Are new online business models just substituting “pennies for dollars” for media owners? That was the woeful conclusion of Mort Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News and US News and World Report, according to the detailed minutes of a recent inquiry into media ownership by the UK House of Lord’s Communications Committee released Friday. In September, the committee visited the U.S. and the offices of its major media owners, regulators, and media groups looking at the state of newspapers, broadcasters, radio and online. The minutes show an industry at a turning point, with media owners both hopeful and despondent of the future. One theme that consistently arose was whether or not the Internet represented a boon or bane for media owners and if the Web could ever be channeled for profit. Complete transcript of the minutes can be found here.
— Mort Zuckerman on the internet: Zuckerman noted that classified advertising is moving on to the Internet, but not to the websites of newspapers but to new dedicated providers–and for the first time it may hit the profits of the Daily News, which up till now has always made a profit. While he is trying to develop new online business models, Zuckerman called it “substituting pennies for dollars”.
— Arthur Sulzberger Jr, chairman of the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) Company and publisher of the NYT, on the newspaper’s site: Sulzberger noted that while online ad revenues may be less than print ad revenues, the cost of producing Web news is cheaper. Scott Heekin-Canedy, president and general manager of the NYT, reported that for the first time at the company, new online growth is making up for lost advertising revenue from the paper. He attributed this to brand value and the NYT’s early entry into the web news business.
— Roger Ailes, CEO of Fox News, on the relationship between the TV channel and the Web: Ailes called it “hard to work” trying to figure out the relationship between the two—especially if one platform should push views to the other. It is also hard to balance the needs of young and old news audiences. Older audiences value accuracy; younger audiences want immediacy. But, as Ailes noted, if a breaking story is not immediately up on the web, “young visitors will never return.”
— Leonard Downie, Jr., executive editor of the Washington Post, (NYSE: WPO) on the newspaper’s “successful” web site: The web site has enormous reach with 82 percent of online readers from outside the DC area. Downie says that its audience is growing faster than the paper audience is shrinking, but that profits from the web site—once growing “steeply”—have begun to “slow down.” He attributed this to aggressive competition for advertisers from new web entrants such as Facebook. Still, the web site only makes up 15 percent of the paper’s revenues, and according to Downie, “this was not enough.”
Christopher Beam writes for Slate: "You know it’s 2007 when a candidate, in this case Mike Huckabee, holds a bifurcated conference call, first with reporters, then with bloggers. I listened in on both calls to see what the differences were. The reporters’ questions were much more concise and polished. But the bloggers’ questions were more substantive by a long shot."
