‘Seattle P-I’ Site Traffic Plunges 23% Following Cancellation of Print Ed.
Newspapers that are considering remaining in existence by going online-only will be concerned to hear that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has seen its unique users drop significantly since it ceased publishing a print edition.
The paper’s website, Seattlepi.com, was down 23% in unique users in March, compared to March 2008, to 1.4 million unique visitors. It also fell off the list of top 30 newspaper websites, writes Broadcasting & Cable.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s competitor, the Seattle Times, acquired a significant number of readers in March, up 70% to 2.2 million uniques.
Meanwhile, most of the other papers in the list of top 30 websites experienced double-digit growth in March over the previous March. The New York Times was up 7% - though online revenue in the first quarter dipped 8%.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped publishing a print edition in March. Its website was rejiggered, and now features mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, though it does maintain some original reporting. Some current and former government officials, including a former mayor, a former police chief and the current head of Seattle schools, are writing columns, and a number of the paper’s popular columnists and bloggers are continuing to write for the site, which is also offering repackaged material from Hearst’s stable of magazines.
Scarborough Research says the number of adults who have read newspapers online-only during the week is just 4%.
Zenith Optimedia predicts that newspaper ad spending will slump 12% in 2009.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Be Careful Before Going to Online Only
‘Seattle P-I’ Site Traffic Plunges 23% Following Cancellation of Print Ed.
Newspapers that are considering remaining in existence by going online-only will be concerned to hear that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has seen its unique users drop significantly since it ceased publishing a print edition.
The paper’s website, Seattlepi.com, was down 23% in unique users in March, compared to March 2008, to 1.4 million unique visitors. It also fell off the list of top 30 newspaper websites, writes Broadcasting & Cable.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s competitor, the Seattle Times, acquired a significant number of readers in March, up 70% to 2.2 million uniques.
Meanwhile, most of the other papers in the list of top 30 websites experienced double-digit growth in March over the previous March. The New York Times was up 7% - though online revenue in the first quarter dipped 8%.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped publishing a print edition in March. Its website was rejiggered, and now features mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, though it does maintain some original reporting. Some current and former government officials, including a former mayor, a former police chief and the current head of Seattle schools, are writing columns, and a number of the paper’s popular columnists and bloggers are continuing to write for the site, which is also offering repackaged material from Hearst’s stable of magazines.
Scarborough Research says the number of adults who have read newspapers online-only during the week is just 4%.
Zenith Optimedia predicts that newspaper ad spending will slump 12% in 2009.
Newspapers that are considering remaining in existence by going online-only will be concerned to hear that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has seen its unique users drop significantly since it ceased publishing a print edition.
The paper’s website, Seattlepi.com, was down 23% in unique users in March, compared to March 2008, to 1.4 million unique visitors. It also fell off the list of top 30 newspaper websites, writes Broadcasting & Cable.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s competitor, the Seattle Times, acquired a significant number of readers in March, up 70% to 2.2 million uniques.
Meanwhile, most of the other papers in the list of top 30 websites experienced double-digit growth in March over the previous March. The New York Times was up 7% - though online revenue in the first quarter dipped 8%.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped publishing a print edition in March. Its website was rejiggered, and now features mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, though it does maintain some original reporting. Some current and former government officials, including a former mayor, a former police chief and the current head of Seattle schools, are writing columns, and a number of the paper’s popular columnists and bloggers are continuing to write for the site, which is also offering repackaged material from Hearst’s stable of magazines.
Scarborough Research says the number of adults who have read newspapers online-only during the week is just 4%.
Zenith Optimedia predicts that newspaper ad spending will slump 12% in 2009.
Ten Things Every Journalist Should Know in 2009
Liane came across this posting and calls it to our attention:
Ten things every journalist should know in 2009
Posted by John Thompson
1. How to use Twitter to build communities, cover your beat, instigate and engage in conversations.
2. How to use RSS feeds to gather news and manage them using filtering techniques (basic or advanced).
3. That there is a difference between link journalism and ‘cut and paste’ journalism (aka plagiarism).
4. That your readers are smarter than you think. In fact, many are smarter than you - they know more than you do.
5. That churnalism is much easier to spot online. If you do this regularly, your readers are already on to you - merely re-writing press releases without bringing anything to the table no longer cuts it.
