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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Business of Journalism

1. October 20, 2011 02:53 PM

   NYT Paywall to Other Papers: “Copy Me!”

   There's no excuse for other publishers not to follow the Times's model

   By Ryan Chittum

   If The New York Times spun off its digital edition, it would be the tenth biggest paper in the country by circulation, with more paying readers than the Chicago Sun-Times and just behind the Chicago Tribune in circ. With its third quarter results out this morning, the Times further solidifies the case for its paywall strategy, which has brought it...

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2. May 16, 2011 08:25 PM

   Audit Notes: WSJ on Selling Access, Wall Street-Style; Yanked; Small Paywalls

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal has a very good page-one story on how Wall Street gives hedge funds access to key executives in exchange for their business. The lede is great: One day in early March, the phone lines of hedge-fund traders around London and New York suddenly lit up. A stock that many of them had placed hefty bets on—Pride...

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3. December 14, 2010 11:51 PM

   Audit Notes: Fallows on Orszag, The Atlantic in the Black, Google

   By Ryan Chittum

   Obama cabinet official Peter Orszag took a spin through the revolving door and ended up in a million-dollar sinecure at Citigroup, which is still part owned by the government. James Fallows has the best take on that, calling it "damaging and shocking": Shocking, in the structural rather than personal corruption that it illustrates. I believe Orszag (whom I do not...

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4. January 27, 2012 06:14 PM

   Audit Notes: Fukayama on the Crisis, WSJ on Exec Pay, Nonprofit News

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Browser has a great interview with Francis Fukayama on his five favorite financial-crisis books. Here he is on whether companies like Goldman Sachs were really capable of committing systematic fraud: It depends what you mean by systematic. Lloyd Blankfein doesn’t get up in the morning and say, “OK. How are we going to defraud people today?” but I do...

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5. June 27, 2012 02:37 AM

   Audit Notes: Gannett profits, Spiegel grilling, private equity

   By Ryan Chittum

   At least Gannett is optimistic about the next few years, The Wall Street Journal reports (emphasis mine): Gannett, publisher of USA Today and the largest U.S. newspaper network by circulation, reaffirmed last week it expects revenue to rise 2% to 4% annually and earnings growth to expand by 2015. Though its print advertising revenue fell 8.4% in the first quarter,...

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6. February 9, 2012 01:53 AM

   Audit Notes: Off the Hamster Wheel, The Dumb Money, iPad Newspapers

   By Ryan Chittum

   I like this Nieman Journalism Lab piece on how Salon hopped off the hamster wheel and saw site traffic increase dramatically. Salon's traffic jumped 40 percent even though it posted a third less than it had a year earlier. Adrienne LaFrance talks to Salon editor Kerry Lauerman: “I remember we had aggregated a Charlie Sheen story, and I saw it...

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7. June 9, 2011 07:49 PM

   Audit Notes: Paywall Protection, News Corp. Scandal Widens, Goldman and Libya

   By Ryan Chittum

   Ken Doctor has a good post over at Nieman Journalism Lab on the Walter Hussman Theorem, which is that you can stanch or even reverse the decline of your print paper by not giving it away free online. Another name for this is "common sense." Here's a terrific chart that Hussman put together on how his two papers (they're the...

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8. November 2, 2012 11:30 AM

   Audit Notes: Stray on Silver, the new-old Black, ‘rocketing’ from a low base

   Data-based journalism and its potential; an ex-mogul takes a flogging, etc.

   By Dean Starkman

   The best thing about the faux-controversy between New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan and political stats whiz Nate Silver is that it brought attention to what Silver actually does and how it differs from traditional journalism, in this case, what passes for political reporting. (If you missed it, Silver offered to bet MSNBC talking head Joe Scarborough on the...

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9. March 24, 2011 08:15 PM

   Audit Notes: Sunday Papers, Weymouth’s Payday, Ayn Rand

   By Ryan Chittum

   Ken Doctor has some interesting thoughts at the Nieman Journalism Lab on why The New York Times's paywall pricing steers print readers toward its Sunday edition: In fact, one impact could be to provide a boost to Sunday print circulation. Across the country, Sunday circ has declined at close to the rate of daily, though there’s a fair amount of...

