Azeem Azhar, entrepeneur and former Internet correspondent for The Economist, wrote in The Guardian last week, “I think that today is the best time in four years to launch a business.” Read why. Now UK managing director of 20six, a blogging company,…
Several UK and Scandinavian publishers have allied to set standards for European online classified ads in regional newspapers. Called FinnTech, the alliance includes Schibsted of Norway and the UK publishing groups Associated New Media, Guardian Media, Newsquest Media, Northcliffe Newspapers, and Trinity…
London-based Emap, publisher of diverse magazines such as FHM, Heat, Angling Times, and Pleine Vie, has announced that in 2002 its digital subsidiary earned an annual profit for the first time —
Is the newspaper industry determined to convince itself that charging for access to its online content is a good idea? To reach that conclusion, it seems determined to overlook all facts, data, and logic about the subject. For example, here is the…
PEPCWorldwide, whose satellite-connected vending boxes can on-demand print any of 119 daily newspapers from 48 countries, is rebranding itself as Satellite Newspapers. Steve Mannen, CEO of the Dutch company, explains, “This new easy-to-remember name reflects our company’s focus on the seamless distribution…
There’s an interesting article in American Journalism Review about whether or not newspapers should implement user registration and/or charge for online content. Registration makes sense (hello, did anyone remember why NYtimes.com announced in 1995 why it implementing registration?). But charging for all…
We categorically agree with this interesting quote from Slate.com Editor-in-Chief Jacob Weisberg in a New York Times‘ story (free registration required) about his site making a quarterly profit: “As it turns out, e-mail was the killer application on the Web.”
David Astor, syndication columnist for Editor & Publisher Magazine, has written a column [which unfortunately might by now be hidden behind VNU’s paid archive wall] about how My Comics Page gained 10,000 new paid subscribers this spring. MCP now serves 25,000 paid…
The Times of London and the Daily Telegraph, competitors, are the latest UK dailies to begin publishing digital editions. What’s notable about these large (weekday print circulations ranging from 500,000 to 2 million) dailies publishing digital editions is that the Audit Bureau…
Covering the IFRA Online Trend conference earlier this month in Amsterdam, our friend Rafat Ali notes the interesting ‘Instant News’ project by Sweden’s Sdysvenska Daglbadet newspaper. It involves instant delivery of news through whatever electronic media the user wants at any pre-designated…
Today’s
While researching international online privacy issues for a client today, I happened across the Center for Democracy & Technology‘s fairly comprehensive Guide to Online Privacy. I initially came across it while looking for any updates to the U.S. Commerce Department’s ‘Safe Harbor’…
The behavioral psychologist Abraham Maslow once noted, “When your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” Unicast ? a New York online advertising technology firm whose name infers anything but interactivity ? today unveiled what might be…
In 1998, we formulated a Philosophy of New Media. This past week, we took time out from this Web log (and other things) to reformat its pages. Not only does this Philosophy point out the misnomers and misperceptions that currently plague most…
Perhaps no story portrays the newspaper industry’s current woes as well as this: On Monday, Kmart Corporation was named the Best Overall in the Newspaper Association of America’s third annual Retailer of the Year awards competition. The following day, Kmart filed for…
According to Tom Wolfe‘s book, The Right Stuffto screw the pooch was a slang phrase that test pilots in the California desert used during the 1950s to describe a pilot who died in the wreckage of his plane. News last week that…
We’ve long been a fan of REASON Magazine Editor Virginia Postrel, who also is one of four experts who takes turns writing the Economic Scene column in The New York Times Business Section. Here are two reasons why we like her: In…
“To borrow from the tagline of the new blockbuster film Lord of the Rings, it may be the one Web page that binds them all. But did it united them in darkness?” That’s is how CBS MarketWatch leads a story claiming that…
Last month, the UBS Warburg Pincus Media Conference saw a rather frank and bleak slide presentation (9.5-megabytes in size) from the Newspaper Association of America’s Vice President of Market Analysis Jim Conaghan with forecasts for 2002. Online publishers can incidentally take some…
In mid-December, Forrester Research issued a report entitled Guides Redefine Mass Media that states, “Media companies in every sector face a collapse of their distribution control – and distribution control is what maintains media industry profits. Industry troubles have only begun.” Mass…