GlobalMedia-ABC News in talks with Bloomberg
The news divisions at the big networks have been in a world of hurt lately as advertisers seek out younger consumers and viewers. This has lead to big cutbacks in staffing and resources over the years as the networks strive to keep profit margins from deteroirating even further.
ABC is certainly no expectation and has experienced managment upheaval when ABC News president David Westin announced in September his departure partly due to the financial situation and the pressure to increase profit margins.
Speculation has persisted that ABC News parent company, Walt Disney, has been seeking to untie itself from the division– rumors that similary dog CBS.
Anne Sweeney, president of Disney/ABC Television Group, flatly denied that the company was looking to offload the news or TV divisions but also confirmed that ABC News has been in talks with Bloomberg in forming a partnership. “We’ve had a lot of conversatoins with Bloomberg over the past couple of years,” she said during Reuters Media Global Summit.
Sweeney also said they are currently searching for Westin’s replacement though she was coy on when and who that might be. “We certainly have a lot of talent in ABC,” she said.
Layoffs hit The Washington Post after BusinessWeek, AP
Several media reporters wrote on Twitter on Thursday that this was one of the worst weeks in journalism, and it’s hard to argue with them. BusinessWeek is canning a third of its staff as Bloomberg gets ready to buy the magazine. The Associated Press is laying off 90 people as part of its effort to cut payroll costs by 10 percent this year.
And now The Washington Post is laying off staff, sources told me on Friday, and a spokeswoman confirmed.
The Post has cut an unknown number of washingtonpost.com workers, the website folks who until now have worked separately at the dot-com headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from the Post’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. One source told me up to 10 are going. That’s not as big a number as other places you’ve read about lately, but it’s still a painful cut. (Disclosure: I worked for The Washington Post Co. from 1998 to 2005)
Sources shared several names with me, but until those people confirm that they were laid off, I don’t want to publish them. What I can say is that there were several journalists and marketing people among the casualties. They are getting severance packages, but they are accompanied by non-disclosure agreements which prevent them from discussing their firings. Apparently, some of my sources said, they will be out of work by Dec. 31.
Why is this happening? Here’s what spokeswoman Kris Coratti said:
As part of the work we’re doing to turn around the business that supports our journalism, there were a small number of individual positions eliminated as a result of efficiencies we have found through our new structure and through new technology, and those have taken place in both print and online.
The background: The Post’s web staff, as I mentioned, is joining the main newsroom as they eliminate the gap that the paper set up many years ago by making its website a separate operation. The company, all my sources tell me, want to cut staff before the end of the year because next year the remainder would become unionized. Web staff are not unionized now. That, my sources say, would make it much more difficult for the money-losing Washington Post to cut costs by laying off people because they would be protected to some extent by their contract.
This place is an absolute joke. The paper is dying, not slowly but fast and it’s all of the Senior managements fault. The worst generation of the Graham family.
Talking with Thomson Reuters chief about print
Covering Thomson Reuters Corp for almost two years has taught me that people like to cast my company in a recurring role in media deal parlor games. Now that the company’s arch-rival Bloomberg LP will buy BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill, lots of my pals in the media world are wondering: Will Thomson Reuters buy a mainstream news or business news magazine? Or newspaper? Why not Forbes? Why not the Financial Times?
Keep in mind that Thomson Reuters likes to remind people when they ask these questions that Thomson Corp, before buying Reuters, got out of its Canadian newspaper empire for a reason. (See below)
I asked our chief executive, Tom Glocer, a question along these lines on a Thursday phone call he had with reporters to discuss the company’s third-quarter financial results.
Here is what he said:
Thomson did a remarkable job, far earlier than any other company I know, of seeing what was coming and transitioning their business out of print for the most part… I don’t see any particular time or reason at this juncture why we should go the other way.
Later on Thursday, when I interviewed Glocer, we returned to this theme. (I can’t help it, I’m a print guy.) I used the Financial Times, owned by Pearson Plc and beloved of its CEO, Dame Marjorie Scardino, as a sample target:
Here is Glocer’s reply:
SC NJ: Thanks for reading – and commenting. I did not include a quote from Glocer where he referred to PDR and similar properties. That said, I asked him about mainstream news and business newspapers and magazines, so that’s the context in which he answered the question. I don’t think you caught him out.
Robert
The Wall Street Journal — now for ‘professionals’
The Wall Street Journal, ever on the hunt for new ways to please its readers and new ways to make money (and what, we ask, is wrong with that?), will launch a new, pricier version this November. Called “The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition,” it is designed for business readers who want more than what the daily newspaper and website provide on their own.
Essentially, it is the Journal’s daily offering, with reports from Dow Jones Newswires and a reservoir of news and information from Factiva, the news archive that Dow Jones owns — and a bunch more stuff:
- Information from more than 17,000 global sources, some of which are not available to the public.
- A one-year archive of Factiva’s global business sources and a two-year archive of wsj.com content.
