Great West Newspapers producing Edmonton Sun
“Great West Newspapers (GWN) of St Albert, Alberta, Canada, began new daily production of Postmedia’s tabloid Edmonton Sun along with a second regional daily and 14 other weekly and twice-weekly newspapers Jan. 12.
GWN has been printing Postmedia’s metro broadsheet, the Edmonton Journal, since the summer of 2013. Although this work is another new size and format for GWN and represents a substantial increase in volume to its already busy printing plant, no major changes were needed, the company says.
That’s due in large part to the efficiency of the GWN’s specially designed multi-format triple width press installed in 2013, the company says. “It has the flexibility of a single width press and the productivity of a triple width press,” says a news release from GWN. The production concept, press design and project management were by Web Offset Services, GWN says.”
Source: News and Tech, 2020
The State drops Saturday print
“The State (Columbia, South Carolina) is dropping its Saturday print edition, starting the week of Jan. 19. The paper will still deliver a Saturday e-edition.
“For decades, we gave away our product at a fraction of its value because advertising paid the freight. But our advertising revenue has cratered from the days when a market was just a newspaper and a couple of television stations,” the paper wrote.
“Like any business, we’ve had to adjust. We’ve raised prices to ask you to pay closer to what it costs to produce and deliver an actual printed newspaper, and we’ve cut expenses to keep those subscription rates at a level that represents value,” the paper said.
The Friday and Sunday editions will be bigger to carry the puzzles, comics and TV listings that would appear on Saturdays, the paper said.
McClatchy owns the paper. In its third quarter earnings report released in mid-November, McClatchy said it plans to cut Saturday editions of all of its 30 publications in 14 states by the end of 2020.”
Source: News and Tech, 2020
Journal Gazette adds paywall
“The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Indiana) instituted a metered paywall Jan. 15. Accessing news online from the paper now requires a subscription.
People with a seven-day print subscription can read the paper’s online content at no extra cost, the paper said.
Scott Stanford, president and CEO of Fort Wayne Newspapers, said the news content has value, regardless of whether it is published in print or online.
An online-only subscription to The Journal Gazette costs $20, with a one-month promotional price of $9.95.
“We have always charged for our print product and we probably should’ve charged in 1996 when we began offering that content on the internet,” Journal Gazette President and Publisher Julie Inskeep said. “I think it is imperative we do so now.””
Source: News and Tech, “20
Sentinel Newspapers to stop publishing
“The last edition of The Sentinel Newspapers will publish on Jan. 30, after serving Montgomery County for more than 160 years and Prince George’s County (both in Maryland) for 88 years, CEO/Publisher Lynn Kapiloff wrote in the papers.
The Sentinel Newspapers have not been profitable for the past decade, according to Kapilof. “We prided ourselves in creating a launchpad for young journalists such as Bob Woodward, who uncovered the Watergate scandal, or current member of the Virginia House of Delegates Danica Roem, who became the first openly transgender person to be elected to the Virginia General Assembly,” Kapilof wrote.
“Our family has owned the Montgomery County Sentinel newspapers for 57 years and the Prince George’s Sentinel for 42 years and it has been my great honor and privilege to be part of this team,” Kapilof wrote in a letter to employees, according to Montgomery Community Media.”
Source: News and Tech, 2020
Tribune Publishing offers buyouts
“Tribune Publishing is offering voluntary buyouts to all staff employed for eight or more years, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The move is aimed at avoiding “turning to company-wide reductions of the workforce as a last resort,” Tribune Publishing CEO Tim Knight said in an email to employees.
New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital became the biggest shareholder in Tribune Publishing in November. Tribune Publishing then added two Alden representatives to the newspaper company’s board, making it eight members. Alden is barred from boosting its stake in the company to more than 33 percent until the end of June.
Tribune Publishing had some 4,100 full-time employees at the end of last year, according to the company.
Tribune Publishing owns the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Hartford Courant, Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun Sentinel, New York Daily News and other papers.”
Google Chrome to phase out support for third-party cookies
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Google plans to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome, the company announced in a blog post Jan. 14. The company plans to do so within two years. “But we cannot get there alone, and that’s why we need the ecosystem to engage on these proposals. We plan to start the first origin trials by the end of this year, starting with conversion measurement and following with personalization” says the blog.
In August, Google announced a new initiative known as Privacy Sandbox to develop a set of open standards to enhance privacy on the web, the company says. The cookies announcement is an update on that initiative.
“Users are demanding greater privacy — including transparency, choice and control over how their data is used — and it’s clear the web ecosystem needs to evolve to meet these increasing demands” says the blog.
Google says it’s gotten positive feedback in forums like the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) that the mechanisms underlying the Privacy Sandbox represent key use-cases and go in the right direction.
Meanwhile, new research has found that cookies represent higher revenue to online publishers. According to the study, titled “Consumer Privacy Choice in Online Advertising: Who opts out and at what cost to industry?” there is a 52 percent reduction in advertising revenue to publishers when cookies are eliminated through user opt-out protocols. When cookies are present, publishers’ ad pricing doubles, the study says.
The study is authored by Garrett Johnson of Questrom School of Business at Boston University; Scott Shriver of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado; and Shaoyin Du of the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester. It can be found in the January edition of the INFORMS journal “Marketing Science.””
Source: News and Tech, 2o20
