Earnings season: Newspapers finish 14th straight revenue-losing quarter; some intel from Wall Street filings

By Martin Langeveld

When revenue is still seriously down, but profits are up, is that good news? The U.S newspaper companies that have reported fourth quarter 2009 results so far would have you believe it is. But based on their reports, it’s clear the industry as a whole is still in deep trouble, with no strong indication that better days are ahead.

Five of the ten publicly-owned U.S. newspaper companies have reported their fourth-quarter 2009 results; five more to go. (Those reporting so far are Gannett, New York Times Co., Media General, Lee Enterprises and McClatchy. We also have results from News Corp., but News publishes newspapers on four continents, and much of its revenue comes from films, television, cable, and book publishing. Its U.S. newspapers represent perhaps 10 percent of News Corp.’s total revenue and are not broken out for comparison.)

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From Ken Doctor’s “Newsonomics”: How paidContent found its niche

By Ken Doctor

[Here's another excerpt from Ken Doctor's new book, Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get. Today, Ken's Q&A with Rafat Ali, who runs media-world must-read paidContent. —Josh]

Rafat Ali is founder, publisher and editor of ContentNext Media. Reuters described its success well: “ContentNext’s flagship paidContent, founded in 2002, has quickly established itself as a must-read among executives in the media and digital media sector.” PaidContent has indeed a daily stop for those involved in the business of news, media, and entertainment industries. In addition, the company runs parallel sites for the United Kingdom and India and around mobile content.

Q: PaidContent filled a niche no one had previously seen as clearly as you did. How did you see the niche, define it, and make sure you got it as focused as you could?

A: This was the depths of Internet recession in 2002 in New York City, and I was looking for a way to raise my profile, and this seemed like a good way to showcase my skills as an online journalist covering online media and the Internet. I was aiming for a new job with the likes of WSJ and CNET then. Of course, no one was hiring in those days, much less hiring an online journalist covering online media. Keep reading »

So it’s called the iPad: Five thoughts on how it will (and won’t) change the game for news organizations

By Joshua Benton

So, it’s official: There is an Apple tablet, and it’s called the iPad. And, at least to these Apple-friendly eyes, it looks really, really nice. I can feel my credit card getting warm already.

But for future-of-journalism junkies, the question was never whether or not Apple could come up with a sexy new device. The question was whether it could have an impact on the news business. Phrases like “save the news business” and “alter the economics and consumer attitudes of the digital era” have been tossed around an awful lot in the last few months.

So what did we learn today about how the iPad will impact journalism? Here are my first thoughts:

— It will have a real impact on consumer behavior. This thing’s going to be popular — I suspect it’ll sell at multiples of the Kindle (assuming Amazon ever decides to tell us how many Kindles they sell). And the form factor will be attractive in a lot of contexts, and that’ll likely increase the amount of news and information that people consume. Anyone who loved the Kindle will love this (unless they’re e-Ink junkies), and the iPad will also appeal to big crowds who would have never thought of a Kindle — gamers, mobile workers, YouTube addicts, and more.

— I don’t think the iPad changes the paid-content equation. The dream of the news business is that a device will come along that will convince people to pay for digital news. That was the dream of the Kindle — people will pay $10 a month to “subscribe” to all the news we give away for free on the web! And while that dream has dimmed on the Kindle, the same ideas kept popping up on the road to the iPad. As Brad Stone and Stephanie Clifford wrote in the Times: Keep reading »