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10. July 29, 2011 07:40 PM

    Audit Notes: What News Corp. Knew, Mulcaire Talks, FT Paywall Success

    By Ryan Chittum

    The New York Times has a big scoop tonight on the Murdoch hacking scandal, reporting that News International and its law firm knew back in 2007 that News of the World had bribed the police—and proceeded to cover it up. Both Harbottle & Lewis and News International took notice of the e-mails to and from Mr. Goodman containing those initial...

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11. June 22, 2011 01:42 AM

    Gannett’s Multimillionaires Regret to Inform 700 Workers of Their Layoffs

    Imagine if these six execs scrapped the "multi" and took low seven figures

    By Ryan Chittum

    Gannett says "we need to take further steps to align our costs with the current revenue trends," so it's laying off 700 employees in its newspaper division—about 2 percent of the company's total workforce. Poynter's Jim Romenesko is good to note that Bob Dickey, the guy who announced the "extremely difficult and painful decisions," got paid $3.4 million last year....

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12. April 18, 2011 04:24 PM

    Newspaper Turnaround Stories

    Give credit to the creditors and the courts before the CEOs

    By Ryan Chittum

    David Carr takes a look today at the fortunes of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which have stopped plummeting at least temporarily. It's nice to read some good news for a change about newspapers, especially ones that have bumped circulation, returned to profitability, and even sent profit-sharing checks to the newsroom. But I'm skeptical that much has changed and especially doubt...

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13. February 3, 2012 11:15 AM

    NYT Paywall Datapoints of the Day

    By Felix Salmon

    Ken Doctor has a very smart and interesting take on the news that the NYT now has 390,000 paying digital subscribers — plus another 16,000 at the Boston Globe. It’s unambiguously good news, on many fronts. First, and most importantly, digital ad revenues went up by 10% in the area of the business with the paywall, while plunging by 26%...

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14. June 12, 2012 10:32 AM

    Owens’s straw man army

    A commentator takes 10 swings at paywalls, and misses each time

    By Ryan Chittum

    Howard Owens's 5,200 word CJR riposte to David Simon on paywalls deserve a reply of its own (outside of its comments section, which at 126 and counting, you should take some time to read). Owens’s ideas are something of an artifact—conventional wisdom from a few years ago that time and new information have disproved. Let’s be clear: When it comes...

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15. June 1, 2012 01:31 PM

    Responding to Shirky on the Washington Post

    Transformation is required, and transformation takes investment

    By Ryan Chittum

    Thanks to Clay Shirky for responding to my piece on the financialization of the Washington Post Company, which during the financial crisis has handed more than a billion dollars back to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks while its newspaper crumbles. I've got a couple of thoughts in response. First, it's seriously good news to see an Internet thinker like...

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16. July 26, 2011 10:32 AM

    The New York Times Paywall Is Working

    By Felix Salmon

    Back in April, I was very skeptical that The New York Times would achieve its leaked goal of getting 300,000 paying digital subscribers, and I put my money where my mouth was, entering into a bet with John Gapper. John wouldn't bet me that the NYT would get to 300,000 within a year, so we pushed it out to two...

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17. March 20, 2012 03:34 PM

    The NYT Paywall Hums Along

    By Ryan Chittum

    The New York Times's paywall continues to outperform expectations at its first birthday. The paper says it now has 454,000 paying digital subscribers. Those numbers are increasing at a healthy clip. Here are the numbers the Times has reported in the last year: Second quarter: 281,000 Third quarter: 324,000 Fourth quarter: 406,000 390,000 First quarter 2012 (still underway): 454,000 You'd...

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18. February 28, 2012 05:53 PM

    Warren Buffett and Paywalls

    By Ryan Chittum

    The newspaper paywall now has a champion in some guy in Nebraska named Warren Buffett. Buffett, who just forked over $150 million for the Omaha World-Herald Company, has some wise words, however late, on newspaper business models: Stop giving away your product with one hand while charging good money for it with the other. Buffett tells CNBC's Becky Quick that...

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