- More than 30 industry pages, managed by Dow Jones editors
- Six industry sections managed by Journal editors who select news and information for readers on pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, media and marketing, telecommunications and technology.
- Personalized homepages and news alerts for when things break.
Dow Jones plans to sell the edition to businesses, which would make it available to employees through “site licenses” (ie, your business buys a license that makes the professional edition available to X number of people for a price to be determined). In January, it will be available to people for $49 a month, or just under $600 a year, said Clare Hart, head of Dow Jones’s Enterprise Media Group, which oversees Dow Jones Newswires, Factiva and Dow Jones Indexes.
So why have a professional edition for a paper that is arguably already for professionals? According to Hart, it is an attempt to recognize the middle ground between “regular” readers (like my mom) and financial clients who use the super-charged “terminals” from Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg that provide news along with sophisticated and deep financial information.
“It’s a response to what customers are driving us toward. Customers want the simplicity of a consumer application with the sophistication of an enterprise application,” Hart said.
Robert Thomson, who edits the Journal and oversees Dow Jones’s editorial operations, offered a hypothetical example of an oil service company employee in Boise who might not be in the market for a Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters computer, but needs more information than he or she would get in the paper.
content is king… always has been … always will be…. #johngaltwashere
Welcome to Turkey, Bloomberg ‘efendim’
It always makes me happy when one of the companies on my beat reminds me that I study Turkish for at least one practical reason. In this case, it’s our rival wire service Bloomberg, which will start broadcasting news in Turkey through local partner Ciner Media. Pronounced, more or less, “Jiner Media,” the company also publishes magazines in Turkey that include Marie Claire, Newsweek Turkey, OK! and GEO.The service will be called BloombergHT for “Haber Turk,” which translates to, “Turkish News.” The service will be a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week Turkish language financial news and business channel that will broadcast on cable and satellite in Turkey and “Turkish Republics.” I have to find out what that means, but I’m guessing it means parts of Central Asia where Turkic languages are spoken.The launch will come later this year, Bloomberg said in a statement on Tuesday. It also said that Bloomberg will retain editorial control over the channel’s business content and will provide Ciner Media with access to the Bloomberg news service and that a website will follow.This news comes months after Bloomberg held a rare round of layoffs and laid out plans to shut down some of its non-English-language TV operations around the world. Bloomberg, as we and others have reported, has been working to broaden its worldwide reach. The company, I have heard from people familiar with its thinking and also from employees, wants to raise its profile outside its hardcore financial industry subscribers and is trying to offer more news to a bigger audience to do it. Pursuing BusinessWeek is one way to do it. Another would be forging more deals like the one in Turkey — let someone else handle the distribution, and you just focus on the news. We might see more of these deals soon.UPDATE: While I’ve been obsessing over whether I’ll get to play Peter Ustinov’s part in a remake of Topkapi, Business Insider noticed some substantial changes on Bloomberg TV’s presentation for the rest of the world. In the world of financial journalism, less really is more, apparently.PS: Efendi = “lord” or “master” or a general “sir” might even do these days. “Efendim” = “My lord,” etc. and is a common form of address. For example, you might call me “Robert efendim.” Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.(Reuters Photo: Istanbul)
I would love Bloomberg to broadcast in Turkish in Uzbekistan as well. We also speak a kind of Turkish.
Sniper-blogger grills Taiwan reporters
“Even Reuters’ Ralph Jennings — of whom I’ve been extremely critical for getting the story very wrong when it comes to Taiwan — tells us that ‘half a million’ attended the protest,” a blogger wrote in October after seeing the Reuters’s write-up of an opposition-led demonstration in Taipei against President Ma Ying-jeou.
China claims sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan. Ma, Taiwan’s president, likes China. The opposition and the blogger don’t like either.
I poured a beer to celebrate because I had it right, up from a score of “lies” that the same blogger gave me on a story earlier that year.
Not all of us get off so easy. The blogger would write up a former Taipei-based BBC correspondent for “vague and inaccurate descriptions,” one of the friendlier grades given to the British TV network’s Taiwan coverage. The same commentator gave the China Post, a local English-language paper, a score of “Nazism.”
“The facts that are always ignored when AP sells its mendacious stories about Taiwan,” the blogger added. And a one-time Taipei bureau chief with Bloomberg was labeled “China-centric,” with the word “China” in red type.
Getting blog-flogged is as much a part of being a 21st-century reporter as interviewing and writing. But none of the numerous transparency-wary reporters I know here can name the blogger who names us. Maybe it is one of us, someone quipped at a foreign correspondents club meeting. Maybe it’s you, I said. Maybe it’s you, he replied. Another correspondent said she once got into a debate with the blogger about her low grades, but still never learned the other party’s identity.
The blogs that offer Taiwan-based reporters this free publicity identify our sniper only as Tim Maddog, a member of the “education industry” in the central Taiwan city of Taichung. One website lists Michael Turton, a fellow Taiwan blogger, who some correspondents know personally, as a collaborator. But Turton says he doesn’t know who’s mad-dogging us.
