Tag: media business

Christian Science Monitor goes Web-mostly

The only reason to publish an old-fashioned print newspaper in 2008 is because print advertising is more lucrative than Web advertising. Flip through the print edition of the Christian Science Monitor and you will see virtually no advertising. Therefore, the paper’s announcement today that it will switch to a mostly Web model next April makes eminent good sense.

The Monitor’s daily print edition is already little more than rumor. Where would you get one, other than stopping by a Christian Science Reading Room? Yet the Monitor’s Web site is popular enough to attract about 1.5 million visitors a month. (For purposes of comparison, Boston.com, the Globe’s Web site, attracts nearly 4.5 million visitors a month.)

The Monitor’s announcement makes it clear that the paper, founded by Mary Baker Eddy nearly 100 years ago, is in pretty tough financial shape — as is every newspaper operation. What the Monitor has that commercial papers lack is nonprofit ownership that can look at the long term — and pay a subsidy, as new-media consultant Ken Doctor notes, thus providing a vital bridge to the day that online revenues will start to cover the cost of news-gathering.

Those who insist on the printed word will be able to buy a weekly edition, which will allow the Monitor to engage in reverse-publishing — that is, in republishing content that appears online first. That’s what they’re doing in Madison, Wis., where the Capital Times earlier this week dropped its daily print edition and replaced it with two free tabloids filled with material from its Web site.

What’s happening at the Monitor had been long anticipated. If handled properly, it could be a positive development — and another big step in the paper’s (and the industry’s) evolution toward a model of putting the Web first.

GateHouse story in new CommonWealth

If you live in a suburb or exurb of Boston, or on Cape Cod, there’s a pretty good chance that you read a community newspaper published by GateHouse Media New England — maybe even two.

GateHouse, a national chain based in suburban Rochester, N.Y., owns more than 100 newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts, including such well-known dailies as the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, the Enterprise of Brockton and the MetroWest Daily News of Framingham.

I’ve got a story on GateHouse in the new edition of CommonWealth Magazine in which I find that though the financial condition of the company is dire, its top executives make a decent case that they’ve got the time and the resources to grow their way out of the current mess. And its online initiatives are interesting and worth keeping an eye on.

The question: Can the company’s chief executive in New England, Kirk Davis, eventually begin rebuilding his staff after two decades’ worth of cuts under three and in some cases four different owners, including Fidelity and Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell? Or is GateHouse, and the rest of the newspaper industry, doomed to keep shrinking?

One problem is that the economic outlook is considerably worse than it was in early September, when I was wrapping up my reporting and writing the story. Last Friday, the Boston Herald ran a report that seven editorial employees had lost their jobs at MetroWest and the Milford Daily News. Well-informed buzz within the company suggests that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

In addition, the New York Stock Exchange this week, in a long-anticipated step, announced that it will delist GateHouse’s stock, which is essentially worthless. And a major investor is getting out.

Still, the principal on GateHouse’s enormous debt is not due until 2014, and its cash flow has been decent. Whether that will continue as we move into what may be a deep recession remains to be seen.

Presses stop, Herald continues

Boston Herald columnist Peter Gelzinis weighs in with a nice take on the end of an era, as the paper’s ancient presses grind to a halt. Starting tomorrow, the printing of the Herald will be outsourced to a plant in Chicopee.

Herald reporter Jay Fitzgerald says goodbye to the presses on his blog.

Just because this is a smart move doesn’t mean there isn’t a certain sadness associated with it, especially for the employees who’ve lost their jobs.

About 10 years ago, publisher Pat Purcell gave me a tour of the subterranean presses. Back then, he wanted to let people know that the Herald wasn’t moving because, among other things, it would be too difficult to relocate what was a significant manufacturing operation.

But times have changed. No doubt within a year or two, the Herald, shorn of its presses, will have moved to a much smaller space.

Time out on OT

The Boston Globe keeps adding to its roster of niche publications, which is smart. It plans to charge 50 cents for its new sports weekly, OT, which may not be so smart.

I could see something like OT being a howling success with advertisers if it were freely available. But I’m not sure people are going to lay out money for sports news that is not substantially different from what’s on the Web — even if OT is better written and more insightful, which it may well be with the likes of Charlie Pierce and Tony Massarotti writing for it.

We’ll see.

Paying for the news

Wise words from Troy Warren, circulation manager at the Bowling Green Daily News:

The news has always been free. Advertising has paid for the news. Circulation rates cover the cost of delivering the newspaper, so people have been paying us for delivery, not for the news.

I know there are still people who believe everything in the newspaper business will be all right once they can start charging folks for reading their Web sites. It’s not going to happen, and Warren explains why it shouldn’t.

At newspapers, the slashing continues

Budget-slashing at newspapers continues, both locally and nationally.

At the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, 36 positions are being cut and zoned local editions are being eliminated, according to the Daily Worcesteria, which adds: “This is the journalistic equivalent of bunkering in at the last, strongest point and abandoning the outposts.”

Ironically, the Daily Worcesteria is part of Worcester Magazine, which is shedding positions following an ownership change, reports the, uh, Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

The T&G, as you probably know, is owned by the New York Times Co., whose New England Newspaper Group (the T&G, the Boston Globe and Boston.com) suffered a 24.5 percent loss in advertising revenue in July as compared to the same month in 2007.

Things are at least as grim on the North Shore and in the Merrimack Valley, as CNHI, the corporate owner of the Eagle-Tribune papers, announced this week that it is eliminating 52 jobs, writes Boston Herald media reporter Jessica Heslam. The chain comprises the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, the Daily News of Newburyport, the Salem News and the Gloucester Daily Times.

And it’s no better elsewhere. Alan Mutter, who writes the Newsosaur blog, tells us today that newspaper revenues are down $3 billion over the first six months of 2008, bringing revenues to their lowest level in a dozen years.

Even online revenues are slipping, Mutter says, which shows that what’s happening now has as much to do with the economic recession as it does with the stampede from print to the Web.

A world without editors

Jeff Jarvis argues in his Guardian column that editors are becoming obsolete. These days, he says, we write first and edit later, often in response to what our readers tell us.

The Jarvis system works for a certain type of journalism (mainly short, bloggy-type stuff like this), but it wouldn’t work for everything. I can’t imagine a major investigative series coming together without deep involvement on the part of skilled editors. Then again, that’s the sort of journalism most endangered in the current environment.

And it would seem to me that an editor whose intervention prevented a libel suit has just covered her salary for the next five years.

A boost for Internet radio

This is why you shouldn’t worry about the FCC’s decision to allow the merger of XM and Sirius — or, for that matter, why you’ll only have to live with the horrendous state of chain-owned commercial radio for a few more years.

Once it’s possible to have low-cost, reliable WiFi in your car, someone will start offering Internet car radios. And that will mark the end of the radio business as we know it.

Gordon Edes to leave the Globe

Alert Media Nation reader O-Fish-L reports that Boston Globe baseball writer Gordon Edes’ on-again, off-again move to Yahoo Sports is on again. (Via Scott’s Shots, which has some quotes from Edes.) Thus we see the continuation of a trend, as sportswriters flock to sports outlets.

I like Edes a lot, but I won’t miss him — as long as I remember to bookmark Yahoo’s Major League Baseball page, that is.

Apparently there was some unpleasantness over Edes’ departure. As I understand it, Edes tried to take the buyout the Globe was offering, but management refused on the grounds that Edes was too valuable. (He was.) So now he’s leaving anyway, with the fate of his buyout reportedly subject to an appeal.

Photo of Edes (cc) by ADM, and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.