6. Google is your friend. But if you are not using advanced search techniques, you really have no idea what it is capable of.
7. You do not have to own, or even host, the technology to innovate in journalism and engage your readers. There is a plethora of free or cheap tools available online, so there is no excuse for not experimenting with them.
8. Multimedia for multimedia’s sake rarely works, and is often embarrassing. If you are going to do it, either do it well enough so it works as a standalone item or do it to complement your written coverage - for example, add a link to the full sound file of your interview with someone in your article, or a link to the video of someone’s entire speech at an event. The latter will enhance the transparency of your journalism too. Great tips and resources here and some useful tips on doing video on a budget.
9. How to write search engine friendly journalism. Old school thinking about headline writing, story structure etc no longer applies online and there is also more to learn about tagging, linking and categorisation. Sub-editors (if you still have them), editors and reporters all need to know how to do this stuff.
10. Learn more about privacy. You can find a lot of information about people online, especially via social networking sites, but think carefully about the consequences. And bear in mind that it cuts both ways, if you do not do it carefully, your online research could compromise your sources.
Ten things every journalist should know in 2009
Posted by John Thompson
1. How to use Twitter to build communities, cover your beat, instigate and engage in conversations.
2. How to use RSS feeds to gather news and manage them using filtering techniques (basic or advanced).
3. That there is a difference between link journalism and ‘cut and paste’ journalism (aka plagiarism).
4. That your readers are smarter than you think. In fact, many are smarter than you - they know more than you do.
5. That churnalism is much easier to spot online. If you do this regularly, your readers are already on to you - merely re-writing press releases without bringing anything to the table no longer cuts it.
6. Google is your friend. But if you are not using advanced search techniques, you really have no idea what it is capable of.
7. You do not have to own, or even host, the technology to innovate in journalism and engage your readers. There is a plethora of free or cheap tools available online, so there is no excuse for not experimenting with them.
8. Multimedia for multimedia’s sake rarely works, and is often embarrassing. If you are going to do it, either do it well enough so it works as a standalone item or do it to complement your written coverage - for example, add a link to the full sound file of your interview with someone in your article, or a link to the video of someone’s entire speech at an event. The latter will enhance the transparency of your journalism too. Great tips and resources here and some useful tips on doing video on a budget.
9. How to write search engine friendly journalism. Old school thinking about headline writing, story structure etc no longer applies online and there is also more to learn about tagging, linking and categorisation. Sub-editors (if you still have them), editors and reporters all need to know how to do this stuff.
10. Learn more about privacy. You can find a lot of information about people online, especially via social networking sites, but think carefully about the consequences. And bear in mind that it cuts both ways, if you do not do it carefully, your online research could compromise your sources.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Bankruptcy No Option for Newspapers
From Fortune:
Bankruptcy: No option for newspapers
Even if they could wipe out all their debt, they'd still still lose money on a product that can't compete with the Web.
(breakingviews.com) -- It's hard to imagine any U.S. industry worse off than the automotive sector. That is, until one considers the newspaper business.
Many have already started to shutter. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer shifted to the Web. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Boston Globe - whose parent is the the New York Times Co. (NYT) - are under threat of closure.
Many newspaper publishers, like carmakers, suffer from too many liabilities, including debt and commitments to workers. But auto companies have an edge that should allow them to restructure and survive, albeit through the bankruptcy process: Until someone invents an affordable version of George Jetson's hovercraft, they can be assured of a minimum stream of revenue.
Not so the newspaper. Even if some publishers wiped out all their debt they'd still be stuck creating a product with high fixed costs and declining revenues, as readers and advertisers migrate to the Internet, where the economics are unappealing. As a result, unlike say General Motors (GM, Fortune 500), closing the presses may be a more viable option than a Chapter 11 restructuring.
Take McClatchy (MNI), the publisher of the Miami Herald and Sacramento Bee, which reported losses last week. McClatchy has $2 billion of debt, which it took on to buy Knight-Ridder, but sports a market cap of just $45 million. Yet it isn't all that debt that's making life hard at McClatchy.
