Deep Publishing Intrigue: Publishing Activism Targeted Overpriced Academic Journals - Now It's Freeing Financial Journalism

Print version of the 'Daily Paywall'
on sale in New York City

Interesting, interesting, interesting! An enlightened individual, Paolo Cirio, has hacked into the paywalls of the top financial newspapers and magazines (such as the WSJ, the Financial Times and the Economist) and has published over 60,000 pirated articles for the general public on his newly launched site 'The Daily Paywall' AND he even pays you to read them! 

Is this right or wrong? Well, you decide. But, he (and I) "strongly believe that information must be free and knowledge accessible for everyone, especially if the material regards corrupted global economy and politics, because access to it would enhance democracy."

These financial publications have other means to grow readership and revenue, other than through the subscription model, such as other popular media employ like 'The Guardian' and 'VICE'. 

Paolo Cirio describes just how he hacked the stubborn censorship paywalls and how he he structured his 'Daily Paywall' site to allow the hacked-article authors to get paid.

Interesting and intriguing stuff.

Now this from the Motherboard section of The New York Times written by Brian Merchant:

Behind the Daily Paywall: The Site that Pays You to Read Pirated Articles

The ​Daily Paywall is a new website that's loaded with tens of thousands of pirated articles from some of the world's top paywalled newspapers, and its proprietor will pay you to read them.

Anyone who's spent any amount of time online knows what it's like to hit a paywall—you click the link, get a prompt to subscribe for access, perhaps experience a brief pang of disappointment, shrug, and move on your way. Thousands of bits of reportage and information remain sealed off.

Since 1997, when the Wall Street Journal became the first major newspaper to block its content from non-subscribers, a number of outlets have followed suit in fortifying their walls to protect revenue. Paolo Cirio is trying to knock them down. 

The digital artist—perhaps best known for installing "ghosts," images gleaned off Google Street View, ​on real-life city streets—has "hacked" into the paywalls of financial newspapers to share their content with the global public. Now, he's published 60,000 pirated articles from the WSJ, Financial Times, and The Economist on his newly launched site. He has also distributed a number of curated print versions containing topical selections of the previously walled-off content around New York City.

But his subversion doesn't end there; Cirio also wants to pay you to read the pirated stories. If a reader correctly answers a quiz about a piece re-published on the Daily Paywall, he or she will earn $1. 

Cirio describes the project as "a cocktail of share economy, crowdfunding, piracy, art market and labour exploitation for making political propaganda." In a series of emails, he explained how he executed the project, which he acknowledges will prove "controversial." 

"I paid subscription to the main financial newspapers, then I coded a script that automatically logs in WSJ, FT and The Economist a hundred times a day," he said. "Through the RSS channels, that they provide, the script gets access directly to every content they publish which successively gets sucked into my database on DailyPaywall.com. I've been doing so for the 12 months, my script has been running [a] thousand times a month in [the] background on my server."

And that's where the hacking comes in.

"To log in automatically through a script I had to hack [their] authentication system and cookies session, strangely enough all of them used similar technology. Yet, WSJ has increased they security just a month ago and so I had to get deeper in hacking them. Sick!"

Cirio has set up a donation system, wherein readers can donate to the project, to the journalists whose work you're reading, or to him.

"I STRONGLY BELIEVE THAT INFORMATION MUST BE FREE AND KNOWLEDGE ACCESSIBLE FOR EVERYONE"

"It's a crowd funding system, the money comes from who wants to pay someone else to read, plus other form of revenue in exchange of artworks or ads," he said. "In addition, authors of hacked articles are invited to claim payment."

I've requested comment from both the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and have yet to hear back from either. 

As to the philosophical underpinnings of his project, Cirio explains it thusly:

"Ultimately, I leave for a question, regarding the subscriptions of those financial publications, do you think they really need extra revenues from subscribers while other popular media are getting more readers without subscriptions, es. VICE, The Guardian, etc?" 

"This project poses several questions that can't be answered through the common understanding that worn-out models and conventions are imposing on us," he said. "I strongly believe that information must be free and knowledge accessible for everyone, especially if the material regards corrupted global economy and politics, because access to it would enhance democracy." 

Comparisons are bound to be drawn to Aaron Swartz's advocacy—his activism targeted overpriced academic journals, while Cirio is trying to free financial journalism.

"So, as an open access activist, I will always proudly break barriers to access information and as artist I'll always provide settings to understands it better."

