Monthly Archives: April 2010
FT parent reports first quarter profit
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Pearson PLC, the parent company of The Financial Times, reported a first-quarter increase in profits due partly to a strengthening advertising market.
Lilly Vitorovich of Dow Jones Newswires writes, “At FT Publishing, strong demand for print and online subscriptions to the Financial Times, an increase in new sales at Mergermarket and a return to growth in advertising revenues all contributed to a good first quarter. ‘We are encouraged by a more positive environment for corporate and financial advertising, but bookings remain volatile and visibility remains poor,’ Pearson said.
“The trading update was well received by analysts, with UBS describing it as ‘another strong update.’ UBS has a buy rating on the stock and 1100 pence price target.
“‘The solid start to the year and return to growth amongst more cyclical parts of the business are encouraging,’ Citigroup said in a research note.”
Read more here.
Gasparino's Tampa roots
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Walt Belcher, the television critic for the Tampa Tribune, writes Thursday about Fox Business Network‘s Charles Gasparino, who worked at the paper 20 years ago.
Belcher writes, “When Fox Business Network hired him away from CNBC two months ago, he told them the same thing he told the editors who hired him at the Tribune: ‘My job is to rip the lungs out of the competition.’
“‘This is a competitive business, and breaking news is what I thrive on,’ says Gasparino, who delights in scooping rivals and even co-workers.
“Since joining Fox Business, he has broken several big stories that have embarrassed Republican and Democratic lawmakers who were privately courting favor on Wall Street.
“He debuted on the network in February with a breaking story – his business sources tipped him that Tiger Woods was going to make his first public apology.
“‘I am paid to produce, and I work hard at it,’ he says. ‘I care about issues that affect the pocketbook.’”
Read more here. DISCLOSURE: I replaced Gasparino on the Tampa Tribune business desk when he left in 1990.
WSJ DC bureau makes two additions
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John Bussey, the Washington bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, made the following announcement on Thursday:
“I’m pleased to announce two additions to the Washington bureau:
“Keith Johnson has joined the bureau to cover the Department of Homeland Security and related topics. He was most recently writing the Environmental Capital blog from Washington. Keith joined the paper in 1999 in the Madrid bureau where, over the years, he covered banks, telecoms, and energy. He was also part of a team of reporters that covered terrorism in Europe, and was especially active on that beat after the Madrid train bombings. Keith graduated from the University of Georgia in 1994.
“Devlin Barrett has joined the buro in a new post covering the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut congressional delegations and other political and regulatory matters affecting the NY metro area. His stories will appear primarily in the new Greater New York edition, but will also run in other sections of the paper.
“Devlin most recently was a reporter with the Associated Press in Washington where he covered the Justice Department. Between 2002 and 2009 he covered the NY congressional delegation for the AP, based in Washington. He was previously a reporter for the New York Post where he covered federal and state courts and terrorism. Devlin is from upstate New York and is a 1995 graduate of McGill University.
“Please join me in wishing Keith and Devlin success in their new jobs.”
Reuters' outsourcing strategy
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Edmund Lee of Advertising Age wrote about how some media companies have been outsourcing their content, and he looks into what Reuters.com is doing publishing stories from Associated Content.
Lee writes, “Associated’s contributions to professional publishers, however, sometimes look more like ‘serious’ journalism. Reuters.com, for example, has published Associated stories on the economy .
“‘This is part of a series of personal accounts about small business and the recession,’ a label on the Associated stories for Reuters said, suggesting that the pieces within or near the domain of citizen reporting. ‘The writers are contributors to Associated Content.’ But some pieces in this section make a clear attempt at traditional journalism, including one that interviews the president of a local GM dealership in Idaho and tries to parse sales figures for other dealerships that GM shut down.
“‘This was not a business decision, but entirely an editorial one,’ said Keith McAllister, global online editor for Thomson Reuters. ‘We want to fill out the online offering as much as possible. We’re building Thomson Reuters to be a content candy store.’
