ShopLocal, the shopping service owned by Tribune, Gannett and McClatchy, often gets overlooked in the glare of Amazon, eBay and the pricing comparison engines. But the service’s three networks are now getting over 200 million page views a month, which…
Why watch "American Idol" tonight? As an alternative, I recommend that you download the lawsuit filed by MediaNews Group against Par Ridder, the former publisher of St. Paul's Pioneer Press, and son of Tony Ridder, who bolted across the river…
Inside the newspaper industry, the notion of the Web as a Hail Mary pass has never been fully embraced. But last week's earning reports from the major newspaper chains is a bracing cup of cold water. An article in today's…
A few months ago, Freedom Interactive President Michael Matthieu said he was "tearing out the infrastructure" at his newspapers and TV stations and making everything Web-centric. Now we see the first tangible results. At The Shelby Star, Freedom’s 15,000 circulation…
The WSJ is reporting that McClatchy, the publisher of 30 newspapers, is set to be the 12th newspaper publisher to join the Yahoo! consortium, leaving behind Gannett and Tribune, which had hoped to work with McClatchy to build an alternative…
Mobile versions of newspaper and TV station sites WAPsites have mostly been corporate vanity projects, generally attracting just a couple of dozen regular users. But as the demographics for enhanced mobile services have graduated from kids downloading ringtones and…
I was recently stunned by a conversation with a group of newspaper execs mulling over which U.S. city would be the first to rely on an online-only newspaper. The switch might be faster in one of the handful of surviving…
Every once in a while, I’ll allow myself to post something on the lighter side. Just a warning that this is one of those posts only tangentially related to local search, but having a semantic coincidence that I couldn’t…
How is one to consider Sam Zell's "purchase" of the Tribune Co.? We can be fairly certain that Zell, a "grave dancer" investor who is putting in $315 million and relying on an ESOP for the rest, didn't win the…
The America East show the largest regional event in the U.S. newspaper industry took place last week in Hershey, Pennsylvania, with 1,200-plus attendees. I'd sum it up by saying that the attendees' mostly small and medium-sized markets remain…
Most newspaper Web sites have been focused on driving new audiences, but McClatchy sees a gold mine in its existing print circulation. How many local media outlets have 40 percent penetration in this age of fragmentation? Speaking at the Inland…
Hearst Interactive Media has bought into local search in a big way by loaning $8 million in a debenture to Local.com. The amount would translate into roughly 20 percent of the publicly traded company if Hearst converts the debenture notes…
Fresh off its partnership with Nokia, which we wrote about here and in this week's Local Media Journal, AdStar has partnered with classified aggregator Edgeio. Edgeio will use AdStar's software to offer print advertising upsells (on behalf of newspapers) to…
Kate Kaye at ClickZ has an interesting story on newspaper publishers and local television stations that are sending their salespeople away to learn more about interactive advertising. As the media world in general moves toward many different advertising platforms (Web,…
AP reports (via WSJ Online) that The New York Times Co. and Monster.com are partnering to sell recruitment ads. This will bring the Monster brand to 19 of the publisher's sites (including NYTimes.com and Boston.com). There is little information given,…
Following up on the previous introductory post on Monster Worldwide's partnership with The New York Times, there is a lot more that can be said about the deal and the quickly changing newspaper environment it both represents and contributes to.…
Following up on yesterday's mobile news roundup, we had the chance to catch up with AdStar CEO Leslie Bernhard and others during a call yesterday afternoon. The company earlier in the day had announced a partnership with Nokia to integrate…
The newspaper consortium ("the amigos") that teamed up with Yahoo! for Hot Jobs is planning to invade used autos next, according to a post by newspaper insider Ken Doctor. If it pans out, such an alliance would probably signal that…
New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was quoted in Israeli newspaper Haaretz as saying he wouldn't care if The Times ceased print publishing in five years. More specifically, when asked at the World Economic Forum whether he foresees The…
In the wake of the hard knocks reported by community journalism sites such as Backfence, and social review sites such as Judy's Book and Insider Pages, it seems to be a good time to reassess the category, starting with a…
