The 'Wall Street Journal': Now Worth 38 Cents @1:29 PM
In 2002, the Wall Street Journal was $189 a month. (That's because you got it at your desk and your company paid for it.) It's never been that expensive on the newsstand, at least—though they raised their newsstand price from $1 to $1.50 in July, 2007. It charges $2 a week—or $1, for subscribers—to read the paper on mobile devices. Or, in this new wonderful era, you could get all six issues delivered each week, for $9.99 a month. For, you know, basically 38 cents an issue. 4
Sometimes people wish for things to come true. 13
By the Numbers: The McSweeney's 'San Francisco Panorama' Experiment @2:25 PM
Last week, McSweeney's published their gorgeous, 320-page, one-shot newspaper, the San Francisco Panorama. We have not yet gotten our hands on one, here on the other coast, but the reports were all glowing, from the feature in the LA Times to the New York Times live-blogging its distribution. "The Panorama," McSweeney's honcho Dave Eggers emailed the Times, "is just a reminder that readers will be more likely to pay for the physical paper if they're given something very different than what we get on the Internet." The Panorama said its total editorial costs were $80,000, which is almost exactly one-third of the total production costs. It cost $111,000 just to print 23,000 issues; the total cost, of each issue, including editorial, was $7.98. The production time was about nine months. There were seven full-time staff members, and it was published by Oscar Villalon, the former editor of the San Francisco Chronicle's book section, who took that newspaper's buyout last fall. READ MORE 64
The Future: When the Editors Hire the Publishers @10:35 AM
At a bar last night, I was talking to someone smart who made an excellent point: that a very quiet, revolutionary act in the history of publishing had just taken place. (This person compared this moment to Gutenberg, which might be a little bit far afield but not that far off!) That is that Joshua Micah Marshall is hiring a publisher for Talking Points Memo, the blog he started all on his own in 2000, a bit before all the warbloggers like Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Reynolds came onto the Internet, and four years before Michelle Malkin. (Oh yes, how soon we forget.) My friend's point was: here is an editor, who built and owns his publication, who is now going to be the editor-owner, who will employ the publisher. For those of you who have worked at any sort of publication, the implications of this are staggering. READ MORE 18
How To Make It On The Internet, Explained! @3:31 PM
This in-house LA Times memo explains how to make it on the Internet. Two big stories blew away some previous benchmarks, it sounds like. One was the story about Obama bowing in Japan! That is because it was in 48pt type on Drudge, and was the biggest traffic day for the paper's Top of the Ticket blog ever, which covers, like Obama and stuff. Fancy that. The other traffic winner was about a bunch of local sports on Saturday. The future of newspapering, according to Tony Pierce, the LAT's blog editor? "So yes you should post on weekends. Yes you should post in the middle of the night." 21
How Are Newspapers Reporting on Newspaper Circulation? @12:40 PM
There were two trends I noticed while compiling yesterday's chart of the last two decades of newspaper circulation trends. I relied upon the New York Times for data, and one trend I found there was that, in general, over the last 16 years, reporting the actual number of newspapers circulated grew and then radically diminished. Instead, most often, the data given was year-over-year percentage changes, or other far less specific metrics. In today's paper, Richard Perez-Pena nicely reports both percentages and actual numbers for 7 papers. But back in this story from April, actual numbers are only given for one paper—the Times itself. The other trend—well, it is largely a flat-line trend!—was the New York Times headlines themselves. Very rarely did media reporters attach themselves to a narrative such as the now-moot Denver newspaper battle, or the nearly-moot New York tabloid battle. Mostly, well…. READ MORE 2
A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades @1:40 PM
Every six months, the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases data about newspapers and how many people subscribe to them. And then everyone writes a story about how some newspapers declined some amount over the year previous. Well, that's no way to look at data! It's confusing—and it obscures larger trends. So we've taken chunks of data for the major newspapers, going back to 1990, and graphed it, so you can see what's actually happened to newspaper circulation. (We excluded USA Today, because we don't care about it. If you're in a hotel? You're reading it now. That's nice.) READ MORE 43
Nick Denton: "A few cases recently where we've thought *way* too much before publishing." @9:40 AM
Today is that awesome panel at this magazine media thingy, at which Awl pals Nick Denton and Simon Dumenco will tell you what to do with your magazine. It is a great time to do this for two reasons: one of which is that, overnight, Gawker just digested and extruded Twitter in some weird hashtaggy way. And also, this Gawker memo from the other day! Subject line: "We're not running a newspaper."
