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Mixed Media

Mixed Media

by Jeff Bercovici

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Apr 27 09 10:02am EDT

Conde Nast Closing 'Portfolio'

For nearly two years I've been covering the media industry's bad news on this blog, including some that's hit very close to home. Now it hits closer still: Condé Nast Portfolio is closing. Our editor in chief, Joanne Lipman, just broke the news to staff, saying the decision had been made "because of financial reasons at Advance," Condé Nast's parent company. "It's not anything that the company wanted to do." She said she was informed by Condé Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr. this morning of the decision ... Continue


Apr 27 09 9:32am EDT

Newspaper Circ: 'WSJ' Gains as 'NY Post' Tumbles

Rupert Murdoch may be losing the tabloid war, but he suddenly has a pretty good comeback next time someone accuses him of ruining The Wall Street Journal. If I'm making such a hash of it, he could say, why is it the only big newspaper in America that's growing? Okay, "growing" might be an overstatement. But according to the latest semi-annual report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Journal is alone among the top 25 U.S. newspapers in reporting higher weekday circulation for the six months ending March 31, 2009, than for the same period a year earlier ... Continue


Apr 27 09 8:55am EDT

Idle Chatter: The Prognosis for Newspapers, more

-Newspapers are even more screwed than the auto industry: "Even if some publishers wiped out all their debt, they would still be creating a product with high fixed costs and declining revenue, as readers and advertisers migrate to the Internet. That's why closing the presses may be a more viable option than a Chapter 11-style restructuring." [Breakingviews on NYT] -Maureen Dowd continues to play West Coast media reporter. I say if it keeps her from writing about Michelle Obama's arms, more power to her. [NYT] -Facebook is opening up the information in its users news streams to third-party application developers. [WSJ] -Coca-Cola Co. wants to change the way advertising agencies get paid; it's pushing for an industry-wide embrace of performance-based compensation, under which agencies will only get maximum payouts if the campaigns they create hit certain effectiveness targets. [Ad Age]. □


Apr 24 09 4:01pm EDT

Late Breaks: MySpace, NYT, 'New York'

-Former Facebook executive Owen van Natta is the new CEO of MySpace. [WSJ] -The New York Times Company Foundation has suspended new grant awards and matching gifts. [AP] -New York magazine has canceled two summer issues to save money. [Folio]. □


Apr 24 09 4:00pm EDT

Nostalgia, Entitlement and Murdoch's 'Journal'

Is practicing the more rarefied forms of journalism a right or a privilege? I'd say a privilege, but the way some people talk about the evolution of The Wall Street Journal since Rupert Murdoch bought it shows they take the other view. Check out Scott Sherman's 5,000-worder in The Nation to see what I'm talking about. Although Sherman interviewed plenty of people who think the Journal is as good as it was before Dec. 2007, or even better, he still can't shake the nagging sense that a terrible injustice has been committed. "Murdoch has not corrupted the Journal," he concedes, grudgingly. But, just as damnably, "he has smothered it and made it ordinary." Just what manner of smothering are we talking about? In brief, Murdoch has cut back somewhat, though not drastically, on long features; favored, among the features that remain, those that have some connection to the news of the day; instructed reporters to generate more scoops; and devoted more of the paper's space to news. More news in a newspaper? The fiend! ... Continue


Apr 24 09 12:44pm EDT

Huffpo's Lerer on the 'New and Better' Journalism

Huffington Post co-founder and chairman Kenneth Lerer delivered a talk to students at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism last night. Portfolio.com's Alexandra Fenwick, a student at the school, was there. Here's her report. HuffPo co-founder Ken Lerer says that newspaper publishers will be making a "huge mistake" if they put up pay walls around their content, but concedes that mass layoffs are "inevitable" in the journalism of the future, which he decrees will be lived online. Lerer told journalists to stop whining and get with the digital revolution already at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism last night, where he delivered the school's annual Hearst New Media Lecture to a chorus of real-time Tweets accompanying a simultaneous live-video feed of his speech. "Ubiquity is the new exclusivity," he said ... Continue


Apr 24 09 12:33pm EDT

Ailes Heats Up Cold Spring with Newspaper War

How much does Roger Ailes love business bloodsport? Enough that, having evidently bored of trouncing CNN and MSNBC in the cable-news rating race, he's trying to wage a newspaper war in New York's sleepy Putnam County. As I've reported before, Ailes has over the past year acquired two weekly newspapers, the Putnam County News & Recorder and the Putnam County Courier, installing his wife, Elizabeth, as publisher of both. This week, the News & Recorder went after its chief competition, the Gannett-owned Journal News, with a populist-tinged broadside that will be familiar to anyone who's followed Fox News's persecution of GE and The New York Times ... Continue


Apr 24 09 10:24am EDT

Happy Friday. Now Watch This.

I'm not even going to bother to explain this (but if you need explanation, read this New York Observer story). It's the best thing since Lil' O'Reilly. . □


Apr 24 09 8:50am EDT

Idle Chatter: NPR Cutbacks, Jon Meacham, more

-NPR is laying off more employees -- although no one in programming this time -- and also mandating company-wide furloughs, benefit cuts and a freeze on merit raises. [WaPo] -Randi Rhodes, the former Air America host who was suspended from that network after calling Hillary Clinton "a big fucking whore" in a comedy routine, has signed on with Premiere Radio Networks, the on-air home to Rush Limbaugh. [WSJ] -Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, who this week won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Andrew Jackson, is working on a new book about George H.W. Bush. [NYP] -Gawker is on a mission to ambush Jesse Watters, the O'Reilly Factor producer who handles the show's ambush interviews. [Gawker]. □


Apr 23 09 5:59pm EDT

Late Breaks: Twitter and the 'Times,' more

-Some guy thinks The New York Times Co., which doesn't make enough money, can save its bacon by buying Twitter, which makes no money. I think some guy needs to go back to math school. [HBR] -New York Observer editor Peter Kaplan, who's leaving the paper after 15 years, may land in the No. 2 job at Condé Nast Traveler. [WWD] -People now spend more time on Facebook than the do using web-based email. [The Deal]. □


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