Selling the news: Reuters, the AP and Tribune
We and others reported Monday night that our parent company Thomson Reuters Corp is starting a U.S. general news service for U.S. publishers and broadcasters. Though my employer, Reuters News, has been providing general and business/financial/economic news for more than a century, we didn’t have a service before that would rely on a big group of hired journalists and stringers to get busy covering U.S. news in a large way.
You can see our story here, as well as the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and paidContent.org stories, for more information. One of the interesting aspects that we didn’t get into in our story is one of the reasons that Tribune Co, Reuters America’s first client, decided to work with our parent company.
Here’s Russell Adams’s explanation, taken from The Wall Street Journal:
In a cost-cutting move this past spring, Tribune began producing modules, or ready-made pages, that are filled with news from wires services and its various properties, and printed in multiple papers. Gerould Kern, editor of the Chicago Tribune, said Tribune expects to begin selling the pages to other publishing companies—something Reuters was open to.
“Clients want to be a syndicator of our content,” said Chris Ahearn, president of media for Thomson Reuters.
The AP doesn’t let papers repackage its content for sale. In a statement, the AP said, “The Tribune newspapers remain valued members of the AP.” The cooperative added: “Our members have rights to use our content in various ways. However, there are ancillary uses of AP content that we cannot allow because they wouldn’t be fair to other members,” the AP said.
I’m curious to hear from our media readers how creative a move they think this is for news outlets like Reuters as well as the customers that my company is trying to enlist. We don’t know the size of the investment in this news service, other than that it’s part of a “multimillion dollar” commitment. We also don’t know the eventual size of the reporting staff (including the freelancers). Still, it’s an interesting move on a number of levels.
The future of newspapers via Sam Zell
Sam Zell popped over to CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday to chat about real estate and investment opportunities in the U.S. and abroad. This being MediaFile, we were most interested in what Zell had to say about Tribune Co., the company that he helms and that is currently slogging its way through a bankruptcy with warring creditors.
Zell didn’t reveal a whole lot when asked about the Chapter 11 process but he did share his thoughts on the future of newspapers and that future involves… PDFs! Zell is pretty sweet on the idea that home delivery will just go away something the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News semi-embraced more than a year ago. Instead newspaper subscribers will be able to get electronic versions of the newspapers.
Here’s Zell on what he believes is in store for newspapers: ”Going forward it’s going to require all kinds of different approaches, including, probably the most significant, the elimination of home delivery and the replacement of it with PDFs. The iPad is the real example of almost replicating a newspaper on an instrument. I think that is only the beginning of how that is all going to evolve.”
Friday media highlights
Here are some of the day’s stories on the media industry:
Movie studios try to harness “Twitter effect” (Reuters) “Audiences are voicing snap judgments on movies faster and to more people than ever before on Twitter, and their ability to create a box office hit or a flop is forcing major studios to revamp marketing campaigns. The stakes are especially high this summer season when big budget movies like “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which opened on Wednesday, play to a core audience of young, plugged-in moviegoers,” writes Alex Dobuzinskis.
Sun-Times chief optimistic about sale of company (Chicago Tribune) But, Michael Oneal writes: “In a court filing last week, creditors in the Sun-Times’ bankruptcy case raised concerns about the sale efforts, noting that the company has “limited time” before it “can no longer sustain the losses being incurred from operations.” They warned that unless a buyer is found soon, “time could run out, or a buyer could be located that would only pay a fire-sale price.”
Goldman makes peace with blogger in trademark case (Reuters) “The agreement required blogger Michael Morgan to post a disclaimer on his goldmansachs666.com website, saying it has no affiliation with the financial firm. Morgan, a Florida investment adviser, uses his blog — whose name combines Goldman’s name with numbers used to evoke connotations with the devil — to criticize the bank and its large profits,” writes Martha Graybow.
Reuters Opens its Kimono (CJR) “Wright, Reuters’s global editor of ethics, innovation, and news standards, brandished the thick stack of paper to drive home the point that “we’ve moved beyond the time when people were carrying around books with style guides.” We’re also apparently beyond the time when all journalism organizations charge people for said style books,” writes Craig Silverman
Monday media highlights
Here are some of the day’s stories on the media industry:
‘Tonight Show’ Audience a Decade Younger (NYT) “In Mr. O’Brien’s first month as host, the median age of “Tonight Show” viewers has fallen by a decade — to 45 from 55, a startling shift in such a short time. This audience composition means advertisers can now address almost exclusively young viewers on “Tonight,” and NBC is already contemplating a shift in how it sells the show,” writes Bill Carter.
Springer’s daily Welt dreams of going international – again (Reuters)
“German publisher Axel Springer plans to launch an international weekly edition of its flagship daily, Die Welt, in a 48-page tabloid format starting February 2010. Springer is still mulling distribution options but the paper will likely be available from airlines,” writes Nicola Leske.
Just the Messenger: Mediaite.com Focuses on Celebrity of Journalism (WP) On the newly launched website, Howard Kurtz writes: “Mediaite paints with a colorful palette, even if its hues will appeal mainly to journalists and those who obsess over them. By hiring bloggers who worked for Mediabistro and the Huffington Post, Abrams has put together a sassy critique of media missteps and foibles, an overall take not driven mainly by ideology.”
Cubs sale finalized for TribCo (Crain’s) “Tribune Co. has finalized a deal to sell the Chicago Cubs to a bidding group led by bond salesman Thomas Ricketts. Documents describing the fully financed deal were sent to Major League Baseball over the weekend, a source familiar with the negotiations said Monday. The value of the deal is between $850 million and $900 million, the source said.”
