Media Industry Archive

Whether you agree with it or not, one thing that’s always been impressive about Major League Baseball is its almost authoritarian control of its content and brand. While other content providers have given the store away, MLB has actually made it difficult to consume its content except through official channels — for instance, by pulling unauthorized videos off of YouTube. Now, with...

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It’s a sign of our times when a small company announces on its blog that it’s been acquired by a huge company, and then a New York Times blogger pushes that news out to the large audience always hungry for tech news online, especially when the way I find out about all of this is via a virtual community I recently joined that circulates info via a listserv on intellectual property...

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Twenty-three of the nation’s top 25 daily newspapers, as measured by weekday circulation, lost readers during the past year ending in March, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). The only newspaper to not drop in circulation was the Wall Street Journal, which recorded a very modest 0.61 percent growth. (The Denver Post added some readers, but only due to the Rocky Mountain...

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With the closing today of Condé Nast Portfolio, it’s worth taking a moment to question whether the magazine — even if it will be officially classified as a victim of the recession —  was ever a good idea in the first place. Check out this description of what the magazine promised to deliver from Amazon, and tell me whether other business magazines couldn’t claim the same...

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Portfolio to close — Conde Nast has announced the closure of Portfolio magazine. Portfolio, which was launched in 2007 to cover business, will cease publication immediately. The magazine had a circulation of 415,000 but saw ad pages decrease 60 percent in the first quarter. Last month’s issue was the thinnest magazine ever published by Conde Nast. Late last year, Portfolio trimmed...

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The Wall Street Journal says that Facebook will announce later today that it will “open up core parts of its sites” to third-party developers (subscription required). If you look at how third-party development has transformed things like the iPhone and Twitter, it’s hard to underestimate how important this will be in supercharging Facebook, which, of course, is supercharged...

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There’s been so much bad news about The New York Times lately that the paper’s  five Pulitzer Prizes this month almost felt like sympathy notes sent over by the judges. Or, as one of my friends wagged, “Let’s see, that was, what, $12-14 million in losses per prize?” She was referring of course, to the massive fall in quarterly revenue we reported on earlier this...

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New York City This massive city is home to many things, one of which, of course, is the domestic book publishing industry. Any time you spend a few days here, then, it’s inevitable that, by design or chance, the current state of book publishing will come up in conversations, polite or not. These days, it is fair to say, the largest publishers are running scared.  Joanne Kaufman wrote a...

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Last week, like many of you, I was somewhat obsessed with the sheer, jaw-dropping shock of seeing the unassuming Susan Boyle become an overnight singing sensation. But this week, I’ve been wondering where the announcement is, from some U.S. TV net or another, that it is picking up the rest of the season of “Britain’s Got Talent.” I’m still waiting. Instead,...

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Star Tribune agrees to cuts — The union representing the newsroom of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and management have agreed, in principle, to several cuts. The two sides met this morning and settled on $1.7 million in compensation cuts which include furloughs, reduced severance and pension freezes. Management had initially moved to end seniority and will instead get to protect a handful...

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