Archives: January 2010

Vanity Fair: Former late night host Joan Rivers: Jay Leno isn’t funny.

Editor & Publisher: News Corp. is no longer in talks with The New York Times over printing The Wall Street Journal.

Forbes: New York Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman calls Rupert Murdoch‘s plan to launch a local New York section of The Wall Street Journal “a brilliant move”, but worries that there may not be enough advertising to go around for all of the local NY news outlets.

AgencySpy: Would you have been able to tell that there are Bloomberg screens in this ad for Thomson Reuters?

J. Alfred Proofreader: Oops, looks like The New York Times forgot to fill a TK in its obit of J.D. Salinger.

Time: Could the Times‘ pay wall plans imply an impending death for the newspaper? “The online-pay-wall plan is the Times saying things cannot continue at this rate. Something has to give, and the paper is hoping it will be its readers’ purse strings. And if not? What would its fans — and its critics — do without it?”

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There has been much egg on the face of Cablevision after its pay wall plan for Newday.com was revealed earlier this week to have only 35 subscribers.

Tad Smith, Cablevision’s president for local media, reached out to Romenesko in an email declaring that the success of the pay wall initiative isn’t measured by the company in the number of people who subscribed to the $260-a-year service, but by “the change in unique visitors compared year over year in the New York metro area (our target audience).” And those unique visitors, according to Cablevision, have only decreased two percent in December 2009 compared to the same month last year. The slight decrease may be due in part to the fact that many of Newsday.com’s readers are Cablevision subscribers, and therefore get to read the site for free anyway.

Still, using a newspaper only to increase your subscriber sales isn’t anything to crow about, says Slate‘s Marion Maneker:

“Either way, Smith seems to be declaring that Cablevision’s $632 million acquisition of Newsday was simply to add another freebie to Cablevision’s subscription bundle. This was every analyst’s worst fear when it was announced that the Dolans had the winning bid for Newsday. Instead of expanding the subscription base for the newspaper and increasing advertising inventory for the cable business (buy a local ad on Cablevision and get a newspaper and Web ad as value-add), they paid a premium for some local content.”

So Cablevision is using Newsday not just as a newspaper, but as a way to sweeten the deal for Internet subscribers to choose their service. But that’s not to say that Newsday would be better off had Rupert Murdoch had purchased the paper in 2008. Whose to say the site wouldn’t be behind a pay wall in that scenario?

Read More: Newsday exec: We don’t measure success by how many people sign up to pay $260/year for our website –Romenesko

Cablevision Exec Defends Newsday Web Strategy –Slate

Previously: Newsday’s Pay Wall Experiment Yields Disappointing Results

On March 23, one group of intrepid reporters will be winning $25,000 for the 2010 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. The six finalists announced today come from such varied locales and media as KHOU-TV in Houston, The Boston Globe, and ProPublica. Being a finalist carries a $10,000 award. Who says that journalism doesn’t pay?

According to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Web site, the goal of the Goldsmith prize is to “recognize and encourage journalism which promotes more effective and ethical conduct of government, the making of public policy, or the practice of politics by disclosing excessive secrecy, impropriety and mismanagement, or instances of particularly commendable government performance.”

See the full list of winners after the jump.

Read More: Shorenstein Center Announces Book Prize Winners and Finalists for the 2010 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting — Harvard Kennedy School

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Four years ago today, ABC News’ Bob Woodruff narrowly escaped death.

Reporting from Iraq, the World News Tonight co-anchor was in a convoy struck by a roadside bomb, injuring both Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt. But in the four years since, Woodruff has beaten the insurmountable odds to recover from his serious brain injury and work on camera again.

Today, our sister blog TVNewser reports, Woodruff is celebrating his ‘Alive Day’ with a father-daughter dance with his twin nine-year-old daughters, as well as a big interview with former John Edwards aide Andrew Young on 20/20 tonight. Woodruff promises some big news from his interview with Young — “revelations that you’ll hear from an aide who was witness to much of this incredible mess.”

And even bigger news for Woodruff — he has stopped going to speech and physical therapy. He told TVNewser:

“Most of my friends and family around me four years ago, would have never really thought that I would be able to do what I’m doing now. I’m very close to the way I was before.

There’s no way that you return to exactly the way you were, but there are parts of you that are better.”

Read more: Bob Woodruff’s Big Interview Just Part Of A Big Day –TVNewser

Previously: Once Seriously Injured In Iraq, Woodruff Returns

Last night The Atlantic hosted a discussion titled “Money, Media, and the Future of HBO” with network co-president Richard Plepler and the magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg. Also on hand were Michael Hirschorn, Stephen Colvin of The Daily Beast, and Senator Michael Bennet.

Plepler discussed the success of HBOGo, which allows subscribers to view their favorite episodes of Entourage or True Blood from any computer, and eventually on portable devices like the iPad or Blackberry. The theme of the evening seemed to be, “Piracy will always be an issue, but people will always pay for quality.”

Looking to expand this theory to print publications, FishbowlNY talked to Atlantic editor James Bennet. The magazine was one of the earliest users of a pay wall on its Web site, but like The New York Times, it eventually took it down in 2008 to allow readers to view the content for free. Now that the Times is planning on charging again, would Bennet’s magazine follow suit?

“It’s an idea we’re constantly revisiting,” Bennet told us. “But we can’t afford to be ideological about it. The New York Times‘ announcement does not affect our decision at all.” The magazine has no current plans to reinstate a pay system, he added.

When asked how The Atlantic plans to monetize in new media, Bennet pointed to The Atlantic Fiction For Kindle, created exclusively for the e-reader, which provides a series of never-before-published fiction for $3.99 a month. This is one of the few genuinely novel ideas we’ve heard about in terms of regulating content. Since it’s virtually impossible to copy and disseminate (unless you feel like all that retyping), and since it’s an original product (unlike news, which users can get from a variety of sources), it may be one of the few types of word-based media people will still shell out money for.

