Archives 2005-1014: News
Thomson Corp. is essentially getting out of the newspaper business altogether. The New York Times Co. has put four of its dailies up for sale. Journal Register Co. is selling five. Early last year, Donrey Media spun off 10 of its papers to a partnership controlled by another company. Gannett Co. has sold off 11 dailies over the last three years, and Hollinger International sold 92 over the last two. Most recently, of course, the Chandler family decided to give up to the Tribune Co. control of... MORE
EVER SINCE THE New York Times Co. announced in late January it would attempt to cash in on the Web investment craze by offering stock in Times Digital Media in an initial public offering, it has been the talk of the industry. The Times, according to Reuters, could raise up to $100 million from new stockholders by creating a "tracking stock" for Times Digital Media. A tracking stock is one that trades separately from shares of the parent company, reflecting the performance of a particular... MORE
IT BEGINS SLOWLY IN October and November and picks up steam in December. At newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations across the country, a designated person begins tracking down answers to a series of questions. Are the rules the same as last year? Is the deadline the same? Any new categories? Is the prize still $1,000, or has it gone up? By January, life becomes insane. Twelve-hour days, working weekends, hiring temporary employees to help with staggering amounts of paperwork. News... MORE
EACH DAY, the Washington Post's closely guarded news budget is e-mailed across country at 2 p.m. EST to three editors at MSNBC.com's headquarters within the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. The Post sends not only a rundown of what's slated for the following day's edition, but also a list of other Post stories ready to go or in the works. The Washington Post sharing its trade secrets with the competition? "Everyone is in total understanding at MSNBC.com of the importance of the Post's... MORE
LIKE EVERY would-be entrepreneur, Nick Denton had an idea that kept him up late at night. Finally, tired of the usual 9-to-5, Denton quit his job two years ago and followed the herds into cyberspace. At 33, he's not looking back. "I only wish I had done this sooner, says Denton, an affable Brit. Of course he does. By the time you read this, Denton expects to have sold another chunk of his San Francisco-based company, Moreover.com, to venture capitalists. Projected selling price: somewhere... MORE
One of the dreams of the Internet was that it would allow almost anyone to become a publisher. It's debatable whether or not that dream will ever be meaningfully realized, but it certainly seems that anyone who ever wanted to be a media critic can now do it easily online. There are hundreds, and probably thousands of sites on the Internet that republish mainstream media snippets, often with comment and analysis. The better known Webzines, such as Slate and Salon, approach the task with familiar... MORE
Ten years to the day after Time and Warner merged and shocked corporate America, Steve Case, head of AOL, and Gerald Levin, head of Time Warner, announced a blockbuster plan to join forces. Their new corporate title--AOL Time Warner--truly reflects the ascendancy of the Internet and the beginning of a new economic era for the TV industry. Less than two weeks into the new millennium, AOL bet its considerable corporate wealth on something we might call Internet-TV by buying Time Warner, the... MORE
Walter Isaacson awoke early at his home in Bronxville, New York, fifteen miles north of Manhattan in Westchester County. Idly, the editor of Time flipped on an all-news radio station. That's when he learned that his seventy-seven-year-old magazine, and indeed all of Time Warner -- the world's biggest media company -- was being enfolded in the embrace of fifteen-year-old America Online, the arriviste 22-million-subscriber gateway to the Internet. Fortune's top editor, John Huey, got the word... MORE
During the first half of the century just ended, criticism of journalism was relatively simple and well-defined. It meant taking on the newspapers, which in those days presented a fat, inviting target, burdened as many of them were with sensationalism and sacred cows. Will Irwin muckraked the newspaper press as early as 1911. Upton Sinclair used an artifact of prostitution, The Brass Check, as the title for his 1920 exposé of press malpractice. That same year Walter Lippmann's Liberty and the... MORE
CPJ is deeply concerned about the actions taken last week by a customs official in Calcutta to censor the 21 February 2000 edition of "Time", an international weekly newsmagazine. On 16 February, customs agents at the Calcutta airport blocked the distribution of 3,000 issues of "Time" magazine because they contained a one-page interview with Gopal Godse, the brother of Mohandas Gandhi's assassin, Nathuram Godse. In a letter to "Time"'s Indian distributor dated 17 February, a customs officer... MORE
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