READ MORE 73
'Desi Talk': Probably New York's Greatest Newspaper @11:20 AM
The other night I was on the F train, which was running as the E train, annoyingly. I was on my way back from a long hot night of Rock Band in Brooklyn, and I desperately needed something to read. But the only newspaper on the train was a copy of Desi Talk. And? What a wonderful newspaper! READ MORE 14
'Boston Globe' Announces New Digital Reader Application Thing! @10:55 AM
OH GOD. The Boston Globe just rolled out their Globe Reader! It appears to be a computer application available for print subscribers to the paper, so they can now get a "daily" download of Boston Globe content. It's like a PDF, but with links, and with its own application! I don't know how to squeeze it onto my iPhone! This is humiliatingly painful. Do watch the video (sorry, it's not embeddable, because GOD FORBID). It's like their shiny new product comes with a built-in keyboard cat to play the Globe off the world stage. Also, the New York Times announced today a new licensing plan—now they'll sell your own news publication their news stories that have not yet been printed in their physical paper. Revolution! I am being mean because all of this makes me sad. 11
TMZ and Michael Jackson: The World Won't Listen @10:11 AM
Not only will we not be able to see Sasha Baron Cohen's "interview" with Latoya Jackson in Bruno, and not only will we never find out what "stage move" he was feverishly creating "to succeed his famous 'moonwalk,'" (crueler Awl staffers than I suggest "the Demerol flop"), there are other, sadder concerns. Like, when will America learn to respect TMZ? READ MORE 20
This Day In History: June 19, 1909 @9:54 AM
From the Penny Illustrated Paper, deep in the bowels of the British Library, comes this 100-year-old nugget about the relations between the classes. READ MORE 3
The Bloggers Are At War With The Times (In Their Minds) @9:32 AM
Oh boy. A small New York Times column has dared to say that "For some blogs, rumors are their stock in trade." Now the usual suspects are freaking out! About.com consultant (and author!) Jeff Jarvis: "We who publish must learn how to say what we don't know at least as well as we say what we know." That part actually doesn't address the column at all, which is about people publishing things they don't believe to be true and never really saying so. (The two blogs in question, in this case, are Techcrunch and Valleywag, which have always been openly devoted to rumors and have often had unbelievably thin relationships with factual causation and correlation.) I can't help but think I don't want to be on either side of this and I probably don't have to be if I ignore it from here on out. 4
Harvard '09ers To Graduate Into Steaming Pile Of NOTHINGNESS @9:21 AM
Our favorite graduating Harvard senior (yes, we have such things!), Sam Jacobs, describes his non-entry into the working world after four years of working on The Crimson: "I was two days away from handing in my thesis, and the screen of my phone lit up. Just as I planned, and what good timing. A 212 area code. Even though the past year has bruised New York City, the number rang with promise. A person in a New York office building was calling me. The digits ended in a round number. Probably a very big office building. An important person who worked in a big Manhattan office building wanted to talk. This person could see great stretches of earth and sky from where he sat, and surveying all that landscape, had wisely decided to call me." It doesn't have a happy ending. 21
There Oughta Be A German Word For This! @9:45 AM
While reading the nearly 9000-word account of the death of the Rocky Mountain News in the Denver magazine 5280, I came across the following literary device used to describe the newspapers situation. This, like many things, surely requires a handy (and possibly faux) German name! READ MORE 18
The News Is Its Delivery Vehicle @3:55 PM
As a sort of appendix to thoughts about the New York Times and Carlos Slim, there are also these excellent thoughts about what makes a tabloid newspaper a news operation. A news product is, in many ways, made of its own delivery vehicle—and this is a point that's obvious to a man who, for example, essentially gave away cellphones to millions of people to then charge them for cell phone service. Hello!