Previously: So What Do You Do James Bennet, Editor of The Atlantic?, The Atlantic Tears Down Their Paywall

In advance of its introduction of a pay wall on its Web site next year, The New York Times has restructured the jobs of a handful of executives today. These vice presidents, which include Paul Smurl, Eliot Pierce and Nick Ascheim, will oversee the creation and implementation of the Times metered pay wall model, set to debut in 2011.

Smurl, currently a VP of advertising, has been appointed to the newly created position of VP of NYTimes.com paid products. Pierce, VP of operations and strategy for NYTimes.com, has been named VP of advertising and digital strategy, business development and ad operations. And Ascheim, who’s currently the VP of product management for NYTimes.com is taking on the few role of VP of new ventures for the Web site. All three will be reporting to Denise Warren, senior VP and chief advertising officer of The New York Times Media Group and general manager of the NYTimes.com.

In addition, Ira Silberstein, who currently overseeing classifieds, is being named VP of product management and classifieds for NYTimes.com and VP of digital production for the site Rob Larson is becoming VP of search products.

Full release, explaining what all these new titles actually mean, after the jump

Previously: NYTimes.com Pay Wall: Media CEOs, Editors And Bloggers Weigh In

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When we spoke with East West founder and editor-in-chief Anita Malik last year, she seemed excited about the prospect of relaunching her pan-Asian American magazine after a nearly two-year hiatus.

But now, five months later, Malik is telling a new story. In a series of posts on her blog, Glossy On The Outside, Malik has revealed that she is seriously questioning whether there is a future for East West. “From the start, beginning back to 2003, this magazine — whether it was online, then print and online, then hiatus, and then back to test the financial landscape — has defined my identity,” she wrote last week. “But with this latest test run, our emergence from hiatus to gauge the economy, I feel differently.”

She continued:

“My heart isn’t in it like it used to be. In good times and in bad, this is a hard industry. It requires 150 percent, and in the case of East West, even more of me. We are extremely small and this time around even leaner. How much can one person or even two do? At what cost — financially, mentally and emotionally? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself of late. Questions without definite answers.”

Malik is reaching out the magazine’s readers for their advice and thoughts on where East West should go. Should it go quarterly? Should it become online-only? Should it become reader-supported? Malik seems to be leaning towards scrapping the whole project or going the nonprofit route, writing yesterday, “We won’t go quarterly,” even though a majority of respondents to a poll said that’s what they would want.

We asked Malik to explain a little of what she’s going through right now. Her answers, after the jump.

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So the exciting news today is the new Bloomberg LP-owned BusinessWeek, which laid off so many back in October, now officially includes some big-name new hires, the biggest of which may be Hugo Lindgren as executive editor.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek‘s steal of New York magazine’s editorial director is surprising, as Lindgren was Adam Moss‘ right hand man. He’ll begin his new role on March 8.

Also on the Josh Tyrangiel-assembled dream team is Eric Pooley, formerly managing editor of Fortune, who will be taking on the position of deputy editor at Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Ellen Pollock and Ciro Scotti remain the two holdovers from the original magazine to round out the top editorial roster.

Of the staffing announcements made today, Slate‘s James Ledbetter said, “It’s a little like the reuniting of a rock supergroup,” but adds, “it’s not necessarily what the publication truly needs.”

Can’t hurt the image though, after the beating the business magazine took when top editors like John Byrne and Stephen Adler, and president Keith Fox, dropped out of BW once Bloomberg bought it.

Read More: The BusinessWeek Supergroup –Slate

BW names exec editor, deputy editor in first move by new chief — Talking Biz News

Previously: John Byrne BusinessWeek Departure Rumors Turn True, More Employees Fleeing BusinessWeek?

Just over a month after restructuring and promoting its editorial leadership and chief executives, magazine publisher Rodale Inc. said today that it has integrated its running and cycling sales teams under one associate publisher.

Molly O’Keefe, the associate publisher for Runner’s World and Running Times magazines, has been promoted to the associate publisher of the newly integrated sports title team, taking on responsibilities of Bicycling and Mountain Bike as well.

Paul Collins, director of Rodale’s Sports Marketing & Events division, has also been named advertising director of the four sports titles, and he will be reporting to O’Keefe.

The company said the integration “will provide agencies and brand marketers access to two robust audiences, with strong household incomes — and a passion for the healthy and active lifestyle — at a time when running and cycling participation are at an all time high.”

Last month, Rodale implemented a number of changes across many of its titles and divisions, including giving additional responsibilities to David Willey, editor-in-chief of Runner’s World and editorial director of Running Times, who now also serves as editorial director of Bicycling.

Full release after the jump

Previously: Rodale Restructures Management

Related: How To Pitch SI.com, How To Pitch Skiing

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The Huffington Post has recruited MIT business school professor Simon Johnson as contributing business editor for the site. In his new role, Johnson will help craft HuffPo’s business coverage while writing for the site as well.

Johnson, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, is the co-founder of economic Web site BaselineScenario.com, is a weekly contributor to The New York Times‘ Economix blog and has a monthly column that is syndicated globally. He’s also the co-author of the book 13 Bankers, to be published in March.

Said Johnson:

“The Huffington Post has become a major platform for the national conversation, bringing attention to the leading issues of the day — in real-time and in a way that allows everyone to contribute to the discussion. HuffPost is at the forefront of a resurgence in journalism that sees issues beyond the tired frame of ‘right vs. left,’ and provides news and analysis necessary to help guide genuine economic reform.”

Full release after the jump

Previously: Huffington Post’s Traffic More Than Doubles Year Over Year

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