Resource Article: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/behind-the-daily-paywall-the-site-that-pays-you-to-read-pirated-articles

Will Newspaper Publishing Survive? - Inside the Financials

What will be the future of newspapers?

Newspapers (and all print media for that matter) have come under attack from free online digital content (remember the initial destruction of the music industry?).

But, it looks like print newspapers have a path to survival. Ahhh, the intrigue --- AND it is provided by the digital world itself:)

I have reported on the newspaper industry previously on this blog and on the Publishing/Writing: Insights, News, Intrigue Blog. Please feel free to read for great background information.

Newspapers have apparently found a new source for making revenue other than by paid advertising.

The new revenue model and all the other inside numbers are provided neatly and in some depth in this article by SiHien Goh for Kapitall and also carried on the Insider Monkey:

Newspaper Industry – Renewed Hope?

In the last decade, the print media and newspaper industry have suffered tremendously from the onslaught of free online content that besieged the music industry. Not only did the proliferation of free online news outlets hit newspaper circulation, it also introduced a new form of advertising media that successfully competed against the industry for advertising revenue. Furthermore, the advent of cable television and its successful draw on both viewers and advertisers alike meant valuation of newspaper properties on the market have taken a substantial hit.


However, recent moves by famous investors to pick up shares of publicly-listed newspaper companies have raised a few eyebrows. In November 2011, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A) bought the Omaha World-Herald Company for US$150 million – giving the famed value investor ownership of the World-Herald, six daily newspapers and several other weekly newspapers in Nebraska and Iowa. The move was surprising especially after Warren Buffett said in 2009 at Berkshire’s annual shareholding meeting that “we would not buy them [newspapers] at any price.” More recently, Buffett doubled down on his bet on the industry as he reached a deal with Media General Inc. to acquired 25 daily newspapers for another US$142 million in May 2012.

Is the market undervaluing the print media industry? Are publicly-listed newspaper companies [listed below] poised to increase in value? And more importantly, can opportunities in digital media stoke growth in the industry again? This article aims to shed some light on the current dynamics of the industry – its risks and its opportunities.

Briefly, the U.S. newspaper publishing industry includes more than 5,000 companies that make annual revenues of around US$35 billion. The industry is highly concentrated, with the top 50 companies controlling close to 80 percent of the market. Major companies include Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI), the Tribune Company and The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT). Because newspapers were traditionally largely funded by advertisers rather than the sale of its product, the general health of the economy is a key driver in generating revenue from the industry.

In advertising, newspapers have done horribly in either attracting or maintaining its traditional revenue stream. In 2000, advertising spending on the internet and mobile devices made up only five percent of the domestic market while newspapers held a commanding share of 30 percent (US$49 billion) in the same category. 11 years later, newspapers’ share of advertising spending has plummeted to 12 percent (US$21 billion) while internet and mobile devices grew three fold and captured an 18 percent share. This decreasing share of newspaper advertising revenue is a concern especially because the advertising market in general has improved during the same time period.

Read and learn more

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Reuters Positioning to Compete with AP & CNN

With newspapers and other news media scrambling to find ways to cut costs and streamline to improve their bottom line (due to falling advertising, print sales and subscriptions) Reuters has created an alternative for aggregating, selling and distributing news.

The operational process being employed by Thomson Reuters will create more journalism jobs, utilizes more sources and really is quite exciting!

The vetting of news stories could be an issue, but I'm sure that will become a non-issue with this company's expertise.

Jennifer Saba, a correspondent and blogger for Reuters reports these details:

Thomson Reuters starts service for U.S. news media

Thomson Reuters Corp has launched a news service for U.S. publishers and broadcasters in a bid to win business from the Associated Press and CNN.

The new service, Reuters America, provides text stories, photos and video by Reuters journalists for newspapers, television stations and online publishers. Newspaper publisher and broadcaster Tribune Co is its first customer.

As part of the service, Reuters America also will offer sports and entertainment news from six partners: the Wrap, SportsDirect Inc, the Sports Xchange, US Presswire, SB Nation and Examiner.com

The service comes as newspapers and TV stations try to recover from the worst financial recession in recent memory.

Tribune Co, which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and TV stations in New Orleans, San Diego and Denver, has signed a multi-year deal. Terms were not disclosed.

Reuters is hiring journalists and using outside journalists, or "stringers," to provide general news stories in addition to its business and financial news. It also will write stories commissioned by its news clients.