Even if its creditors were to convert their loans to equity, cutting out interest payments entirely, McClatchy would still be losing money. In the first quarter, advertising revenues at the chain plunged 29% from the year before to $285 million. Sure, costs have fallen too, but by only 12%.
As a result, McClatchy has now reached a point where the price of paying its reporters and printing and delivering newspapers to its customers is $11 million greater than the income it generates. And that's before making the $34 million interest payments due to its creditors each quarter.
Sure, a portion of McClatchy's troubles are cyclical. The slowing economy has hit core advertisers of regional papers - local auto dealers, banks, department stores and real estate agencies - particularly hard.
But it's impossible to know how much of the group's woes reflect recession and how many are a result of the secular shift by advertisers away from the printed word towards the likes of Craigslist, job sites, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and other platforms.
Without that information, it is difficult to figure out what kind of cost structure the business can support. GM is in a different boat. Consumers may have slowed car-buying for now.
But at some point they will need to replace their clunkers. So, again, until the personal space ship is invented, there will be a viable automobile market, a piece of which General Motors is likely retain. If only it were so for newspapers.
Bankruptcy: No option for newspapers
Even if they could wipe out all their debt, they'd still still lose money on a product that can't compete with the Web.
(breakingviews.com) -- It's hard to imagine any U.S. industry worse off than the automotive sector. That is, until one considers the newspaper business.
Many have already started to shutter. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer shifted to the Web. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and Boston Globe - whose parent is the the New York Times Co. (NYT) - are under threat of closure.
Many newspaper publishers, like carmakers, suffer from too many liabilities, including debt and commitments to workers. But auto companies have an edge that should allow them to restructure and survive, albeit through the bankruptcy process: Until someone invents an affordable version of George Jetson's hovercraft, they can be assured of a minimum stream of revenue.
Not so the newspaper. Even if some publishers wiped out all their debt they'd still be stuck creating a product with high fixed costs and declining revenues, as readers and advertisers migrate to the Internet, where the economics are unappealing. As a result, unlike say General Motors (GM, Fortune 500), closing the presses may be a more viable option than a Chapter 11 restructuring.
Take McClatchy (MNI), the publisher of the Miami Herald and Sacramento Bee, which reported losses last week. McClatchy has $2 billion of debt, which it took on to buy Knight-Ridder, but sports a market cap of just $45 million. Yet it isn't all that debt that's making life hard at McClatchy.
Even if its creditors were to convert their loans to equity, cutting out interest payments entirely, McClatchy would still be losing money. In the first quarter, advertising revenues at the chain plunged 29% from the year before to $285 million. Sure, costs have fallen too, but by only 12%.
As a result, McClatchy has now reached a point where the price of paying its reporters and printing and delivering newspapers to its customers is $11 million greater than the income it generates. And that's before making the $34 million interest payments due to its creditors each quarter.
Sure, a portion of McClatchy's troubles are cyclical. The slowing economy has hit core advertisers of regional papers - local auto dealers, banks, department stores and real estate agencies - particularly hard.
But it's impossible to know how much of the group's woes reflect recession and how many are a result of the secular shift by advertisers away from the printed word towards the likes of Craigslist, job sites, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and other platforms.
Without that information, it is difficult to figure out what kind of cost structure the business can support. GM is in a different boat. Consumers may have slowed car-buying for now.
But at some point they will need to replace their clunkers. So, again, until the personal space ship is invented, there will be a viable automobile market, a piece of which General Motors is likely retain. If only it were so for newspapers.
Monday, April 27, 2009
White House Photographer Has 'Inside Look'
Here's a very interesting "inside look" from the photographer who has unrestricted access to President Obama:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/26/souza.photos/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/26/souza.photos/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
Newspaper Circulation Continues the Decline
It's getting worse, not better. This is an excerpt--to read the entire article click here.
