Chris Hughes sold The New Republic to publisher Win McCormack

You might have heard: After buying The New Republic in 2012, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes put it back up for sale in January, saying the magazine needs a new business model But did you know: Six weeks after Chris Hughes announced he was putting The New Republic up for sale, the magazine has a new owner. Win McCormack, publisher of literary quarterly Tin House, has purchased the magazine. McCormack...

ESPN’s mobile strategy: ‘If we’re thinking about anything else, we’re failing the audience’

ESPN’s vice president and editorial director for domestic digital content Chad Millman is clear: “Mobile is everything.” As more people cut their cable TV subscriptions, ESPN is being forced to change its business model and betting on mobile audiences going forward. Millman says: “We always have to be thinking about mobile first. If we’re thinking about anything else, we’re failing the audience. …...

China shut down the social media accounts of an influential property developer after he criticized China’s recent campaign to control state-run media

Ren Zhiqiang, an influential retired property developer in China, had his social media accounts shut down by the Chinese government after he criticized the Chinese president’s plan to tighten control over state-run media. Zhiqiang had more than 37 million followers on popular Chinese social network Weibo. Chinese president Xi Jinping has exerted control over state-run media in China recently by “jailing...

To work from home more efficiently, find ways to connect more often and create good documentation of practices

As Vox Media’s Elite Truong prepares to make the move from New York to a smaller city, and more employees elsewhere work remotely, she lists some ideas for how to work from home more efficiently. Among the ideas: Stay connected by finding ways to see each other through Skype or Google Hangouts and encouraging people to share their thoughts in those chats, and create well-written documentation of teams’...

Facing threats from big platforms, more competing publishers are partnering with each other

Google and Facebook are expected to control 51 percent of online ad revenue in the U.S. this year, a number no single publisher can hope to compete with. To stay competitive against these platforms, more publishers are partnering, Digiday’s Ricardo Bilton writes. Publishers such as The Huffington Post and Mental Floss have created link-sharing agreements with other websites, while other publishers...

‘Spotlight’ wins the Academy Award for Best Picture

In an upset, “Spotlight” won the Academy Award for Best Picture on Sunday night. The movie tells the story of The Boston Globe journalists who broke the story of widespread sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the area. “Spotlight” also won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, while The Boston Globe won the Pulitzer Prize for the story behind the movie in 2003. Director Tom McCarthy said...

Need to Know: Feb. 29, 2016

Fresh useful insights for people advancing quality, innovative and sustainable journalism OFF THE TOP You might have heard: After buying The New Republic in 2012, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes put it back up for sale in January, saying the magazine needs a new business model But did you know: Chris Hughes sold The New Republic to publisher Win McCormack (Wall Street Journal) Six weeks after Chris...

How digital subscriptions work at newspapers today

Among the 98 U.S. newspapers with circulations over 50,000, the American Press Institute found that 77 of them use a digital subscription model (79%).1 This figure is similar to the Newspaper Association of America’s recent analysis, which surveyed publishers and estimated that 75% of newspapers use...

Early digital subscription models

In the 1990s and 2000s, most newspapers were hesitant to charge for content. Publishers feared that if they were the only newspaper charging for content, readers would simply shift to alternative sources. A few newspapers in the United States, however, adopted digital subscription plans before any others. These...

Experiments and future models for digital news subscriptions

Digital subscriptions reached a high point in 2015. In August, the New York Times reported that it had passed the 1 million paid digital subscribers mark. Digital magazine Slate announced that it is creating a metered subscription for international readers, and the technology news site Pando announced that it will now require digital subscriptions to access articles. Even YouTube may soon require...

Publishers miss opportunity to collect data when registering subscribers

Today, news organizations are striving to convince advertisers that their first-party data (information collected from users on their website) is more valuable than third-party data from Facebook or Google. To understand how newspapers are approaching this challenge, the American Press Institute analyzed what user information is collected when a person registers for a digital subscription. Our analysis...

How digital subscriptions took over the newspaper industry

In 2009, with advertising revenue steeply declining, news organizations began debating the feasibility of requiring digital subscriptions. Publications like The Guardian, The New York Times, Time Magazine and The Atlantic published op-eds questioning whether readers would...

Paying for Digital News: The rapid adoption and current landscape of digital subscriptions at U.S. newspapers

Newspaper publishers in the United States have moved rapidly in recent years to create subscriptions for digital access to their news, and according to an in-depth analysis the landscape is converging around a couple leading models and price structures. As the traditionally dominant revenue streams...