"This is being designed and being run in a way that is not one size fits all," said Chris Ahearn, Thomson Reuters' president of media. "It gives (publishers) comfort and flexibility that there are other choices than... some of the legacy providers."

Read and learn more

Another great take on this story Selling the News: Reuters, the AP and Tribune by Robert MacMillan, also of Reuters.

World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN)

WAN is the host of the World Newspaper Congress, which meets every year or bi-yearly (after some research I'm still confused on schedule for this event)...The purpose of the Newspaper Congress being to bring all worldwide news media members together to discuss present and foreseeable news production problems and solutions...resulting in a more free press.

WAN's vision is "to be the indispensable partner of newspapers and the entire news publishing industry worldwide, particularly our members, in the defense and promotion of press freedom, quality journalism and editorial integrity and the development of prosperous businesses and technology."

WAN CEO, Christoph Riess, recently visited Viktor Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine, who is lobbying for the 2012 World Newspaper Congress to be held in the city of Kyiv.

If selected, the Newspaper Congress will coincide with the the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2012, also being held in Kyiv.

But, beyond this tidbit of coincidence...and much more important...is the fact that the event could spell the solidification and recognition of a more democratic and free press state for the Ukraine.

This report from Yhiah Information Agency:

Yanukovych meets CEO of World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers

President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych met with Christoph Riess, Chief Executive Officer of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN), according to the Press office of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Welcoming the guest in Ukraine, the President reiterated his earlier invitation to the WAN to hold the World Newspaper Congress in Kyiv in 2012. "It is important that it was held in Kyiv," Viktor Yanukovych said. He reminded that in 2012 Ukraine will be hosting the finals of EURO 2012, therefore all the necessary hotel, transport and exhibition infrastructure will be ready.

"Conducting this very important forum in Kyiv will be the evidence that the state is attractive for free journalists and media,” he said.

Viktor Yanukovych stressed the importance of development of the information market for Ukraine. "It is also the path of democracy and freedom development. For Ukraine, it is its establishment as a democratic state," he said. The President said the Ukrainian side is interested in any investments in this direction.

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The Association of Magazine Media

The main (and probably the oldest - est. 1919) professional association for magazine publishers is the Magazine Publishers of American (MPA).

Well, they have just changed their name to The Association of Magazine Media...which they still abbreviate or accronym as MPA?!

Why don't they just use AMM for Association of Magazine Media?

The reasoning for the new name, they say, is to get away from the words "print" and "publishing" which they figure are dead to the younger generation.

What a cluster muck of thinking! For one, they are still publishers regardless of the media format and secondly, print is not going away (changing yes, but not dying); on the contrary new print tech is here and more surprises are coming in print media.

This report from Reuters by Robert MacMillan:

They’ll always be the Magazine Publishers of America to me

The Magazine Publishers of America said on Friday that it is renaming itself the MPA — The Association of Magazine Media. The notable difference is the omission of the word publishers. Why?

“MPA is underscoring the fact that magazine media content engages consumers globally across multiple platforms, including websites, tablets, smartphones, books, live events and more.”

“More” presumably means “printed magazines,” but nobody in media is all that hot on associating themselves with words like “publish” and “print” because to young people (or young “consumers” in the parlance that people use when their sole desire is to make money from you) and investors those words smell like death.

When magazine publishers like Conde Nast and newspaper publishers like Advance Publications (like Conde Nast, owned by the Newhouses) have been forced to cut hundreds if not thousands of jobs and stop publishing some of their products, it doesn’t do much good in the public relations department to accentuate the part of your business that is fading, even if it still produces 80 to 90 percent of your revenue. Fortunately, Time Inc CEO and incoming MPA Chairman Jack Griffin manages to refer in passing to “print” one time in the press release quote.

Read more http://alturl.com/d6zrd

Newsday is GROWING!

Good news for newspapers!...At least one newspaper. It appears the newspaper biz may be experiencing a resurgence in profitability just like the magazine sector has of late.

I'm happy for these type publishers turning the corner.

Matthew Flamm of Crain's New York Business reports this RE Newsday:

After several rounds of cutbacks and a battle with its union over a new contract, Newsday is hiring.

In a memo to the paper's staff Wednesday morning, Editor-in-Chief Debby Krenek announced that the Cablevision-owned daily would hire 34 new reporters over the next six months and add 2,600 pages of additional news annually, or about seven pages a day.

“I'm very excited to announce that we are making this significant investment in people and pages to provide more and stronger coverage for Long Islanders,” she wrote.

The hires are a surprise move at a time when few newspapers are hiring and many continue to cut back. It's particularly surprising that Cablevision is making this investment following bitter contract negotiations that ended in June with Newsday union members agreeing to wage cuts of from 5% to 10%.

The Dolan family, which controls Cablevision Systems Corp., paid $650 million for Newsday in 2008. By combining the paper with Cablevision assets, the Dolans were hoping to become the dominant player in Long Island news. They have been mainly preoccupied with cutbacks as newspaper advertising has plummeted.

In the second quarter of 2010, Newsday had revenue of $80 million, down 10% from the year ago period. The paper's operating loss narrowed to $1.3 million from $2.6 million.

Read more http://alturl.com/5hu8y

Gannett Newspaper Publisher Talks Money

In previous posts I have reported on the re-blossoming of magazine publishing, including increasing ad pages and revenues...Are newspapers on the road to a financial comeback also?

This insightful article from guardian.co.uk by Mark Sweney gives a clue:

The US newspaper publisher Gannett, which owns the UK regional publisher Newsquest, has reported the best ad revenue performance at its publishing arm in three years and has unveiled a major ad partnership with Yahoo.

Craig Dubow, chief executive of Gannett, said that its publishing division had benefitted from cost cutting and lower newsprint expenses in its second quarter results published today.

"In our publishing segment this quarter was the best comparison quarter for advertising revenues since mid-2007," he said. "We benefited from continuing efficiency efforts company-wide as well as lower newsprint expense."

Gannett, which publishes USA Today and more than 80 other newspapers as well as running 600 magazines and 23 TV stations, said that ad revenue at its publishing division fell 5.7% year on year. Circulation revenue fell 5.9%.

Ad revenues were 4.6% lower in the USA and 6.4% down, in pounds, at Newsquest. The company said that figures in June, which show ad revenues down just 3.6%, were the best comparison "since early 2007".

Newsquest, which owns titles including Glasgow-based the Herald, saw classified ad reveue fall 6.8%, national ad revenue drop 11% and retail advertising fall 4.4%.

Gannett used its results to announce a local advertising partnership with Yahoo. All of Gannett's 81 local publishing organisations and seven of its broadcasting division sites will sell Yahoo advertising inventory.

Gannett reckons the partnership, which "may" include providing "select local content for programming across Yahoo sites in the US", will extend its local media organisation reach to cover "as much as" 80% of the total digital audience in the markets it operates.

"Working with Yahoo will allow us to offer targeted advertising messages with unmatched local audience reach," said Gracia Martore, president at Gannett.

Dubow pointed to Gannett's broadcast and digital divisions as the real drivers of growth, while a positive result for the embattled publishing division was continuing to achieve "moderating revenue declines".

"Our strong results this quarter reflect very positive revenue trends for our broadcast and digital segments and moderating revenue declines in publishing as we continued to close the revenue gap in the quarter," he said. "Stronger core advertising demand and increased political spending drove revenue growth in broadcasting while positive revenue results at CareerBuilder and PointRoll contributed to revenue growth in the digital segment".

Gannett's digital operation saw revenue increase by 8.3% while the broadcasting unit saw revenues climb by a massive 20.3% year on year.

Overall Gannett saw net profits rise 35.7% year on year to $146.5m. Total revenues fell 1.6% year-on-year to $1.37bn.

Is Big Publishing Turning "Agency" Over-reaching?

I was exposed to the term "agency model" in publishing jargon a few weeks ago. I understood the meaning, in the context of the aricle I was reading, to be a business model where the publisher set the price for his work (or contracted work) instead of the online retailer (e.g. Amazon)...

Now, in the following article the phrase "publisher as agency", which I assume to be "agency model", takes on an additional meaning of a publishing company that expands it's usual services to include additional services above and beyond it's original core mission.

So, which is correct? Or are both correct? Or does the word "agency" take on different meanings in publishing jargon?

Anyone?

This article for Marketing Pilgrim by Frank Reed uses the "agency" term in the context of expansion of known services in describing the troubled Tribune Company 's fight to re-invent itself...Keep in mind that Frank Reed is also an internet marketer and is speaking from that frame of mind:

The Tribune Company is struggling to pull itself out of bankruptcy proceedings but it continues to try to move its business forward by becoming the latest publishing company to turn agency. This type of move by larger publishers is becoming more commonplace these days as they scramble to re-invent themselves in light of the digital ‘revolution’ that has kicked many in the tail pretty hard.

“With ad dollars for magazines and newspapers continuing to shrink, publishers like Meredith and Gannett have expanded the purview of their digital ad sales teams to include digital marketing services offerings outside of the content they produce. Tribune Company is the latest entrant into the interactive marketing space. The publisher, still struggling through its interminable bankruptcy proceedings, has formed a new interactive marketing consultancy called 435 Digital Services. Named for Tribune’s Chicago street address, the project will shift a small number of current ad sales staffers into the new 10-person unit, as well as making a few new hires, according to a piece in Crain’s Chicago Business.”

Newspapers are under attack from all fronts which include the general move to online consumption of content, the rise of classified ad killer Craigslist and the challenge of smaller, more nimble hyperlocal blogs.

Honestly, it’s hard to imagine how these companies including Meredith and Hearst (who purchased iCrossing recently) are going to pull this off. Even traditional advertising agencies were slow to truly pick up on digital offerings and are playing catch up. Add to the fact that everyone knows the troubles that the newspaper industry is having and it’s tough to see how even a small to medium business, or SMB, would trust their marketing to a newspaper entity.

Of course, what companies think they can charge the SMB for such services will play a very large role in their level of success. No matter what the politicians say, the economy for the smaller players is still very bad and the fears of getting worse are getting more play these days. As a result, SMB’s won’t pay top dollar for services that many tell them they can do by themselves. Whether that is good advice to the SMB is irrelevant because many use it as a shield to keep service providers at bay.

So this move to be all things to all businesses is interesting. Interesting in a way that it could very well be too little too late. It also looks like a move born more out of desperation rather than something that was part of a bigger business plan to succeed in the online space. Heck, if any of these companies had been actually planning for the new digital world order they wouldn’t be where they are now anyway.

So would you trust your marketing services to a newspaper or magazine publisher who just put on another hat to attract your business?

Mobile Publishing Has a Ticket to Ride!

There is a plan afoot that just might rescue magazines and newspapers from a slow death and make them readily available online and profitable to boot!

The rescue is being carried out by the mobile digital devices flooding the market recently and the new mobiles waiting in the wings...such as the Dell Streak or the Samsung Galaxy.

John Kennedy writes this in the SiliconRepublic.com:

Watch out Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is now in the digital news reader market having acquired Skiff, a Hearst-backed tech start-up that helps distribute newspaper and magazine content and could provide stiff competition to the iPad.

Murdoch has been one of the strongest proponents of building paywalls around newspapers and wants to follow on the success of successful properties like the Wall Street Journal and The Times of London.

Murdoch has acquired Skiff LLU (pictured above), a maker of a flexible news reader device, as well as a company called Journalism Online LLC, which is developing technology that helps publishers collect micro-payments from readers online.

He hopes that both acquisitions will lend support to his quest to help newspaper publishers be as profitable online as they once were in print.

The Skiff digital reader which Murdoch plans to bring to market later this year features an 11.5-inch grayscale touchscreen that allows users to download material wirelessly from Skiff’s online store.

The first material to feature on the Skiff digital reader will be the Financial Times, the New York Times, Forbes, Popular Mechanics, Random House and Simon & Schuster. The technology could also be licensed out to hardware from other manufacturers, appearing perhaps as an app on an Android phone or tablet computer.

Mobile publishing business to boom
The mobile publishing business is about to go stellar thanks to devices like the Apple iPad which have allowed publishers to redefine how news and magazine content is delivered online via apps. Magazines and newspapers that have delivered breakthrough iPad apps include Wired, Time magazine and the Financial Times, while news apps like the Pulse Reader, BBC News, Reuters News Pro and AP News are breaking new ground in online news distribution.

The online advertising side of the coin is also hard to ignore. Last week, Apple revealed that its iAd platform already has US$60m in ad bookings – 50pc of all North America’s mobile ads for H2 2010.

Quite rightly this has online publishers worried about whether they will be excluded from Apple’s devices – now almost 60pc of all mobile devices in the US – and led to the CEO of Google’s recently acquired AdMob expressing his concerns over recent changes to Apple’s terms for app developers.

Either way, for such a young market, the energy and competition about to be unleashed is mesmerising and with new devices entering the fray all the time like the Dell Streak or the Samsung Galaxy, a whole new paradigm in publishing is about to be unleashed with News Corp, Apple and Google currently leading the land grab.

US Newspaper Publishing Industry Includes About 2,000 Companies and Combined Annual Revenue of $50 Bil

Good Golly Miss Molly! (that was a good song!)...The newspaper publishing industry is a bigger business than I realized...Truthfully, I never really thought about it before; and that's why I think the following press release, culled from the TradingMarkets dot com site, detailing the statiatics, will be of interest to all non-experts:

The US newspaper publishing industry includes about 2,000 companies with combined annual revenue of $50 billion. Large companies include Gannett, McClatchy, Advance Publications, Tribune Company, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. The industry is highly concentrated: the top 50 companies control almost 80 percent of the market. Many of the larger companies also own and operate TV stations.

A few newspapers, including the The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times, have daily circulation greater than 1 million, but most have circulation under 50,000. The combined daily circulation of US newspapers is just under 55 million.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

The health of the economy drives both advertising and readership. The profitability of individual companies depends on marketing expertise, as most costs are fixed. Large companies benefit from economies of scale in sharing resources and by providing a range of outlets for advertisers. Small publishers can compete successfully by serving smaller markets. The industry is fairly labor-intensive: average annual revenue per employee is about $120,000.

PRODUCTS, OPERATIONS & TECHNOLOGY

Products include daily, weekly, monthly, and Sunday newspapers; Internet news services; and distribution services. Large circulation newspapers are usually produced daily; community newspapers are usually produced weekly. Almost 70 percent of industry revenue comes from sales of advertising space ("advertising revenue"), and only about 20 percent from subscription and single-copy sales ("circulation revenue").

Online Presence Strengthens Newspapers

Here's one example of how going online has actually strengthened the economical position of three newspapers now owned by The Tennessee Valley Printing Co.

Bayne Hughes of the Decatur Daily News reports:

While newspapers elsewhere are struggling in a bad economy, publisher Clint Shelton is moving to put his newspapers in a position of strength.

Shelton became publisher of The Decatur Daily in January upon the retirement of his father, Barrett Shelton Jr.

The younger Shelton has spent the last year merging the operations of three newspapers under the umbrella of the Tennessee Valley Printing Co.

The Decatur Daily’s parent company will celebrate its one-year anniversary on March 31 as owner of The TimesDaily in Florence. The company bought the Moulton Advertiser in October 2007.

Introduced by Mark Maloney, Shelton told the Rota­ry Club of Decatur on Monday that 2009 was one of the “most exhilarating of my career.”

Director of Operations Scott Brown is leading a merger of the papers’ printing, circulation, human resources and classified services.

The TimesDaily’s former parent company, the New York Times, used a call center in the Philippines to deal with customers’ circulation problems.

The Daily now has a call center in Decatur for the three newspapers.

Customer satisfaction

Shelton said the call center has been particularly well received in Florence because customers talk to a Southern voice when they call with a complaint.

On April 1, the company will convert to a Publishing Business System for retail advertising and circulation billing and the Advanced Technical Solutions system for classifieds.

The new classifieds system will allow customers to cross advertise between the three papers and add a searchable database for readers.

The company has been building its online presence and now has nine Web sites.

These include each newspaper’s site and additional sites that focus on areas such as car sales, jobs, real estate and prep sports.

Before the purchase of the TimesDaily, the Sheltons were saving money to replace an aging offset press that The Daily bought when Clint Shelton, 46, was not yet a year old.

But he got a call that the TimesDaily was for sale and bought the newspaper. The purchase solved The Daily’s press problem.

Because the TimesDaily’s press is 14 years old, the first major transition after the sale was the merger of the printing and mailroom operations of The Daily and the Florence paper at Florence.

On the Net

The Tennessee Valley Printing Co. now has nine Web sites:

decaturdaily.com: Local news

timesdaily.com: Local news

moultonadvertiser.com: Local news

tnvalleywheels.com: Autos

tnvalleyhomefinder.com: Real estate

tnvalleyjobfinder.com: Employment

tnvalleysearch.com: Local news and business search

tnvalleynow.com: Contests

tnvalleypreps.com: High school sports

USA Today Reminds Staff What "Furloughed" Means

Some interesting statistics and accounting figures inside one of the biggest newspaper (USA Today) publishers: Gannett Company.

Jonathan Beer of Daily Finance reports:

Employees at Gannett Co.'s (GCI) USA Today must be insanely dedicated.

Why else would the nation's largest newspaper publisher need to explain to the workers at its flagship paper what it means to be forced to take a week off. But that's exactly what Publisher Dave Hunke decided his depressed workforce needed to hear.

"To be clear, a furlough means no one will be permitted to work while on furlough and no one will be exempt, except for business necessity," he wrote in a memo to employees that was leaked to the press. "That means when you are on furlough, there is no work, no office phone calls, no voice mail, no e-mail and no PDA checking."

This raises all sorts of depressing questions. Why is Gannett so worried about employees working for free on their own time? How is this going to be enforced? Should reporters hang up on sources who phone them at home or screen their calls? What if they find Lindsay Lohan and Warren Buffett having a romantic dinner? Should they avert their eyes, or just phone the National Enquirer?

No Longer No. 1

As the independent Gannett Blog noted, other company papers are already doing furloughs, and at least 26 USA Today employees were recently laid off. A one-year wage freeze at the national newspaper, which was scheduled to end April 1, will be extended for another 90 days because business still stinks. Fourth-quarter paid advertising pages at USA Today fell 10.5%, to 705 from 788 a year earlier. Company-wide publishing advertising revenue fell 17.9% to $790.8 million in the fourth quarter.

Last year, USA Today lost its spot as the nation's No. 1 newspaper after its circulation fell a mind-numbing 17.5%. That was the biggest circulation decline in the 27 year history of the publication that earned the unflattering nickname McPaper. Shares of the McLean, Va.-based company have soared more than 212% over the past year, coming back from record lows as investors bet that the company's cost-cutting would pay off. Some big shareholders, though, are now unloading shares, according to the Gannett Blog.

To be sure, newspapers have nowhere to go but up. Analysts Borrell Associates expects newspaper advertising revenue to reverse its 2009 decline and post a modest 2.4% gain this year. The forecasters expect newspaper ad sales to be up about 8.7% over 2009 levels in 2014. (Yes, you read that right.)

By the time the publishing industry makes its tepid comeback, the companies will be a rotting shell of their former selves. Workers won't need to be told what it means to be on a furlough. They will be painfully aware of it.

Jonathan Berr is a former reporter with Bloomberg News whose work has appeared in The New York Times, BusinessWeek and The Philadelphia Inquirer. In 2000, he won the Gerald Loeb Award, one of the most prestigious prizes in business journalism.

"Editor & Publisher" Went Bust But Will Now Get New Owner

Editor & Publisher owner, Neilsen Co., closed down this venerable newspaper industry information source due to declining revenues. But, was rescued at the last minute by new owner: Duncan McIntosh, Boating Magazine publisher.

From Reuters News Service by Robert MacMillan:

Editor & Publisher, chronicler of the U.S. newspaper business for more than a century, will live again after being shut down two weeks ago.

E&P, as journalists often call it, will resume publication after being sold to boating magazine publisher Duncan McIntosh, it confirmed on its website after Reuters reported the news.

The announcement came two weeks after Nielsen Co shut down the "bible of the newspaper industry" -- as it called itself on its website -- because of financial difficulties.

Current owner Nielsen Co closed the magazine and related website two weeks ago after agreeing to sell its Nielsen Business Media unit to a new company called e5 Global Media, formed by private equity company Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners.

Editor & Publisher's own publisher, Charles McKeown, will keep his job, the website reported. Twenty-six-year veteran Mark Fitzgerald will be the new editor, the site said. He replaces Greg Mitchell.

Editor & Publisher closed after suffering the same financial difficulties as the U.S. newspapers it covered. Ad revenue and a drift of readers to the Internet have hurt nearly every U.S. newspaper publisher.

Duncan McIntosh Co Inc publishes magazines such as Boating World and FishRap. The company did not disclose terms of the transaction.

"Such a critical information source for a newspaper industry so desperately in need of help should not go away," McIntosh told Editor & Publisher. "I've been a reader of E&P over the course of 30 years and know its incredible value to readers and advertisers."

Editor & Publisher's closing was one of the most ominous events in the slow decline of the U.S. newspaper business.

Storied publishers from The New York Times Co to Gannett Co Inc and McClatchy Co have received steadily declining amounts of coverage in the news media as their fortunes have fallen.

Editor & Publisher continued to write tough stories about the business even as other media outlets decreased their coverage because they considered publishers to no longer be big enough -- or lucrative enough -- to attract investor interest.