“‘In the case where we’re going more niche content, it makes sense to do these kinds of partnerships,’ he added.”
Read more here.
New job for Reuters editor
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Martin Howell, editor-in-charge of Reuters equities coverage in North and South America., directing much of its corporate news coverage, sent out the following announcement Thursday morning:
“As some of you have heard already, I am going to be taking a new position as Editorial Learning Manager for the Americas based in New York. This will be a completely new, exciting and I am sure sometimes humbling direction for me but I think that after almost eight years as the regional editor for companies news and more than two years as deputy regional editor it really is time for me to take on a new challenge.
“I wanted to say a few words of thanks to you all for the support, commitment and ideas that have made my job so much easier and so fulfilling over the past few years. It has been a wild ride — from dotcom bust to Enron to housing/consumer spending boom to financial crisis and now the aftermath.
“When you think how far we have come from the days when the companies team was mainly reactive to news events it is quite remarkable. We are now a team that has led the drive on special reports, is often able to be very competitive or win the top stories, runs a massive summits program, breaks lots of news, and in recent weeks thanks to Bangalore’s efforts is even beginning to win the timings war against Bloomberg. You have driven that progress through your commitment and talent and I am confident we will continue to make further big improvements in the file over the next few years. We have created a strong team, with some fine leaders, correspondents and editors, and I will be working over the next couple of months with the current companies EICs, and my successor when named, to ensure that we don’t lose any momentum during the transition.
“I will also ensure that I hand over the details of any career or other staff discussions to my successor and am happy to set up meetings wherever necessary to make certain people comfortable that this has happened. I should also be able to tie up quite a few loose ends myself over the next few weeks so happy if you want to bug me.
“I will be remaining in New York and will be happy to help any of you in your careers, as well as all your training needs, in whatever way I can over the next few years. One of the most enjoyable parts of my current job is to watch people succeed and go onto bigger challenges and in my new job I hope to play a role as a trainer and mentor in helping people achieve that whenever I can.
“I also want to thank my colleagues in the Americas News Planning Team, the other regional specialist editors and bureau chiefs, and of course Brian Rhoads and Jack Reerink, for all their support, guidance and humor (including humouring me when I have occasionally babbled on incomprehensibly about a story idea). We have come a long way in working together across the asset classes. Just looking this week at the changes in Washington, seeing four teams work together on financial regulation stories and breaking a lot of news, was fantastic to see. The silo mentality of the past is clearly dying if not dead.
“Of course, it will be difficult for me to keep my hands off the file in the new role. Withdrawal symptoms would set in too soon. So, do expect me to be active in the newsroom and to be throwing some story ideas (yes, I know sometimes they can be a little crazy!!!) towards you. I think helping staff on a day-to–day basis in the newsrooms around the region is as important as formal classroom training in my new role.”
Management shuffle at Forbes
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Shelley Dubois of Fortune writes that Forbes magazine may be seeing a change in management at its parent company.
Dubois writes, “Headhunter Michele James, CEO and founder of James & Co, has contacted at least one bona fide candidate for the job of COO of Forbes.
“The current COO is Tim Forbes. ‘Tim is staying with the company, he’s just going to go to a higher level,’ says Forbes spokesperson Monie Begley. ‘The new person coming in will report to Steve and Tim.’
“Forbes could be taking someone on because it’s trying to improve and rethink its digital presence. The company recently hired Lewis DVorkin, founder and CEO of True/Slant, as a consultant to help update its web strategy. Hiring a new executive who has significant digital experience could be another step in that direction.
“‘I would imagine that the person will have to have deep skills in web and print,’ says Begley, who doesn’t see the web issue as a driving force for the search for a new COO. ‘We’ve been doing [the web] since 1997, and very successfully.’”
Read more here.
