San Francisco may be the largest city to lose main paper

As Prof. Westphal mentioned, Hearst is planning to sell its San Francisco Chronicle newspaper unless it can cut more jobs. ( San Francisco Chronicle may shut down )

It seems like San Francisco may become the largest city to lose its main daily newspaper. 

So far, New York times and Gannett are cutting cost and selling assets due to the sharp decline in print advertising sales. Philadelphia Newspapers, publisher of the Inquirer filed for bankruptcy protection. 

And more excerpts from Bloomberg. 

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Miami Herald-publisher McClatchy Co., Media General Inc. and New York Times suspended their dividend to cope and Gannett cut about 4,000 jobs last year. New York Times is looking for buyers of its minority stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

Tribune Co.’s bankruptcy filing in December was followed last month by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Tribune has been cutting jobs and costs at its eight dailies, which include the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.

Seattle and Tucson, Arizona, where Gannett is trying to sell its Citizen newspaper, both have two competing for-charge dailies. Clarity Media Group distributes its free Examiner daily in San Francisco. 

Hearst said Jan. 9 it would close or turn its Seattle Post- Intelligencer into a Web-only operation if it couldn’t find a buyer by March. The newspaper lost $14 million last year.

I've just bought the Kindle 2

 It was an impulse buy. I couldn't resist temptation and placed an order for the new version of Kindle. It will be delivered to my apartment on Feb. 28th. 

So, I convince myself that I will read books REGULARLY and catch up on newspapers and blogs. According to the reviews, it is so convenient to pull down the entire paper so that one can read it offline. 

 I am not sure it will justify 360 dollar price tag, let alone the subscription fee. The New York Times charges $13.99 a month for its Kindle edition, The times and Wall Street Journal charges $9.99. 

If you want to read a good review, Here you are. 

I hope I don't regret it!!!!

journalists are seeking PR jobs

 

A couple of days ago, I got an e-mail from my friend who has worked with Dow Jones for 7 years.  She said that she was leaving her position as a business reporter to become a corporate communication manager at an investment bank. 

Of course, there are many fair reasons for her decision. Better pay, steadier hour, more opportunity in career path... But this struck me hard because I thought she's the last person who would leave journalism for money. 

"It wasn't just money. Nobody goes into journalism for money. but at least you expect it to be fun. It's not fun anymore... I feel like I am turning into just one of the hard working salary men. and I am sick of hearing about tightening budget."

That's what she told me. 

And today I stumbled on the similar story about a prime time journalist turning into strip club manager.  He says, "it got to be more ridiculous to hang on at a newspaper and less ridiculous to take this leap."

well, well, well.

You never know where life will take you. But for now, I feel lucky that the fun is still there for me. 

 

iPod moment?

 Recently so much has been written about micropayment-model for newspaper. I guess the origin came from the success of itunes but the recent launch of Kindle 2 definitely reignited discussion. 

 In this week's The Economist magazine put out a story, titled  'Electronic books are popular. Will newspaper follow?' 

 It argues unlike books, newspaper readers expect its online editions to be free.  They are so accustomed to bouncing around the world of free content. 

Even if people are willing to pay a few cents for news, it is doubtful that journalism can live without ads. After all newspapers are in the business of delivering eyeballs to the advertisers. 

lesson from the kindle

 

 

 Amazon launched the Kindle 2, the second generation of its e-book reader. The new model has a new text-to-speech feature that reads book aloud !!! Cool. Here is the details 

 This is consistent to the new digital changes to news media. As iPod and Kindle have paved the way for a business model based on 'micro payments', in which readers pay a few cents for downloads, news media can also charge for each story.  

  

After all, now we know that the newspaper doesn't have to do with ink/paper and subscription. 

Youtube VS. Hulu

A little confession. 

In 2007, I was addicted to watching the Youtube video of James Marsden's singing 'always on my mind' in Ally Mcbeal. It was so dreamy that I felt like he was singing for me. 

But, one day, Youtube pulled down that video clip after Fox tried to sue Youtube for infringement. I panicked and got so mad at Fox. I understand that it's Fox's proper move to protect their intellect property. I just think that before making any moves, Fox should have gotten their own video website where people can easily search video clips and watch all the shows.

Fortunately, my frustration didn't last long. Last year, I stumbled on 'Hulu' website which was the joint venture among Fox, NBC, MGM, Warner Bros, Sony Pictures and other 100 partners. It allowed me to watch all the episodes of my favorite shows including 'The office', '30 Rock'... (Some past episodes are not easy to look up though) Since then, I've been partially migrating from Youtube to Hulu. I don't mind watching some ads as long as I can get back to James Marsden's song. 

I guess I am not the only one. According to Financial times and Economist, Hulu is catching up with Youtube so fast. Here is the story on the Hulu's new business model. 

It is true that Youtube has been hard at work rolling out advertising solutions to monetize its popularity because user generated content doesn't attract that many large scale brand advertisers, whereas Hulu already has more than 100 big brand advertisers including McDonald's, Best Buy, BOA...

To look for the silver lining here, it seems like that professional content still has a lot more value than 'user generated content'. 

The stories you may like

Today I logged in to Amazon to buy some books, and I got my personal recommendations from Amazon. It says "Hello Jin. We have Books Recommeded for you - Darkness visible : A memoir of madness, Unholy ghost : Writers on depression. "

OMG. I've bought only two books from Amazon, and they happen to be related to drinking problem and depression. ( my best friend is a psychiatrist and she wrote a book on depression. If your best friend published a book, it's an obligation to read that book, huh? and the other was recommended by her.)

Anyhow, based on my purchase history, Amazon assumes that I have serious interest in all the dark side of human. I know that Amazon keeps all the customer's past buys stored in their database and present the books they may like. It doesn't even require high level intelligence on the algorithmic side.

I just got into thinking, What if my frequently visited news website shows me the particular stories based on my past reading habits. What if I am a person who enjoys reading gossips about celebrities while barely touches on politics or international news. Will I end up getting only celebrities' gossip? Will it feel like a vicious circle?

A little spooky idea.