It may not make life easier – but aren’t the sniper’s objections justified?
Google redefines time (From the UAL files)
Here’s something funny that I found at the bottom of a Google News search results page the other day:
The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program. The time or date displayed reflects when an article was added to Google News.
That sounds like another way of saying that the time and date the story showed up there do not necessarily match the time and date that the story was first published.
So why is that interesting? I don’t know for sure if this is why they did it, but it could have something to do with the recent flap between Google and Tribune Co over a story about UAL Corp going bankrupt — six years ago. The 2002 Chicago Tribune story wound up being displayed as a seemingly fresh looking story on Google News search results after the article somehow went live inside the website of the Tribune-owned South Florida Sun-Sentinel paper in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The article wound up being picked up by an investor-run information service distributed by Bloomberg News, and prompted investors to nearly destroy United’s stock price before everyone figured out that the story was old. This caused a war of words between Google and Tribune, with the Chicago-based newspaper publisher saying that it was Google’s fault that the story showed up, especially with a time stamp that made it look new. Google naturally blames Tribune.
Is this Google modifying its terms to clarify the true nature of time on its website? Is this a response to the UAL brouhaha? We don’t know yet, as we’re still waiting to hear back from Google’s press team.
(Photo: Reuters)
Relaxin’ at Bloomberg
Is Bloomberg chilling out? The news and financial data provider (and our competitor) looks like it’s trying to make life at the hard-driving news and information provider a little less crazy.
“Starting August 1, employees can request schedules better suited to their personal lives — including flexible hours, a shorter work week and working from home,” writes Reuters reporter Robert MacMillan, who obtained a copy of the plans. “The new work schedule system may be Bloomberg’s first public acknowledgment of the need to accommodate an employee’s personal life — and that the changes would help the business.”
It’s not clear whether there’s a connection, but the new policy comes as Bloomberg is getting ready to defend itself against a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charging discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers.
It’s an interesting cultural shift for Bloomberg, whose staffers work in what many people describe as a very intense workplace. And it raises a lot of questions. Will the move help Bloomberg with employee retention? Will the company actually get more out of staffers, because they will be presumably be happier in the workplace? Could it take away the edge, but in a bad way? Is it even realistic to think that Bloomberg can make such changes to its culture?
For the article, Bloomberg employees contacted by MacMillan declined to comment. We understand (do we ever!) , but our comments section on this blog never said you had to include your name along with your sharp observations. We’re eager to hear from you, Bloomberg folks.
Keep an eye on:
The drama builds in Hollywood
We’re once again wondering who will blink first in Hollywood.
The Screen Actors Guild and the major firm and television studios are having another pow-wow today, and the subject is an ominous sounding “final offer” that management has presented to the union.
As we have seen, the talks so far haven’t gotten around the same sticky issues that prompted a strike this winter by the Writers Guild of America strike. So a take-it-or-leave-it offer by the studios doesn’t sound too promising if the entertainment biz is to avoid another strike.
But wait! SAG executive director and chief negotiator, Doug Allen, suggested on the eve of his union’s formal response that the door to further deal-making remained open. He had this to say in an interview with Reuters:
“I don’t know that those categorical statements are always to be taken at face value,” he told Reuters. “In fact, somebody from the WGA told me they got a total of 10 final offers from the AMPTP (during their talks). So we’ll see.”
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that the studios may be looking at a slight change in strategy. It reports:
Neither wind, rain nor a classroom will keep iPhone fans away
Two days before the iPhone’s launch, fans around Asia are queuing up to buy Apple’s latest offering. They don’t seem to care that it’s raining or freezing cold or if lining up early means missing work or school.
The July 11 launch will be the first chance, after all, for Asian consumers to own an iPhone.
“I’ve told my professor I was going to go buy an iPhone, and he gave me permission,” said Hiroyuki Sano, a 24-year-old graduate student who early on Tuesday arrived in rainy Tokyo from Nagoya to be first in line. Sano, speaking to Reuters, and incidentally wearing a T-shirt with an Apple logo, described his professor as an equally big Apple fan. “He sent me off cheerfully.”
The United States has already been through this, when the iPhone first went on sale a year ago. As the New York Times recalls, “TV news coverage was relentless. Hard-core fans camped out to be the first in line. Bloggers referred to Apple’s new product as the ‘Jesus phone’.”
The paper adds, “This time, though, when the iPhone 3G goes on sale in AT&T and Apple stores, iPhone Mania will be considerably more muted. That’s partly because the mystery is gone, partly because the AT&T service costs more and partly because there aren’t many new features in what Apple is calling the iPhone 3G. ”
But let’s be clear: There’s still a boatload of interest in this phone and plenty of people will be talking about it this week, offering their two cents on what they like and dislike about the iPhone.