The Iberian way at the WSJ
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Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson sent out the following announcement on Wednesday:
“I am delighted to announce that Santiago Perez, the Dow Jones Newswires bureau chief for Spain and Portugal, will now also oversee The Wall Street Journal’s coverage in those countries, which are of particular interest to our readers at this time. Santiago and his extremely capable team of reporters, editors and translators will continue generating real-time coverage for Newswires readers in English and Spanish.
“In addition, they will now look for opportunities to tell business, political, cultural and general news stories for the Journal’s readership. Santiago will continue to report to Art Mooradian, the Newswires bureau chief for Paris and head of operations for Southern Europe, and he will work very closely with the Journal’s Alessandra Galloni.”
FT.com launches new video platform
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The Financial Times announced Wednesday the launch of a new video technology platform and a dedicated video hub on FT.com.
Users will experience video on a broader range of mobile devices, including the iPad. The video content will be available on an exclusive area at www.ft.com/video, as well as being embedded in relevant news stories and analysis.
The redesigned section of the website is in line with the look and feel of the Financial Times brand, and includes a number of options to help users better navigate content on the site.
The new features include an “editor’s choice” selection of the top videos, a “most popular” section that lets users see at a glance what everyone else is watching, and users can also search by the most recently added videos.
Categories have been developed to align content with the main FT.com sections: Companies, Markets, Global Economy, Management, Personal Finance and World.
“FT.com video content is extremely popular for both users and advertisers,” said Steve Pinches, lead product manager, FT.com, in a statement. “The FT.com now publishes over 180 videos a month and has seen video views top 1 million a month. In response to this demand we are investing in an enhanced video platform which, as well as providing a much improved user experience, will also allow for much deeper integration of video right across FT.com and emerging platforms.”
WSJ's New York section falls flat
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The New York Observer provides a critique of the new New York section in The Wall Street Journal, and its evaluation is not pretty.
The editors write, “In terms of news, the section was dominated by mini-scoops, a disappointment given the paper’s resources and lead time. The first-day lead story on how the Port Authority may have let a would-be terrorist slip through the cracks felt incremental. Similarly, it’s hard to see how a hospital bid-rigging story on day two would have made it outside the inside of The Times’ Metro section.
“Other choices seem random. Does Greater New York think New Yorkers care enough about a shooting at Yale to justify putting a photo on the front page, as the Journal section does? They don’t. On the same day, a compelling one-on-one interview with Governor David Paterson was buried inside, right above a story about how box office for Broadway’s American Idiot is improving.
“The lighter coverage, of the arts and society, is where the section feels weakest. (No surprise, given that it’s not The WSJ’s strong suit. And yet the new section boasts an unusually large number of expats from The New York Sun, which had a notably robust culture section.)”
Read more here.
BusinessWeek and banned words
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Yvette Kantrow, the executive editor of TheDeal, went looking through the first issue of the renovated Bloomberg BusinessWeek to see if she could find some of the words — but, however, despite, although — that are banned from usage by Bloomberg News staffers.
“The first issue of Bloomberg Businessweek is not a bore, though it’s not exactly a barnburner, either. It is well organized, however, with its ‘opening remarks’ essays on Goldman up front, followed by six distinct areas of coverage (global economics, companies & industries, etc.) and a feature well, plus a section in the back called Etc., where lighter subjects like travel and gadgets are covered. Overall, the issue is happily devoid of many of the ditzier features that have crept into business magazines in recent years — no pointless lists of the best this or the worst that — and, mercifully, no attempt to get you, the reader, to start blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, linking or job hunting right now!
“There aren’t any scoops, and there won’t be any, since, as the Times reported, stories broken by the Businessweek staff will run on Bloomberg’s terminals first. While that may be sad for the magazine’s reporters, it’s a sensible policy for a weekly in today’s always-on media. It doesn’t necessarily make Businessweek any less of a news magazine. After all, its role model, The Economist, doesn’t break news either.”
Read more here.