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Media Decoder Blog: News Corp. Announces Its Corporate Split, and the Closing of The Daily

December 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

News Corporation announced additional details about its coming split on Monday, including a plan to cease publication of The Daily, its stand-alone tablet newspaper.

The publishing company, which will keep the name News Corporation and will include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, HarperCollins and Australian television assets, will be led by Robert Thomson, the current editor in chief of the The Journal. (He will be succeeded at The Journal by his deputy, Gerard Baker.)

The entertainment company will be called Fox Group, and will include Fox Broadcasting, Fox News and the 20th Century Fox studio. Chase Carey, currently president and chief operating officer at News Corporation, will remain in that role at Fox Group, with James Murdoch serving as his deputy.

Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, will continue to serve as chief executive at Fox Group and will be chairman of the publishing company.

A company news release that announced the changes also mentioned the shuttering of The Daily. The tablet-only daily publication was introduced with much fanfare by Mr. Murdoch and Apple as a way to revolutionize the news business. But the publication struggled to gain readers and relevance.

Jesse Angelo, executive editor of The Daily and The New York Post, will become publisher of The Post. Some members of the staff of The Daily will be absorbed into The Post’s newsroom, the company said.

In June, News Corporation said it would split into two separate, publicly traded companies.

In a nostalgic memo to staff, Mr. Murdoch praised the idea of a separate company devoted almost entirely to newspapers. “Many of you know that a belief in the power of the written word has been in my bones for my entire life,” he wrote. “It began as I listened to my father’s stories from his days as a war correspondent and, later, a successful publisher.”

Amy Chozick is The Times’s corporate media reporter. Follow @amychozick on Twitter.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 3, 2012

An earlier version of this post misstated the first name of the editor who will succeed Robert Thomson as editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal. He is Gerard, not Gerald, Baker.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/news-corp-announces-its-corporate-split-and-the-closing-of-the-daily/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Media Decoder Blog: CNN Makes It Official: Zucker to Be New President

November 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

11:36 a.m. | Updated CNN made official Thursday morning its decision to install Jeff Zucker, the former chief executive of NBC, as the new president of CNN Worldwide.

The announcement culminated a monthslong search to find a replacement for Jim Walton, who had led CNN to record profits even as ratings for its American network, CNN/U.S., hit record lows. The network announced in July that Mr. Walton would step down at the end of the year.

What’s Next?
Many Paths for CNN

Jeff Zucker no doubt is getting much advice on how to revitalize the network: maybe add more celebrities or double-down on news or documentaries.

Mr. Zucker will be expected to revive the American network to competitive standing against its rivals, Fox News and MSNBC, even as it maintains its position as a nonpartisan news network opposing those speaking from the right (Fox) and left (MSNBC). CNN said that Mr. Zucker would start his new assignment in January.

He will arrive at CNN carrying the baggage of the collapse of NBC’s own broadcast network, which descended from dominance in prime time to last-place status under Mr. Zucker, even as the company’s cable networks, including MSNBC, thrived under him.

But Mr. Zucker also brings a reputation for leadership in news, which he forged in two tenures leading NBC’s “Today” show to dominance in morning ratings and profits.

Time Warner’s chief executive, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, and his deputy, Phil Kent, the head of Turner Broadcasting, were known to have sought candidates with the right combination of management skills, programming expertise and journalistic credibility to oversee CNN’s many channels and Web sites. There was a short list, and Mr. Zucker was on it from the beginning.

Walter Isaacson, who ran CNN from 2001 to 2003, preceding Mr. Walton, said Mr. Zucker was a smart choice because “CNN has great journalists, but what it has needed is an imaginative programmer who knows how to build good shows.”

Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said that if anyone could “bring CNN back,” Mr. Zucker could. On Thursday he sounded excited about the competition to come. Referring to Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman, Mr. Griffin said: “Ailes on one side, Zucker on the other: Game on.”

This year Mr. Zucker joined with his longtime friend Katie Couric to produce “Katie,” the syndicated talk show that started in September. There was no immediate word about who would take over the talk show. But Ms. Couric said in a statement on Thursday: “I’m very excited that Jeff has such a wonderful opportunity at CNN and equally excited for CNN. I’m also grateful that Jeff has been so instrumental in getting our show off to such a strong start and look forward to working with the fantastic staff we’ve assembled and building on the strong foundation we’ve created.”

At CNN Mr. Zucker will report to Mr. Kent, who said in a statement: “Jeff’s experience as a news executive is unmatched for its breadth and success. He built and sustained the No. 1 brand in morning news, and under his watch NBC’s signature news programming set a standard for quality and professionalism. As a programmer, a brand-builder and a leader, he will bring energy and new thinking to CNN. I couldn’t be happier to welcome him or more excited about what he’ll accomplish here.”

Mr. Zucker said in a news release that he was excited to return to work as a journalist, specifically “to daily news gathering and compelling storytelling in a place that values those above all else.”

