The decision by troubled media company Mecom to sell its prize German assets is a golden opportunity to abandon reckless cutbacks and put quality journalism back on the media agenda, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) has said. Mecom, a transnational giant based in Britain and funded by investment bankers, has bought up hundreds of newspaper titles across Europe over the past few years...
The Washington Post named has two new managing editors with joint responsibility for its print and online editions, the paper reported. Elizabeth Spayd, 50, editor of washingtonpost.com, and Raju Narisetti, 42, founder editor of Indian newspaper Mint and former deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, will report to Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli. In a statement, the newspaper...
UK-based European newspaper owner, Mecom, has sold its titles in Germany to one of that country's oldest publishers for €152m ($204m), Financial Times has reported. The company, which is chaired by David Montgomery, former chief executive of the Mirror Group, is burdened with net debt of about €650m and has been in danger of breaching its banking covenants. It should, however, scrape through the...
A group of investors, led by Vinay Chhajlani, CEO of Webdunia.com India Pvt Ltd, and Jehangir S Pocha, former editor of Businessworld, has bought INX News, the company that runs English news channel NewsX. Chhajlani and Pocha have formed a company called Indi Media for the purpose. Business Standard, quoting industry sources, pegged the deal at Rs 50 crore. Commenting on the sale, Indrani Mukerjea...
Sun-Times Media Group Inc plans to close 12 weekly newspapers in suburban Chicago and has asked its union employees to take a cut in compensation as part of cost-cutting measures brought on by declining advertising revenue, the Associated Press (AP) has eported. The company, which publishes the Chicago-Sun Times, also wants to lay off up to 15 employees in suburban newsrooms, a union official told...
Hearst Corp, one of the largest US publishers, is seeking a buyer for its Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper within 60 days after losing $14 million last year amid dwindling circulation and advertising revenue, according to news reports. The privately held magazine and newspaper publishing company will seek a buyer for the 145-year-old daily newspaper, as well as its interest in a joint...
Philip Bennett, the Washington Post's managing editor, is stepping down this week after four years as the paper's second-ranking news executive, the paper reported. Bennett was a candidate to be executive editor after Leonard Downie Jr announced that he was leaving last spring after 17 years in the job. But in July, Post publisher Katharine Weymouth chose Brauchli, less than three months after...
The biggest news industry story of 2008 in the US, expectedly, is about job cuts, says leading industry magzine Editor & Publisher. The US Department of Labour estimates that around 21,000 newspaper industry jobs disappeared this year. E&P's 'Top Ten Newspaper Industry Stories of the Year', listed by Senior Editor Joe Strupp are as follows: [ Link] Record Job Cuts: Three years ago, this was the...
Northern Ireland's only Irish language daily newspaper is closing down. West Belfast-based La Nua (New Day) will shut at the end of the year after more than two decades in production because official funding has been withdrawn, its managing director said. Mairtin O Muilleoir added that a proposal to provide a service online at reduced cost had been rejected by all-Ireland sponsoring body Foras na...
The New York Times will launch an 'Instant Op-Ed' feature next month that will allow the paper's website to post immediate expert viewpoints on breaking news. "Our Op-Ed now is very rapid response, but it is at the most the next day," Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal told Editor & Publisher. "We are looking at a way to take advantage of the expandability of the Internet, the back and forth...
