Benjamin Mullin
June 14, 2013
9:20 am
In an era of changing media models, student journalists aren’t just grappling with the basics of reporting, writing, editing and publishing — they’re struggling to survive.
The challenge is the same one faced by their professional counterparts: decreased advertising revenue … Read more
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Joshua Gillin
May 14, 2013
3:59 pm
Boston Business Journal | WPRI
The drop in foreclosures nationwide in March should be good news for everyone, but the Boston business Journal's Jon Chesto notes GateHouse Media Inc. is facing a 6 percent decline in revenue year over year
because of a decrease in ad sales for foreclosure auctions.
The loss of all those foreclosure auction ads that GateHouse once counted on to get through the tough times is continuing to hurt the company’s classified ad pages. Lower foreclosure revenue in Massachusetts accounted for a full 40 percent of GateHouse’s classified ad revenue decline in the first quarter, the company said. But there’s good news, GateHouse investors: CEO Mike Reed said he expects this problem to subside by the end of the third quarter, and “possibly reverse.”
The Fairport, N.Y., company
referred to the Massachusetts legislature in an SEC filing about first quarter results. Lawmakers there passed a law last year making loan modifications easier, implicitly leading to a further decrease in ad revenue.
Declines in classified ad sales have plagued newspapers since the advent of the Internet. Next door in Rhode Island, the Providence Journal's owner A.H. Belo blamed the city's real estate market for the
slow sale of some of the company's real estate.
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Andrew Beaujon
Jan. 16, 2013
9:28 am
The New York Times
Google Creative Lab won a print-advertising contest run by USA Today. Publisher Larry Kramer tells The New York Times "he could see how people may consider it 'hysterical,'" Stuart Elliott writes.
First prize is $1 million worth of advertising in USA Today. “A million dollars is nothing to laugh at," Google Creative Lab Chief Creative Officer Robert Wong told Elliott. The contest was spawned after a conversation between Kramer and USA Today media columnist Michael Wolff, Elliott reports. Wolff was one of the contest's judges.
The winning ad shows the first paragraph of a newspaper story about the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. Via deft copy-editing marks, the ad shows how visa problems preventing a meeting between the two could have been solved by using a Google Hangout. Still, there's something pretty uncomfortable about the Google unit that created Google News winning this thing, right? After all, Google
earned more than the entire newspaper industry in 2011.
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Mark Fitzgerald
Nov. 4, 2011
10:25 am
The Washington Post Co.
The Washington Post Co. swung to a loss in the third-quarter as advertising revenue fell for the fourth consecutive period and its one-time cash cow, the Kaplan education unit, reported a steep drop in profits.
Newspaper publishing division revenue declined 9 percent in the quarter to $149.3 million, pushed by a 20 percent decline in print advertising revenue at the flagship Washington Post. The company said its declines were largely due to drops in classified, zoned and general advertising.
Digital dimes are not making up for the print loss in the newspaper division’s online unit, which include the Post Website and Slate. Newspaper online revenue dropped 14 percent in the quarter to $23.3 million. Display online ad revenue plunged 17 percent and online classified dipped 5 percent.
Overall, the Post Co. recorded a third-quarter loss of $6.2 million, or 82 cents a share. That contrasts with a third-quarter 2010 profit of $60.9 million or $6.48 a share.
Wall Street analysts had been expecting the Post Co. to report another profit this quarter, with the average estimate being a profit of $3.85 per share,
according to Wall Street Cheat Sheet. Expect to see the stock (NYSE: WPO) fall on its opening Friday morning.
The Post Co. did exceed analysts expectations on company-wide revenue, which declined 13 percent to $1.03 billion. Wall Street’s expectation had been for a steeper decline of 16 percent to $1 billion.
The Washington Post Co.’s biggest problem these days isn’t the sluggish performance of newspaper advertising, an industry-wide problem – it’s the sudden change in fortunes at its Kaplan education unit.
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