coincide with the single most important event of the century: Bernie Madoff getting out of a car. So there wasn’t much time to talk about anything substantive, although I did try to chide … Continue reading →

Dear John Thain has a wonderful list of a bunch of the Must-Read Articles that Important Publications have written about the financial crisis. He reckons he really should get around to reading them some time; the scary thing, for me, … Continue reading →

No, Google’s not going to buy the New York Times. But its CEO, Eric Schmidt, says it might come close: I think the solution is tighter integration. In other words, we can do this without making an acquisition. The term … Continue reading →

The end of the world is nigh! Or the end of the print edition of the NYT, anyway, at least according to Michael Hirschorn, in a piece which has been generally well-received by a blogosphere. For me, however, the article … Continue reading →

Jim Surowiecki’s column on newspapers is a good one, especially when he talks about the drop-off in advertising revenues and newspapers’ failure in the online space. I have to take issue with this, however: People don’t use the Times less … Continue reading →

On April 3, 2007, Sam Zell was triumphant. The headline in the WSJ was "Zell Wins Tribune In Bid to Revive A Media Empire", and the story was accompanied by a dot portrait of a happy, smiling grave-dancer. Today, the … Continue reading →

Times Extra has launched, and it’s even less impressive than I’d feared it would be. This is not, by a long shot, the ideal newspaper site, which leads with its own content where that’s strong and which links to the … Continue reading →

The Onion News Network has a video up headlined "In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?". It’s sponsored by Saab, a wholly-owned subsidiary of General Motors.

The FT.com redesign isn’t live yet, but you can get a preview here. It has a lot more white (or, rather, pink) space than before, and places a huge onus on the front-page editors to get the story mix exactly … Continue reading →

How much is Barack Obama paying to blanket the networks with a half-hour TV buy during prime time this evening? Would you believe about the same amount as it costs to buy 30 seconds of airtime during the Superbowl? According … Continue reading →

O frabjous day! Jim Surowiecki now has a blog! It’s called The Balance Sheet, and he put up no fewer than six entries yesterday alone. The RSS feed is here: go add it to your feed reader now.