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ftm Tickle File 20 August, 2007

 

 

The Tickle File is ftm's daily column of media news, complimenting the feature articles on major media issues. Tickle File items point out media happenings, from the oh-so serious to the not-so serious, that should not escape notice...in a shorter, more informal format.

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Week of August 13, 2007

It Seems Warren Buffett Had Little Doubt Murdoch Would Win Dow Jones

Warren Buffett has often said loud and clear he hasn’t believed  for some years now that newspapers are a good long-term investment, but sometime in Q2 his Berkshire Hathaway went and bought some 2.78 million Dow Jones shares.

Now, if he did that before the May 1 public announcement of Murdoch’s offer with the shares in the mid $30s, then Buffett will see a very tidy 65% profit on his investment that could run to around $69.5 million. But assuming he didn’t, and since he has publicly said he doesn’t believe in newspaper investments under normal conditions  and he therefore  bought the shares after Murdoch’s announcement when they were somewhere in the mid-50s  then he can still be looking at a $14 million profit, before tax.

Whenever he bought, the gamble was on whether Murdoch would persuade the Bancrofts to sell. If he bought in the $50s and the deal failed then most people expected the shares to sink back to the mid $30s again. No matter how you cut it was still a gamble --  sounds very un-Buffett-like.  

News of the investment came from an SEC Q2 filing for Berkshire Hathaway. It did not give the precise date of the investment, so it could have been any time between April 1 and June 30.

NYT July Revenue Down But Its Web Site Still The Top US Newspaper Site

The New York Times Company reported its July revenue was down 3.5% in July, but the company was cheered by news from Nielsen/Net Ratings that its NYTimes.com July web site traffic grew to more than 14 million from June’s12.53 million, keeping it by far the number one US newspaper site. (USA Today is second with 10.6 million unique visitors).

Print ad revenue was still going down, but circulation revenue rose 4% and Internet advertising revenue rose 4%.

Everyone seems to have picked up on a recent New York Post article claiming the Times will close down its TimesSelect service, but the company made no comment on that in releasing its July data except to say the service has close to 225,000 paying customers, and doing the math means it is earning some $10 million annually.

The debate within the company is whether the newspaper could make more than that by opening up the TimesSelect pages that have basically put the newspaper’s most popular columnists behind a pay wall, and that advertising sold on those pages would earn more than the subscriptions.

NBC Slams Reuters On Russian Mini Sub Video Under The North Pole

Few in the news business really like to admit they made a mistake and if they have to admit it there’s nothing like putting the blame on someone else. But what Brian Williams did on NBC Nightly News Wednesday night really was cya (cover your ass) gone wild!  

Reuters had provided to clients around the world video footage at the weekend that it said was a Russian mini-sub under the North Pole – it was illustrating the Russian claim they planted a flag on the ocean floor claiming the Pole (and its minerals) belongs to them.  But a 13-year-old Finn saw the Reuters footage and he determined the video was actually of a Russian submarine that had been searching for the wreckage of the Titanic some years ago. Reuters had picked up the clip from Russian RTR TV (no relation to Reuters) not knowing the clip was misleading.

When Reuters became aware of the error it immediately did the right thing – it notified its clients, withdrew the clip, and apologized. But nothing from NBC to its viewers. So Accuracy in Media put out a news release Wednesday that blasted NBC for refusing to apologize for showing the misleading footage.

Apparently that was too much for NBC and so near the end of Wednesday’s Nightly News newscast, Brian Williams said NBC wanted to issue a clarification as he showed the clip yet again.  He basically said it was Reuters footage, it was Reuters fault  it got shown all over the world and, oh, yes,  in case you didn’t catch it the first few times, it was all Reuters fault.

It seems that things have gotten so competitive in US TV news that to admit to a mistake is something you do only as a last resort, and if you do admit it make absolutely certain the public fully understands it was someone else’s fault.  

I doubt the Reuters name has been heard on NBC Nightly News in the last year as many times as Williams mentioned the brand so negatively Wednesday.

Brian, not a class act!

Big Bonus For James Murdoch

People took note that Rupert Murdoch brought son James over from London to participate in the Dow Jones negotiations.  There are many who believe James is the favorite to succeed Rupert whenever succession time comes.

But James is doing just fine running BSkyB in the UK, in fact he did so well over the past three years increasing profits and customer numbers that he has just been awarded a £4 million ($8 million, €5.89 million) bonus for meeting most of his targets.  And that was in addition to his annual £3 million ($6 million, €4.4 million) salary – he got a 15% raise this year, too.

Swissinfo domain name double-take

Former employee registered name, tried to sell

Domain name squatters get very little sympathy in courts or at large. A Berne, Switzerland court, however, rejected public broadcaster SSR-SRG’s request to take control over the domain name swissinfo (dot) org. It seems a former manager at swissinfo registered the domain name in his name before he became an employee at swissinfo. He was fired a year ago – “on short notice,” said the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) – and tried to sell swissinfo (dot) org to a third party.

Swissinfo is the highly respected successor to Swiss Radio International, Switzerland’s former international broadcaster. The transition from short-wave to internet began in earnest in 1998, about the same time the un-named former senior manager was hired. By 2004 the short-wave service was shut-down. Swissinfo is operated by SSR-SRG and receives partial funding from the Swiss Federal Council.

The former manager “allowed” swissinfo to continue using this particular domain name without charge through the end of this year, the effective date of his contract’s termination. SSR-SRG did, however, register the swissinfo (dot) ch domain.

A legal battle appears to be brewing as both sides are intractable.

