Category Archives: Publishing

Mark Cuban sums up why Rupert Murdoch doesn’t care about Google

In the comments to his points on why ““Rupert Murdoch to Block Google = Smart = Twitter has changed it all“, Mark Cuban gives the best summary about why all the traffic that Google brings to News Corp isn’t worth … Continue reading

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The rise of the super-middlemen

Image via CrunchBase Ken Doctor on Rupert’s attempt to get people to pay for news: “When you hear Murdoch and other publishers justifiably scream about Jeff Bezos’ hard bargain — he keeps customer relationships and 70% of the revenue — … Continue reading

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Mark Cuban on the non-value of aggregator traffic

Mark Cuban on why traffic from aggregation sites is worth diddly-squat to publishers: The value of the traffic sent by most sites is minimal at best. Lets look at your best friend Michael Wolf’s site Newser.com.  According to Quantcast he gets … Continue reading

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Why “process journalism” is neither journalism, nor process

Jeremy Toeman, talking about the truly absurd “Twittergate”, sums up why process journalism fails: “But this is par for the course if your job is breaking news as fast as possible, as there is no reward for being late nor is … Continue reading

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Why Nick Denton is smarter than almost anyone in new media

While I think that Mike Arrington is a blowhard – and is gradually being found out as such – it’s fairly obvious that Nick Denton is this generation’s Rupert Murdoch. Especially when he comes out with smart comments like this: … Continue reading

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Amazon seems keen to try out new models for books

Amazon appears to be applying for a patent on inserting adverts into ebooks, and predictably some people aren’t particularly keen on the idea. But it seems to me that Amazon wants to do is explore different ways to get people … Continue reading

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Will someone do to Photoshop what InDesign did to Quark?

Back in the days when I did proper print publishing instead of all this new-fangled online nonsense, everyone used QuarkXPress – and everyone hated Quark with a passion. The price of the product always seemed to go up, never down, … Continue reading

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Some quick thoughts about Google versus the newspapers

Image via CrunchBase Rupert Murdoch has really put the cat amongst the pigeons with his comments about Google: “Rupert Murdoch threw down the gauntlet to Google Thursday, accusing the search giant of poaching content it doesn’t own and urging media … Continue reading

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The passion of publishing, or why some bloggers are journalists

There’s a very simple joke that sums up the difference between a blogger and a professional journalist, and it goes like this. Q: What’s the difference between a blogger and a reporter? A: About £25,000 per year. Employing people as … Continue reading

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Goodbye Maxim

This week Maxim shut, neatly closing a chapter of publishing that I was there to witness at the start. When Maxim first launched, I was at Dennis Publishing on the MacUser team, and I remember the small gathering the company … Continue reading

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