From USAToday
“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Washington Post is eliminating its standalone Business section on weekdays and folding business coverage into the “A” front section, the newspaper announced Friday.
The Post is also eliminating daily stock listings. It will instead offer a half-page of statistics and graphics that will focus on prices of major and local stocks and other economic data.
Many newspapers have been eliminating standalone business sections to cut production costs amid plunging advertising revenue. Last month, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced similar plans, and earlier this month the Los Angeles Times shrunk from five to four daily sections.
Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in a statement that the change also reflects “the increasing overlap of political and economic events” and allows the Post “to run a leaner, better-organized newspaper.”
The changes begin March 30. Last month, the Post ended publication of its standalone book-review section in its Sunday newspaper.
Also on March 30, the newspaper’s Style section will cut some comic strips from the print edition and run them only on its website. The Post currently runs three daily pages of comics.
The Post still plans a separate Business section on Sundays.
More . . .
****
Subscribe to Brusque via RSS
What is RSS?
Subscribe to Brusque via Email
Follow Brusque on Twitter
****
Picture Credit: The Washington Post
March 14, 2009
Posted by
ej |
Newspapers | Business, eNews |
Leave a Comment
They were thin, sure, but they were something
By Elinore Longobardi, Columbia Journalism Review
Business news is booming these days. Business-news sections not so much. They are disappearing and have been doing so regularly for months. The trend seems set to continue.
Newspapers across the country are quietly eliminating stand-alone business sections to lower costs. The business cuts don’t come in isolation, but local business sections have been hit particularly hard. Many stand-alone sections were born within the past few decades, but their brief life is already coming to an end.
The death of the local business-news section won’t come as a great surprise to anyone reading, well, the business section these days. But a trickle is turning into a torrent, leaving a void in local communities and forcing local business editors to put the best face on it.
The death march has been noted by a few business-news watchers, most notably Chris Roush, who writes a blog called Talking Biz News. But the phenomenon has otherwise not gotten the coverage it merits.
That’s too bad, because who else but local business reporters and editors are going to report on the ups and downs of the local economies and the goings-on of the small-to-medium-sized businesses that have huge impacts on individual communities but never grace the pages of The Wall Street Journal? In some cases, local business weeklies have sprung up to fill a void, but those too often have the interests of business in mind, not those of the community at large. That’s a role general-interest publications have typically had to fill. More . . .
****
Subscribe to Brusque via RSS
What is RSS?
Subscribe to Brusque via Email
Follow Brusque on Twitter
****
March 14, 2009
Posted by
ej |
Newspapers | Business, eNews |
Leave a Comment
The New York Times is selling its stake in its building for $225 million.
By Hui-yong Yu and Greg Bensinger, Bloomberg.com
March 9 (Bloomberg) — The New York Times Co. agreed to sell the space it occupies in its Manhattan headquarters for $225 million to pay debt as print advertising revenue declines.
The newspaper publisher will lease the building for 15 years from new owner W.P. Carey & Co., a New York-based real estate investment bank, and retain the option to buy back its stake in 2019 for $250 million, according to a statement today.
The transaction covers 21 floors, or about 750,000 square feet, of the 52-story building on Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st streets. The publisher, which has cut jobs and stopped paying dividends, is trying to sell assets to cope with an accelerating decline in revenue.
“It definitely looks like W.P. Carey is getting a great deal,” based on the long-term outlook for rents and occupancy, Victor Calanog, director of research at Reis Inc., a real estate research firm, said in an interview.
W.P. Carey is paying $300 a square foot for an initial capitalization rate of 10.6 percent, compared with less than 5 percent during the real estate market’s peak in early 2007. The cap rate is calculated by dividing net operating income by purchase price. The higher the cap rate, the lower the price.
The rental income works out to $32 a square foot net, or about $55 a foot gross, including operating expenses, said W.P. Carey Chief Executive Officer and President Gordon DuGan. By contrast, gross leases in the same market today range from $70 to $90 a foot, he said. More . . .
****
Subscribe to Brusque via RSS
What is RSS?
Subscribe to Brusque via Email
Follow Brusque on Twitter
****
Picture Credit: Bloomberg.com
March 14, 2009
Posted by
ej |
Newspapers | Business, eNews |
Leave a Comment
digital newspaper that celebrates the successes of women around the globe with a focus on women in business. Again, we are big on business, entrepreneurship and marketing around here; so if you notice a bias, please excuse it, but at least you’ll know where it comes from.
