Rick Edmonds

Researcher and writer for Poynter Institute on business and journalism issues. Co author, State of the News Media 2006. ExSP Times and Phil Inquirer


Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett’s big payday, and other notes on Media General’s merger with Young

Few paid much attention to the blandly worded announcement a week ago of a merger between Media General and New Young Broadcasting. That was no surprise — an agreement between two midsize local broadcasting companies isn’t nearly as big a … Read more

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StateoftheMedia

New Pew study finds nonprofit news sites are ‘growing but fragile’

The Pew Research Center is out with a new report this morning documenting just how difficult it is for startup, nonprofit news sites, to achieve financial stability.

A typical site starts with a substantial foundation grant, often more than $100,000, … Read more

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hand with money

A lesson from the book business: How to embrace digital transformation & make money from it

E-books have risen from next to nothing when the Kindle was introduced in 2007 to 14 percent of consumer publishing revenues this year. And that share is expected to bubble to 28 percent by 2016. So you might think the … Read more

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Honolulu Civil Beat and Huffington Post join forces for new Hawaii site

Cross Pierre Omidyar's serious-minded Honolulu Civil Beat with Arianna Huffington's traffic-driving wizardry, and what do you get? We'll soon see this fall with the launch of HuffPost Hawaii, a joint venture the two groups announced today.

Civil Beat will continue as a separate site and editorially manage the collaboration, which will be promoted from the Huffington Post's main site. Shortened versions of Civil Beat's investigations and local political coverage will appear on HuffPost Hawaii. The site will also carry broader lifestyle and culture coverage aimed at travelers from both the United States and Japan (where HuffPost has formed another editorial partnership with Asahi Shimbun).

In a promotional video, Huffington said a common denominator between the two online news ventures has been "creating a platform for voices" with diverse contributors and extensive discussion chains. Omidyar said he hopes to draw on the parent Huffington Post's reporting and commentary to attract local audiences to the new site. (more...)
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Koch Industries building

Koch brothers acquiring Tribune newspapers? I’d bet against it

I’m not a fan of speculating who will buy newspapers that are on the block. But I’ll make an exception with some quick thoughts on Tribune Co.’s publishing group — currently attracting investor interest as expected but likely months away … Read more

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NewsRight, ambitious attempt at licensing newspaper content, quietly folds

Nieman Journalism Lab | NewsRight
Analyst Ken Doctor reports at Nieman Labs that NewsRight, an industry-owned agency that has tried to license content to aggregators, has gone out of business.

NewsRight's own news release describes the dissolution a bit differently saying that its database, existing contracts and brand name will go to collaborator Moreover and that anti-piracy advocacy will pass to the Newspaper Association of America.

The company's roots were in the AP News Registry, a business development project of the Associated Press. In January 2012, that became NewsRight with AP still lead investor and 28 other newspaper companies taking a stake.  (more...)
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Deseret syndicates its faith and family values coverage to GateHouse Media

Deseret News Service, which has focused a good share of its content on faith and family values issues, now is expanding that effort by syndicating the material to other publishers.

The first such deal, announced this morning, is with GateHouse Media, which publishes 78 small and midsize dailies and claims 12 million unique visitors per month to its websites.

"Others are in the pilot stage," Matt Sanders, who is directing the licensing effort, told Poynter by phone. "We will be announcing other relationships as the year goes on."

Deseret shifted to an aggressive digital expansion strategy several years ago under CEO Clark Gilbert. Part of that initiative has been to re-orient enterprise coverage to faith, family and related matters and offer that in several platforms available to a Mormon audience worldwide. (Deseret, based in Salt Lake City, is owned by the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). (more...)
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News

New research finds 92 percent of time spent on news consumption is still on legacy platforms

Here is a surprising statistic from leading consultants McKinsey and Company: When you measure news consumption in the U.S. by time spent, rather than raw audience numbers, digital platforms are getting only 8 percent of the action.

McKinsey data … Read more

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Cuttingcosts2

Fairfax Media CEO suggests deep reductions in legacy costs need to precede reduced print frequency

Talk about digital disruption. The CEO of Australia’s giant Fairfax Media said last week that he is preparing the company to abandon printed newspapers entirely “in three, five or 10 years.”

“Print revenues have been going down and are going … Read more

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Newspapers2

Daily newspaper circulation totals ‘do not capture the full story’ anymore

On Tuesday, the Alliance for Audited Media (formerly ABC) will announce circulation totals for American newspapers, as it has done in regular six-month cycles for as long as I can remember.

I will hazard a guess about the results, but … Read more

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