What’s The Worst Mistake A Journalist Can Make?

Irene Epstein was a fiery red-headed associate professor of journalism at San Jose State College in California in the 60s and 70s, She had one rule that she never let her news writing students forget – “The worst mistake a journalist can make is misspelling someone’s name. How would you like it if the newspaper misspelled your name?” And to ram home her point she had a cardinal rule in all of her news writing exercises – “You can write the greatest prose ever but misspell someone’s name and you get 0 out of 10 points for that exercise. No excuses accepted.”

It’s training that is still remembered these 40 plus years later, and it readily comes to mind again following a column in the New York Times Sunday by the Public Editor, Clark Hoyt. He was responding to reader complaints about name misspellings and he admitted, “The fact is, The New York Times misspells names at a ferocious rate – famous names, obscure names, names of the dead in their obituaries, names of the living in their wedding announcements, household names from Hollywood, names of Cabinet  officers, sports figures, the shoe bomber, the film critic for the Daily News in New York, and astonishingly and repeatedly, Sulzberger, the name of the family that owns the New York Times.”

Hoyt says that since it’s not possible to hand out failing marks to a journalist who misspells a name why not make the offending journalist write a personal letter of apology to the person whose name is misspelled (no form letters please). And considering The Times this year has already made 269 name corrections the apology letters could well gain the attention of the offending journalist and/or desk editor.

As an offended reader wrote to Hoyt, “One’s name is part of one. It’s who you are. Even in death you want to be represented correctly.”

The Feds Want Millions of Dollars From Conrad Black

US prosecutors, fresh from getting guilty verdicts for fraud against media mogul Conrad Black, now  are asking the judge in the case to order he and two other defendants refund $16.9 million gained unlawfully. (Read previous article on Conrad Black's potential for jail time)  

"The defendants diverted $32.15 million,” the prosecutors said, but because of a change in the law they can only ask that $16.9 million be returned.

Sentencing for Black and three codefendants is set for Nov. 30. Black is free on $21 million bail but he has been ordered to stay either in Chicago or in Palm Beach, Florida where he has an estate. He has been forbidden to return to his native Canada because Canadian officials told the federal court that if extradition was required to send him back to the US it could prove difficult.

Another Newspaper Saving – Outsource Editorial Production

The New Zealand Herald, the country’s largest newspaper, has started to outsource editorial production – editing and layout – to a sub contractor across town in Wellington who has been given access to the newspaper’s editorial production system. Besides the Herald, APN News & Media has also given the outsourcing for seven regional and weekly newspapers.

Twenty full-time editors are working on editorial production for the newspapers at PageMasters New Zealand and by the time the year is out that number will increase to around 45. That’s some 30 fewer than the newspaper group now hires to do the job. The Herald completed editing staff layoffs last week and the regional cuts are scheduled to be concluded before year-end.

APN is 50% owned by Dublin-based Independent News & Media.

UK Says Airline Ads And Online Bookings Must Show The Full Price

One of the most infuriating things about booking airline tickets online these days is that it gives one price for the journey and then on the payment page the actual price shown can be at least 50% more once the various taxes and fuel surcharges are thrown in. But the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has now ruled that is a no-no, and that the full prices must be shown at the beginning of the online booking cycle, not just at the end, and that advertising must also show the true all-in figures, too.

Sean Williams, OFT executive director, said, “The OFT is committed to ensure that consumers are not mislead by advertised prices that bear little relation to actual prices.”

Since ftm is based in Switzerland we should pay tribute to Swiss International Airlines that actually made that change on its web site many months ago. The difference in pricing can be startling. ftm recently booked an advanced ticket to London from Geneva that carried a full price including taxes and fuel surcharge of 98 Swiss Francs one-way. But look at the pricing breakdown and the actual Swiss ticket is just 43 Francs, and the rest is tax and fuel surcharge. Would have been quite a shock to book a 43 Franc ticket and then find out at the end of the buying cycle the real price was 98 CH, more than double.

Newspaper Web Site Traffic Growth Down

Newspapers are counting on large web site growth to help cover the print losses, but signs from last month indicate that newspaper web site traffic is slowing down.

According to comScore, unique visitor traffic at the New York Times’ web site was down 6.9% from a year earlier; The Wall Street Journal was up 14.6% but for Dow Jones as a whole traffic was down 8.9% because of 21% decreases at the Ottaway Newspapers’ sites and at MarketWatch. com, and at USA Today July traffic was down 3% in July following a 12.7% drop in June.

The world’s biggest phone-in contest cleared of cheating

Eurovision Song Contest critics need to find something else to whinge about. Armed with two separate audits the EBU declared the much bally-hooed “block voting” did not take place when Serbia’s singer Marija Serifovic won the contest last May.

“I wouldn't say 100% because that would be impossible but there is no way you can manipulate the tele-voting,” said Eurovision director Svante Stockselius.

The EBU announcement, of course, has nothing to do with the recent revelations of phone contest rigging on British television.

When asked about the contest voting, 2007 winner Marija Serifovic said, “Some Western countries need to make better songs.''

It’s Monday morning. Do you know where the money is?

The business news channels and programs chattered all weekend about the possibilities of further worries in the financial markets. That is what they do best.

The first big test for media deals in the pipeline will come Tuesday as the Tribune Company’s shareholders vote on Sam Zell’s buyout offer. They will certainly approve. US$8 billion buys big boats.

The next question, though, will be whether or not Zell’s highly leveraged deal will see the light of day…or cheap credit.

Last week's complete Tickle File

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