US newspaper circulation declines faster, falling 7.1 percent in October-March period
By RACHEL METZ , Associated Press
NEW YORK - Circulation declines at the nation's newspapers are speeding up.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations said Monday that average daily circulation declined 7.1 percent in the October-March period from the same six-month span in 2007-2008. The latest figure represents data from 395 daily U.S. newspapers that reported in both the current and year-ago periods.
The most recent drop was faster than the 4.6 percent fall recorded in the April-September period of 2008, and the 3.6 percent fall recorded in the October 2007-March 2008 span.
USA Today remains the No. 1 newspaper, though it suffered the steepest circulation drop in the publication's history. It sank 7.5 percent to 2,113,725 after several periods with little change. The Gannett Co.-owned newspaper attributes the falloff mostly to a drop in hotel occupancy that stemmed from the economic decline and a December price increase for copies sold at newsstands.
The Wall Street Journal, the second-largest newspaper, was the only one in the top 25 to raise its daily circulation.
US newspaper circulation declines faster, falling 7.1 percent in October-March period
By RACHEL METZ , Associated Press
NEW YORK - Circulation declines at the nation's newspapers are speeding up.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations said Monday that average daily circulation declined 7.1 percent in the October-March period from the same six-month span in 2007-2008. The latest figure represents data from 395 daily U.S. newspapers that reported in both the current and year-ago periods.
The most recent drop was faster than the 4.6 percent fall recorded in the April-September period of 2008, and the 3.6 percent fall recorded in the October 2007-March 2008 span.
USA Today remains the No. 1 newspaper, though it suffered the steepest circulation drop in the publication's history. It sank 7.5 percent to 2,113,725 after several periods with little change. The Gannett Co.-owned newspaper attributes the falloff mostly to a drop in hotel occupancy that stemmed from the economic decline and a December price increase for copies sold at newsstands.
The Wall Street Journal, the second-largest newspaper, was the only one in the top 25 to raise its daily circulation.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Look What Chase is Up To!
Here's an excerpt. See the entire article here.
The Cleveland City Stars are excited to announce the launch of the new official home of City Stars videos. Now behind-the-scenes footage of the team is available to all City Stars fans online and for free.
CityStars.tv offers an inside look at the team in action, on and off the field, with player spotlights, candid interviews, match highlights, volunteer work footage, practice outtakes and road trip coverage. CityStars.tv houses online videos of your favorite City Stars players and clips of memorable moments, making them accessible to all CCS fans.
The host of CityStars.tv is Chase Neidig. Chase comes to the City Stars from Plymouth, Indiana where he earned two degrees in both Communications and Journalism at Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana.
Chase played soccer at Grace, an NAIA school, and trained with PDL-side Kalamazoo Outrage and spent a summer traveling with USL-2 club Charlotte Eagles to the Czech Republic in 2007.
Other than his soccer background, Chase has a strong history of success in the sports media industry. He has free-lanced for ESPN, worked as a play-by-play commentator for the Boston Red Sox organization and was also a sports staff intern for a local Fox affiliate in South Bend, Indiana. Recently, he has coached a varsity boy's soccer team and was Athletic Director for another local private high school.
The Cleveland City Stars are excited to announce the launch of the new official home of City Stars videos. Now behind-the-scenes footage of the team is available to all City Stars fans online and for free.
CityStars.tv offers an inside look at the team in action, on and off the field, with player spotlights, candid interviews, match highlights, volunteer work footage, practice outtakes and road trip coverage. CityStars.tv houses online videos of your favorite City Stars players and clips of memorable moments, making them accessible to all CCS fans.
The host of CityStars.tv is Chase Neidig. Chase comes to the City Stars from Plymouth, Indiana where he earned two degrees in both Communications and Journalism at Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana.
Chase played soccer at Grace, an NAIA school, and trained with PDL-side Kalamazoo Outrage and spent a summer traveling with USL-2 club Charlotte Eagles to the Czech Republic in 2007.
Other than his soccer background, Chase has a strong history of success in the sports media industry. He has free-lanced for ESPN, worked as a play-by-play commentator for the Boston Red Sox organization and was also a sports staff intern for a local Fox affiliate in South Bend, Indiana. Recently, he has coached a varsity boy's soccer team and was Athletic Director for another local private high school.
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