Food Network magazine is media’s next wave (MarketWatch) “Hearst executives are very pleased with the magazine’s progress. The company started out by printing 300,000 copies last fall. Hearst now projects the publication’s rate base, the circulation figure that publishers promise to advertisers, will climb to 900,000 later this year and to 1.1 million in 2010,” writes Jon Friedman.
Google’s executive leadership team has the strategic foresight to be prepared for their future opportunities. What’s interesting, to me, is how so many other companies have been totally unprepared for this economy. It didn’t have to be that way, since most could have planned better during the good times. My point: short term thinking, by definition, lacks any meaningful foresight.
Washington Post, Baltimore Sun will share content
The Washington Post and The Sun in nearby Baltimore will share some of their journalism, at least the stuff that they don’t try to kill each other to get first as they compete across the hedgerows and parkways of suburban Maryland. Here are some details from the release, sent out on Tuesday:
The Post and The Sun have agreed to share the newspapers’ day-to-day coverage of certain Maryland news and sports. In addition, The Post and The Sun may draw on each other’s national, international and feature stories that are distributed by the LAT-WP News Service, to which both contribute. The exchanges will allow each paper to take advantage of the other’s strengths and expertise in specific subjects around the region and the world.
As part of this accord, exclusive stories will not usually be shared, nor will coverage of such competitive subjects as Maryland state government and University of Maryland athletics.
I couldn’t find a piece in The Sun, which is owned by Tribune Co (which recently filed for bankruptcy), but figure it will be reasonably similar to the Post story, which includes this paragraph:
The deal comes as both newspapers, like the rest of the industry, struggle to retain readers and cut costs as the economics of the business shift.
Robert McCartney, the Post’s Metro editor, said that the move can help the paper save money, but declined to get into how that will happen. He did say that sharing some stories could help each paper assign reporters to areas in their home turf where they need more coverage, something that in theory could cut costs. He declined to offer other specifics on savings.
One way would be cutting the size of the local news and sports teams as a result of abandoning coverage areas — not that that would make anyone happy, though it is something that more people in our business have come to expect as a reality. Tribune has been doing this at its papers, while the Post earlier this year offered buyouts.
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)
It’s budget cutting time
In the media world, it looks like it’s time for a trim. Whether that’s jobs, travel expenses, or anything else, budgets are coming down… With the economy in the sick ward, what did we expect?
Yahoo is among those expected to outline ways to cut expenses, including further job cuts, a source tells Reuters. The announcement will likely come when it reports quarterly results on Tuesday:
The Internet company will discuss the scale and timing of the future layoffs, but specific details on the exact jobs to be eliminated will not be disclosed, the source said.
Over at NBC Universal, they are also cutting some costs. The Wall Street Journal says the media company wants to shave $500 million from its 2009 budget. That would be about 3 percent.
The question is can any of the other media companies be far behind?
Keep an eye on:
National Amusements: Time to talk to the bank
Another day, another twist in the latest Sumner Redstone drama. This time, the media mogul’s company, National Amusements, announced that it’s having sit-downs with its lenders over some debt covenants? What are the covenants? And how much debt to they cover? Nobody outside of the company seems quite sure at this point.
What we do know, is that all of this has been caused by the sharp drop in CBS and Viacom shares — since they are worth far less as assets than they were a a month ago, we assume that some debt-to-assets ratio has become a problem.
What does this mean for Viacom and CBS? Not much, in the short term. Stock of both were steady to slightly higher in early trade. But it does underscore what’s at stake for Redstone, and probably turns up the heat on the companies to perform better and get the stock price moving higher.
Keep an eye on:
- Google Inc profits surpassed Wall Street quarterly forecasts, as the Internet search and advertising leader held deepening economic gloom at bay (Reuters)
- NBC Universal’s Spanish-language television operation has cut 85 jobs, reducing its workforce 5 percent (LA Times)
- The final U.S. presidential debate was watched by about 11 percent fewer Americans than watched the “town hall” format the week before (AdAge)
- CBS College Sports said Thursday that it was laying off nearly one-quarter of its staff, or about 30 employees (NY Times)
- Tribune Company has given a two-year notice to the Associated Press that its daily newspapers plan to drop the news service, becoming the first major newspaper chain to do so since the recent controversy over new rates began (Editor & Publisher)
(Photo: Reuters)
All eyes on Goldman — the conference, that is
We’ll be paying close attention to Goldman Sachs today for reasons other than the wrenching financial crisis. Our interest relates to the investment bank’s Communacopia conference, an annual meeting of some top media players.
Of course, it’s impossible to escape Wall Street’s woes, even at a media conference. After all, there are questions about the ripple effect on the economy — and that includes the advertising business, the bread and butter of media.
We spoke to a number of experts and the consensus was that while financial services make up just 6 percent of advertising spending in the United States, which is no small sum, the bigger issue is the influence that the crisis has on confidence throughout Corporate America. Watching this week’s turmoil, will corporations be as free with spending?
Here’s how Zain Raj, chief executive of Euro RSCG Discovery, a unit of France’s Havas advertising company, put it:
”Normally, when Wall Street sneezes, Madison Avenue ignores it. In this case, Wall Street has pneumonia and Madison Avenue better realize it.”
Whether in presentations or on the sidelines of Communacopia, that’s sure to be a topic of conversation. Let’s hear what News Corp, Time Warner and CBS, among others, have to say.
Keep an eye on:
