Times said to start charging for Web in January

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that The New York Times will begin charging for access to articles on its website in January. The Journal cites remarks that NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller made at a dinner for the Foreign Press Association this last night.

The WSJ report notes the Times unveiled a plan early this year to begin charging for access to the Web version of its flagship newspaper. "Keller's comments helped pinpoint the timing of the plan,'' the Journal says.

In Times Square near-bombing, it's advantage: NYT

The Wall Street Journal missed the big local story in print because it doesn't publish on Sundays. In the rising battle over New York City news, that gave The New York Times an advantage. Still, it kept the play modest, limiting it on the front page to the traditional far-right column lede position (bigger view):


The two papers are now duking it out online, of course. Screenshots, taken moments ago; click on images for bigger view:



[Image: front page, Newseum]

As battle heats up, WSJ continues circ gains on NYT

The Wall Street Journal eked out a small circulation gain during the six months ended March 31 from a year ago, an industry group report says today, as the daily racheted up its competition with The New York Times with a new section devoted to New York City.

The Journal topped this morning's Audit Bureau of Circulations list of the nation’s largest-circulation daily newspapers, trade journal Editor & Publisher is reporting. The WSJ was the only daily among the 10 largest to gain circulation in the latest six-month period, E&P says.

The third national daily, USA Today, continued to see its circulation drop, although losses moderated from the the previous six-month period.

Top three dailies
USAT remained No. 2 among the 10 largest, E&P says:

The Wall Street Journal

• March 31, 2010: 2,092,523
• March 31, 2009: 2,082,189
• Change: +0.5%

USA Today

• 1,826,622
• 2,113,725
• -13.58%

The New York Times

• 951,063
• 1,039,032
• -8.47%

Related: The industry got some good news today -- well, sort of.

AdAge says NYT's new online biz page is the latest gambit to grab readers, advertisers from rival WSJ

The online section front has been rebuilt, starting today, to more closely resemble a home page, trade publication Advertising Age says, "complete with the top-left and top-right 'rabbit ear' ad units traditionally limited to the paper's standard home page; an automated "latest news" box on the top-right with stories from the Times and other sources such as Reuters and the Associated Press; a frequently updated river of news down the left column; a center column highlighting analysis; and Times blog posts wherever they may fit in the news or insight columns."

Related: NYT Co.'s press release on the makeover

WSJ shut out of Pulitzers, as rival NYT wins three

The New York Times today won three Pulitzer Prizes, in a 2010 competition that saw a new generation of online journalists elbowing their way into the industry's highest honor.

Notably, the Times' surging competitor -- The Wall Street Journal -- failed to win a single prize.

The NYT won for explanatory reporting and for national reporting. Plus, the Times's Sunday magazine tied for the award in investigative reporting with with the Philadelphia Daily News. The magazine's work was in collaboration with ProPublica -- a new, non-profit website devoted to investigative journalism. (So, in fact, maybe the NYT won just 2.5 Pulitzers.)

In a new post, the New York Observer says: The WSJ, which was once a Pulitzer-hoarder under former top editor Paul Steiger, "once again goes home empty-handed." The paper has not won an award since April 2007, and this brings the Journal's Pulitzer count in the Rupert Murdoch era to a grand total of zero, the Observer says.

Related: the complete list of 2010 winners. Plus, the WSJ's account of the awards

In NYC rivalry, WSJ has 'uphill battle' against NYT

[News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, NYT Co.'s Arthur Sulzberger Jr.]

That's according to New York Magazine, which compares The Wall Street Journal's roster of reporters in its about-to-launch New York City Bureau to the established team at The New York Times. "Even accounting for slight differences in assignment (the Journal city room will cover only New York, whereas Times city reporters must also do national reporting on their beat), the staff numbers say Murdoch has an uphill battle,'' the magazine says today. It lists reporters known to be devoted to each team. "As you can see," the magazine says, "in nearly every beat, the Times already has two reporters in place for each one of the Journal's."

In early iPad reviews, good to 'game changer'

Among those published today for Apple's new tablet -- being released Saturday -- most influential-of-all technology reviewers Walter Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal raved: "I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop."

The iPad is priced from $499 to $829, depending on features including whether it's equipped for Wi-Fi only, or fully mobile connections via AT&T's network. Here's a roundup, plus videos, with emphasis on the iPad's potential for helping publishers.



Mossberg
He writes: I was able to try a pre-release version of The Wall Street Journal's new iPad app (which I had nothing to do with designing), and found it gorgeous and highly functional -- by far the best implementation of the newspaper I have ever seen on a screen. Unlike the Journal's Web site, or its smart-phone apps, the iPad version blends much more of the look and feel of the print paper into the electronic environment. Other newspapers and magazines have announced plans for their own, dramatically more realistic iPhone apps.

David Pogue, The New York Times
He writes: There’s an e-book reader app, but it’s not going to rescue the newspaper and book industries (sorry, media pundits). The selection is puny (60,000 titles for now). You can’t read well in direct sunlight. At 1.5 pounds, the iPad gets heavy in your hand after awhile (the Kindle is 10 ounces). And you can’t read books from the Apple bookstore on any other machine — not even a Mac or iPhone.


Edward Baig, USA Today
He writes: You can change pages on the iPad by tapping the screen: The page turns naturally, like a book. On Kindle, you have to press physical buttons and wait an instant while the page refreshes. Rotate the iPad, and you'll see two pages side by side. Newspaper and magazine layouts look vastly superior on the iPad compared with Kindle. The iPad is backlit, so you can read in the dark. You have to supply a reading light with Kindle.

Related: iPad reviews in the news

What's your gut feeling about iPad's potential to aid our industry? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

USA Today circulation reveals NYC battleground

[Top 10 USAT "print markets" -- not cities -- for paper sales]

As it wields a new trade campaign in the growing rivalry among the three national dailies, USA Today's marketing kit offers a glimpse at the stakes -- especially in the New York City area. That's where The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are battling for local supremacy, with some observers fearing Journal owner Rupert Murdoch aims to put the NYT out of business.

USA Today's fight is over national advertising and readers, rather than the New York metro alone. Nonetheless, circulation figures show the paper has plenty of readers to peel away there.

USAT's publicly available data doesn't reveal the exact number of New York City area readers. Still, the paper's New York print market -- which extends well north in the state -- is the single-biggest among 25 such regions in copy sales: Nearly 152,000, Monday through Thursday, or about 8% of the total 1.8 million sold nationwide those days. (See, graphic, above.)

USA Today is using trade publications such as Advertising Age to get more advertising buyers to consider the paper. In New York City, the WSJ is aiming for some of the NYT's bread-and-butter: Big display advertisers such as Bergdorf Goodman and Bloomingdales. The Journal is set to open a New York City bureau next month, staffed with about 36 reporters, editors and other journalists. The paper also is beefing up its sports coverage of New York area professional teams.

How much are USAT ad rates?
Cost of a full-page ad, Monday through Thursday: $119,600 (black and white); $189,400 (color); Friday (when circulation is higher): $146,000 and $231,000.

Total readers, including pass-along: 3.7 million


• Male/female: 70%/30%

• Median age: 49

• College graduate+: 38%

• Professional/managerial: 25%

• Median household income: $74,949

How is USA Today's audience different than yours? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

[Image: today's paper, Newseum]

In new campaign, USA Today fires salvos at WSJ

[AdWeek banner tackles famous WSJ feature; see arrow]

Gannett's flagship is now taking on The Wall Street Journal via a series of ads in AdWeek and other trade publications -- and the paper isn't holding back. In a banner ad I saw recently, USAT not-so-subtly takes a dig at one of the WSJ's most famous daily features: "Heard on the Street," a column and related stories closely read by Wall Street investors because its exclusive news often moves stocks.

The ad is part of USA Today's new campaign focused on potential advertisers, one that emphasizes the paper's populist position in the market. The paper's line: USAT's more general readership isn't so taken with inside-baseball accounts of, in this case, the stock market. "What's heard on the street doesn't matter," the ad says. "What they really want is Money."

That, of course, is USA Today's Money section, which emphasizes personal finance, consumer technology and well-known retail brands: the public face of U.S. business.

But the USAT campaign isn't risk-free. In distancing itself from harder-edge coverage like "Heard on the Street," the paper may draw unwanted attention to its reputation in some quarters for being too lightweight. That could backfire among potential advertisers seeking better-educated, more affluent readers. The Gannett paper's ad revenue remains under pressure, so this campaign's success ultimately depends on whether is spurs more sales.

It's no surprise that USAT is gunning for the WSJ. Under new owner Rupert Murdoch, the paper snatched the No. 1 circulation title last year, bolstered by its hundreds of thousands of paid online subscriptions. The Gannett paper is left promoting itself as No. 1 in print, a difficult sell when online is where the action lies.

Now, the Journal is beefing up its sports reporting, too, a key franchise for USAT. This week, The New York Observer reported that the Journal's sports reporters are getting on-the-road credentials to cover New York area pro sports teams like the Mets, aiming for human-interest features beyond game scores, a hallmark of USA Today's well-regarded sports reporting.

USA Today's campaign also comes as another national rival, The New York Times, is similarly engaged in a full-bore trade marketing effort of its own, also targeted at the WSJ.

[Image: today's WSJ, Newseum]

Murdoch confirms April launch of new WSJ section; in speech, he promises NYC edition 'will be feisty'

In remarks that refer to "a certain other New York daily'' -- The New York Times -- CEO Rupert Murdoch for the first time previewed The Wall Street Journal's nascent New York City edition, in a speech today before the Real Estate Board of New York, according to a transcript on Romenesko. He confirmed that it will launch next month, saying:

"I can't tell you all the details. I can tell you that the new section will be full color -- and it will be feisty. It will cover everything that makes New York great: state politics, local politics, business, culture, and sports. Oh yes -- and real estate. Why are we expanding where others are pulling back? Because we take a different view of technology and value. Too many newspaper editors and owners are afraid that technology is harming the value of our product. The truth is just the opposite: technology is putting a premium on content."

Related: Here's the WSJ's story

Animus vs. arrogance, Part 2: Murdoch's envy

We knew that CEO Rupert Murdoch wants to compete hard against The New York Times with his prized Wall Street Journal.

But I didn't realize how fully it stems from a status-driven hatred for the paper and its owners. That fight is presented as the downmarket Australian press baron vs. the imperious, white shoe Sulzberger clan, according to today's New York magazine cover story about Murdoch. The graph that sealed it for me:

"Building the Journal into a general-interest newspaper to take on the Times is a crusade. Arthur Sulzberger himself is, for Murdoch, a symbol of the Times hypocrisy, its smugness, and its shortcomings. Murdoch’s hatred of the Times is a product of his long-standing class antagonisms rooted in his early days as an Australian building an empire in London. But on a more fundamental level, he believes Sulzberger is a poor businessman who has mismanaged his company’s fortunes and deserves to lose."

What's the over/under on whether the Sulzbergers will still control the Times Co. a year from now? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Animus vs. arrogance? Murdoch and Sulzberger

[Murdoch, Sulzberger]

From today's much-anticipated New York magazine cover story about CEO Rupert Murdoch:

1. When author Gabriel Sherman asked Arthur Sulzberger about surging competition with The Wall Street Journal, the Times Co. chairman dismissed his question out of hand: "Whatever," he said.

2. After Murdoch read an unflattering June 10, 2007, editorial about his plans to buy the Journal, he sent a note to Sulzberger that concluded "Let the battle begin!"

WSJ | Bloomingdale's said in new NYC section

Bergdorf Goodman, too, according to a new Advertising Age story that says the two retailers' plans for The Wall Street Journal's new New York City section illustrate the threat that metro expansion poses for The New York Times' hometown advertising base.

"Both traditionally spend far more in the Times than in the Journal,'' the trade publication says. "Bloomingdale's, for example, spent $17.9 million in the Times last year while devoting less than $1 million to the Journal, according to estimates from Kantar Media."

Ad Age notes that the NYT "has a solid base and probably a great many loyalists that won't be easy for the Journal to poach. But it also means the Times has something to lose, while the Journal is looking at tremendous opportunity."

[Image: Bloomie's iconic brown shopping bag]

Is the WSJ gunning for a Pulitzer -- in sports?

Here's fresh evidence that The Wall Street Journal under owner Rupert Murdoch (left) is aiming to be a more general-interest national newspaper, elbowing past The New York Times and USA Today.

Check out its full-bore hard-news coverage of the decisions leading to the death of a luge athlete last week. The paper has just broadcast an alert to the following story, now on its website:

Years before a young luge racer from the Republic of Georgia flew to his death at the Olympics last week, officials made a series of decisions designed to make the icy track a commercial success after the Games but that left it faster, and ultimately more dangerous, than any competitive track before.

Fox films | In Avatar, Murdoch's anti-NYT nuke

As The Wall Street Journal readies its nascent New York City news bureau to battle The New York Times, controlling shareholder Rupert Murdoch has another weapon at his disposal: Huge profits from Avatar, which is being distributed by the media mogul's Twentieth Century Fox division. In a new post today, blogger Ken Doctor smartly notes that News Corp. -- holding company for the WSJ, Fox and other media properties -- stands to earn $1.5 billion or more from sci-fi epic Avatar alone.

"That compares to the Times Co.'s total revenue of less than $2.5 billion in 2009," Doctor says, "and probably a small operating loss (the company reports its full 2009 on Feb. 10.)" He continues: "If you're Rupert Murdoch though, you just have to say, 'Take some of that blue people money and invest it in the Journal. Remember I said I wanted to kill the Times.' Maybe send them flying into the infinity of the flux vortex."

Report: WSJ's N.Y. city bureau to be even bigger

Expected to launch on April 12, The Wall Street Journal's New York City bureau will employ roughly three dozen staffers, three times more than the dozen or so the paper had planned for just three months ago, according to the New York Observer, adding that it represents Rupert Murdoch's most direct assault on The New York Times: "As we’ve reported, Mr. Murdoch has set aside a budget of $15 million for the project. There are plans for a daily stand-alone New York section, an Albany bureau, a City Hall bureau, a crime beat, a sports section and a culture section—in other words, a new, full-fledged New York paper, and one, incidentally, that is looking increasingly like the now defunct New York Sun."

Stock | New NYT paywall doesn't rally investors

Stock markets are broadly lower in trading so far today. But major newspaper publishers are suffering even more -- despite the New York Times Co.'s announcement that it has settled on a pay model for its flagship paper. Among stocks I follow, recent prices and change:

• Gannett: $15.83, down 3%
• News Corp.: $15.37, down 3%
• NYT Co.: $13.14, down 4%
• Dow Jones Industrial Average: down 2%
• S&P-500: down 1%

Fox TV | Anatomy of NBC's slide to a 'punch line'

In a new story, The New York Times traces the network's embarrassing decline to also-ran among the four broadcast networks are NBC affiliates. "It has been an unseemly spectacle for a company that prides itself on a smooth corporate culture," the NYT says today, "and the disastrous culmination of a high-stakes gamble" last year by NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker to move talk show host Jay Leno to the 10 p.m. slot, passing The Tonight Show to the younger Conan O’Brien.

Haiti | How they're playing the story online

Home pages from about 11 p.m. ET at the three national dailies; which one has the greatest sense of urgency?



Got a home page to recommend? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Is Times whistling past graveyard over WSJ move?

New York Times reporters say there's not a lot of talk in their newsroom about The Wall Street Journal's soon-to-launch New York City bureau, according to New York magazine. "The Times already has the apparatus to dominate city coverage," one staffer told the weekly. "That takes years to build, and the Journal doesn't have any of that."

The NYT was first to break the news about the Journal's move onto its backyard. New York says: "While originally reported to launch in April, it looks like the bureau will begin reporting its own stories by February. Its goal is to compete with the Times on its own turf: the news, politics, and culture of New York City (and State!). Starting with a reported staff of 12 and a budget of $15 million, obviously that's a tall order."

The magazine is wondering whether Sewell Chan's recently announced transfer to the NYT's Washington beat from the successful City Room Blog is good news for the Journal's nascent bureau.

Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.