Category Archives: journalism

WSJ owners get a whopper of an offer

Posted on May 1, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. made a $5 billion offer for Dow Jones, representing an eye-popping 67% premium above the company’s recent market value. Shares of Dow Jones quickly shot up to near the value of the News Corp offer, indicating … Continue reading →

Posted in journalism, media, newspapers, publishing | Comments Off on WSJ owners get a whopper of an offer

Who reads the front page?

Posted on April 9, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

I was trying to determine how profitable Tribune’s online operations would be if they blocked sites from displaying links to their stories. The answer: “Not very.” The stats for washingtonpost.com and nytimes.com (which have much stronger online operations than Tribune) … Continue reading →

Posted in journalism, media, newspapers, publishing | 4 Comments

A new local platform from Topix

Posted on April 2, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

I’ve written before about the need for newspapers to go hyperlocal — allow readers to get ultra-targetted news about where they live from their neighbors. Topix, a company owned by newspaper companies, is offering a platform to do that. Topix … Continue reading →

Posted in blogs, journalism, media, newspapers, web 2, web 2.0 | 1 Comment

Journalists, bloggers and parasites

Posted on March 6, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

There’s an interesting discussion at the Online Journalism Review about whether bloggers are parasites: Over the past months, I’ve heard several journalists make the same comment at various industry forums: That blogs are a “parasitic” medium that wouldn’t be able … Continue reading →

Posted in blogs, journalism, media, newspapers | 2 Comments

USA Today goes community crazy

Posted on March 5, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

USA Today got a facelift over the weekend, with heaping doses of community thrown in. The new site allows you to vote stories up, comment on stories and vote on comments. Selected quotes from user comments are displayed on the … Continue reading →

Posted in journalism, media, newspapers, web 2, web 2.0 | 1 Comment

Taking newspapers beyond tonight’s fishwrap

Posted on March 4, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

The newspaper business works much like an old-style manufacturing business where stories go from reporters to assigning editors to copy editors to layout editors with the final destination being the next day’s newspaper. A lot of thought and knowledge goes … Continue reading →

Posted in journalism, media, newspapers | 9 Comments

Adapting online newspapers to a search/Web 2.0 world

Posted on January 3, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

I’ve written earlier about troubles facing the newspaper industry as well as some ideas for improving online newspapers. Here are a few more ideas. Make sure your pages are crawlable. Most newspaper sites do just fine at this when it … Continue reading →

Posted in journalism, newspapers, search, seo, web 2.0 | 10 Comments

McClatchy dumps the Star Tribune

Posted on January 2, 2007 by Rakesh Agrawal

The end of the year is the time that savvy investors dump their losers for the tax write-off. McClatchy did just that, selling off the Star Tribune in Minneapolis for $530 million. McClatchy paid $1.2 billion for it in 1998. … Continue reading →

Posted in journalism, newspapers | 1 Comment

CNN tries to rewrite its history

Posted on November 14, 2006 by Rakesh Agrawal

Bill Maher outed Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman on Larry King Live last week. But you won’t find that in CNN’s transcript. In its place, you’ll find “(A PORTION OF THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN REMOVED).” The outing was also … Continue reading →

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