Category: Media

From FT.com May 9, 2011

Tom Glocer has been celebrating the success of the three-year integration process that melded Thomson with Reuters. But the chief executive of the information and media group needs to beware overstating the value of its ownership model. In a recent Financial Times interview, he said that Thomson Reuters – 55 per cent of which belongs to a family investment company – had “what may become the defining corporate structure of the best institutions for the next 20 years”.

Posted in Business, Media |

John Gapper A flawed measure of internet news loyalty

May 9, 2011 6:33 pm by John Gapper

The most popular measure in selling news and entertainment sites to advertisers at the moment  is “uniques” – the number of people who visit a site at least once a month. The more I hear about it, the more I question it.

The number of “uniques” is, like the radio measure of “reach”, inherently flawed because a person who clicks once on a website – or a person who tunes in for 30 seconds to a programme – counts equally with a regular reader/listener.

The degree to which “uniques” are a poor measure of loyal readership is highlighted in a new study by the Pew Research Centre in the US. Most big news sites, it points out, have very disengaged readers.

Continue reading: “A flawed measure of internet news loyalty”

Posted in Media |
From FT.com May 4, 2011

Late on Sunday night, Wolf Blitzer, the news anchor on CNN, was visibly struggling not to tell his 9m viewers something a lot of them already knew or suspected – that Osama bin Laden was dead. The rumour broke out on Twitter at 10.25pm but it was only 20 minutes later that he reported the fact.

Posted in Media, Technology |

John Gapper Wall Street goes west for investment opportunity

April 11, 2011 7:56 pm by John Gapper

It feels as if Wall Street is moving westward, and that US investors, having been caught up in the mortgage boom, have instead turned their attention to the opportunities on the west coast.

The National Venture Capital Association has unveiled figures showing that the industry had its best start to the year in terms of fund-raising since 2001, raising about $7.1bn in the first quarter.

Meanwhile, Matthew Garrahan writes in the FT about the keiretsu-like Raine merchant bank, which is raising $500m from a range of Illuminati from Silicon Valley and Hollywood including Eric Schmidt of Google and Sean Parker of Facebook etc.

Continue reading: “Wall Street goes west for investment opportunity”

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Business, Media, Technology |
From FT.com April 5, 2011

A confession: if a bribe is something offered to influence judgment or conduct, then I have given and taken bribes.

I have enjoyed sporting, musical and theatrical events at companies’ expense. I have literally rubbed shoulders with Silvio Berlusconi in the tribuna d’onore at Milan’s San Siro stadium (at someone else’s invitation). I have flown in Robert Maxwell’s jet to Robert Maxwell’s yacht, to hear the corrupt media magnate extol his latest acquisition on the deck off which he later tumbled. I have, in my turn, wined and dined diplomats, civil servants, bankers and chief executives. And I will again because it helps me fulfill my half of journalists’ odd business bargain, in which human contact yields news and improves insight.

Posted in Media |
From FT.com March 30, 2011

In Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, the Victorian writer Charles Mackay describes a company formed during the South Sea Bubble in 1720 which declared in its prospectus that it was “for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is”. After investors hurried to buy shares, the founder “set off the same evening for the Continent” and was never heard of again.

Posted in Media, Technology |

Conrad Black attacks way US papers have been run

March 30, 2011 6:27 pm by FT

By James Mackintosh, the FT’s investment editor

It would be prudent to pause before taking advice from a man who was gaoled and his business empire broken up.

Still, (Lord) Conrad Black, former owner of the Hollinger International media group, which owned London’s Daily Telegraph and the Jerusalem Post, among other papers, has plenty of advice to offer to other newspaper proprietors. He was in garrulous form on Tuesday, pausing from his assault on the way in which US papers have been run only to attack the journalists who write them.

Continue reading: “Conrad Black attacks way US papers have been run”

Tags:
Posted in Media |

John Gapper Why Cory Doctorow is wrong about news

March 28, 2011 7:45 pm by John Gapper

The New York Times paywall (or pay fence) goes up today and there has been an enormous amount of speculation/analysis about it. For what it’s worth, I think it will succeed.

This is not because people “should” pay for the NYT’s journalism any more than they should buy any other product, but because the organisation does produce a lot of valuable and unique information. That means it can attract paying customers online as well as in print.

One of the main arguments deployed against the NYT asking at least some of its readers to pay (it is erecting a fairly porous barrier that allows people to click on 20 articles a month free, and an infinite number if they arrive at an article through a link) is that news is now a commodity.

Continue reading: “Why Cory Doctorow is wrong about news”

Tags: ,
Posted in Media |
BackOlder entries
Newer entries

Business blog

Strategy & managing

About this blog Blog guide
This blog is mainly about business and strategy and how and why people who run companies take the decisions that they do.

Most of the time, John Gapper is in New York and Andrew Hill is in London. We occasionally debate business issues between us, but your comments and criticism are welcome.




To comment, please register for free with FT.com and read our policy on submitting comments.

All posts are published in UK time.

Contact andrew.hill@ft.com or john.gapper@ft.com about the Business blog.

See the full list of FT blogs.

About John and Andrew

John Gapper is an associate editor and the chief business commentator of the FT. He has worked for the FT since 1987, covering labour relations, banking and the media. He is co-author, with Nicholas Denton, of All That Glitters, an account of the collapse of Barings in 1995.

Andrew Hill is an associate editor and the management editor of the FT. He is a former City editor, financial editor, comment and analysis editor, New York bureau chief, foreign news editor and correspondent in Brussels and Milan.

Archive

« JanFebruary 2012
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
272829