The basic circumstances that may make a story impossible to put on the cover of your newspaper on a given morning are not in the control of the editors: How is the paper distributed? When does it have to reach trucks/planes to get that distribution? When does printing have to start for the paper to reach the trucks?
Horrifying Seattle PI Web Launch Party Astounds @10:30 AM
This account of the launch party for SeattlePI.com, which is the website that used to be a newspaper in Seattle, is so horrifying. For just one thing, it's disturbing to find out that the editor of their site's most popular blog ("by a factor of 10") has a day job! What the fuck! They can't pay him a living wage? (Secondarily, his day job is installing software for a military contractor. Which means he works for Skynet.) Anyway, everything else about this party is so much worse! 6
Nerd Shamed By Newspaper @10:30 AM
This is the meanest picture ever published of someone in a newspaper ever. Particularly as it comes with the text "Students at Utah's Neumont University tend to be computer whizzes but social fizzles." 15
Explained: The 'Times' Has Two Pay Website Models @9:25 AM
Here are the two ways that the New York Times is considering making money off their website, explained! This is gonna be fun/sad to watch. 6
Richard Johnson Sad About Internet @7:54 AM
Long-time Page Six editor Richard Johnson says in a new interview that he is sad that you youngs hate newspapers: "The younger people just never developed the habit. They have other habits: using computers and using cell phones. A lot of people grow up now never touching a newspaper. They're read the content, but they're getting it from these parasitical news aggregation sites." Of course we know that this is just another attack on Michael Wolff's website Newser!* *Idea only valid inside Michael Wolff's crazy brain. 1
News Judgment Gets Meta @12:06 PM
Are TV reporters in denial about the troubles their industry is facing, or are they just less self-involved than print media? 1
Can There Be Wage Growth Erosion If Wages Barely Grew? @9:23 AM
It's hard to pick a good headline when you run a newspaper! For instance, the Washington Post this weekend originally went with "Wage Growth Is Eroding As Firms Rush To Slim Down" for a story about trombonists being forced out of work for a month this year. Oh, and about how one-third of American households have had their pay or hours cut in the last couple months. But online? The paper goes with is "U.S. Workers' Wages Stagnate As Firms Rush to Slash Costs." Which is a good thing, as its hard to imagine the idea of "wage growth erosion" in fields where wages really haven't grown! 2
Malcom Gladwell Now Doing Old Jackie Mason Routines @11:27 AM
Yesterday was tech day at the National Association of Broadcasters' big convention in Las Vegas, and writer Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, The Tipping Point, Outliers, This Theory Will Appeal To You Because It Is Based On Common Sense: Now Pay Me) was there for a conversation. Discussing the decline of newspapers, he suggested a "thought experiment… what if we had started with everything online and paper was only invented like five years ago?"
That is a provocative theory! I wonder why no one has thought of it before. 10
Washington Post Memo About Editing Could Use An Edit @11:08 AM
Your shit is so busted.
From the Washington Post's memo about "restructuring," which is really apparently about less editing happening faster, including stories being managed on a "universal desk" instead of, say, a desk that is familiar with and devoted to the topics at hand: "Together with the executive editor, the managing editors and the deputy managing editor, these people will form the core leadership of them newsroom." Get me the universal copy desk! 0
Who doesn't love a good innovation? @8:03 AM
"The theme this year is innovation, a solid choice that nonetheless made some attendees wish the calendar said 1999, not 2009." Publishers attending the Newspaper Association of America's San Diego convention are all out of deck chairs to rearrange. 0