Notably, Mr. Zucker will be based at CNN’s bureau in New York. Mr. Walton was based in Atlanta, where CNN has been headquartered since its inception in 1980. The change may signal a shift in power within the 4,000-employee organization.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/cnn-makes-it-official-zucker-to-be-new-president/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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‘The Five’ Rises on Fox News, in Glenn Beck’s Shadow

December 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

So, about a week and a half before Mr. Beck signed off, Mr. Ailes wrote the words “The Five” on a piece of paper. Looking to the ABC talk show “The View” and to the time of day as inspiration, he pictured five co-hosts who could argue about the day’s top stories without feeling antipathy for one another. When announced on June 30, Mr. Beck’s last day, “The Five” seemed to be a temporary fix — even to the co-hosts, who were initially told they were just trying out for a weekend show.

But the show has stuck and has become a permanent part of the network’s lineup. The show’s ratings, though generally not as high as Mr. Beck’s, are growing. And most important, the advertisers that had shunned Mr. Beck are coming back to the time slot.

Of Mr. Beck, Roger Domal, the vice president for eastern ad sales at Fox News, said, “I think that his ratings provided us, unfortunately, with empty calories.” In mid-2009, groups lobbied advertisers to boycott Mr. Beck’s broadcast after he called President Obama a racist, making the show “basically something that we could not monetize,” Mr. Domal said.

Now, on “The Five,” he said, “there are no issues at all; the program has a full complement of ads.”

The surprise success of “The Five” gives Fox News, a unit of News Corporation, a stable schedule in a presidential election season that has played out largely on its own airwaves. Fox remains the country’s most-watched cable news channel by far, with more than a million viewers at any given time, though it is down about 4 percent this year from its audience levels last year.

“The Five” is shown at a crucial time — 5 p.m. Eastern — that acts as a transition between daytime and prime time. Of the seven rotating hosts, the five regulars are Greg Gutfeld, who also helms the overnight show “Red Eye”; Eric Bolling, who also has a show on the Fox Business Network; the former Bush administration spokeswoman Dana Perino; the conservative columnist Andrea Tantaros; and the Mondale campaign manager and Fox analyst Bob Beckel.

Two others, Juan Williams and Kimberly Guilfoyle, sometimes sub in.

“We genuinely get along inside and out,” Mr. Gutfeld said in an interview last week. “When it gets too heated, you can tell that we feel bad about it afterwards.”

Said Mr. Beckel in a separate interview, “It’s like seeing a family at Thanksgiving come home and argue about politics, but you know that everybody loves each other.”

When Mr. Beck joined Fox in January 2009, he more than doubled the 5 p.m. time slot’s ratings, sometimes drawing as many as three million viewers. But love didn’t exactly radiate from the time slot. He spurred controversy — with the “racist” remark and many others — and eventually fell out of favor with Fox, so it came as no surprise when the two sides mutually agreed to split up. Mr. Beck is now hosting a daily show on GBTV, an Internet channel that costs $5 to $10 a month.

In his final month on Fox, Mr. Beck had an average of 1.6 million viewers; the following month, “The Five” had fewer than 1.3 million.

It has steadily gained audience share since then, and in mid-September Mr. Ailes made the show permanent. So far this month it had 1.6 million daily viewers, matching Mr. Beck’s final numbers for the first time.

“Not having a host, just in and of itself, is a departure for cable news,” said Mr. Beckel, who commutes to New York weekly from Washington to be on the show. Viewers, he said, “are looking all day long at cable news and they’re seeing guest, host, guest, host — and this is a departure from that.”

Conservative opinions and themes are front and center on the show, as they are on virtually all of Fox’s opinion programs. Blogs took notice this month when Mr. Bolling asked, halfway into the show, “Guys, why are we doing our third segment on, like, beating up Newt Gingrich or trashing Donald Trump? Where’s the segment on Obama’s socialist economy, isn’t working? Where’s the section on guns or unions?”

“You’re going through withdrawal,” Mr. Beckel answered, adding that “about every other segment on every other show is” about Mr. Obama.

Mr. Beckel said in an interview, however, that he did not feel outmatched on the show, in part because “a big chunk of the show is not about politics.”

Added Ms. Perino in a separate interview, “We’re very mindful about keeping the show fresh.”

Ms. Perino, who was commuting to New York like Mr. Beckel, recently decided to move to the city with her husband. She said she often gets stopped in public by viewers. “Usually,” she said, “I get asked, ‘Does Bob Beckel really believe those things he says?’ ”

Brian Krason, a grant writer who lives outside Boston and who calls himself an ex-conservative, watches the show in part for that reason.

Mr. Beckel, Mr. Krason said, challenges and sometimes even changes his views.

“The appeal of the show for me is that it is truly balanced in its reporting,” he said. “Although it is really four conservatives and one liberal, Bob Beckel keeps the others in line and corrects the facts when needed.”

Production of “The Five” has been assigned to John Finley, the longtime producer of Sean Hannity’s 9 p.m. talk show on the network, and there are some similarities between the two. On Mr. Hannity’s show, there is a segment called the “Great American Panel” with three rotating guests.

“The Five” and several lower-rated talk shows that started on MSNBC this year are representative of a continued shift on cable to talk about the news and away from actual news reports.

“People know what the news is,” said Mr. Domal, the ad sales executive. “You’re not coming to cable news for news anymore. You’re coming for either validation of your opinion or you’re looking to find out what the other side is saying.”

It is, he said, analogous to the debates that break out on peoples’ Facebook walls.

“It’s almost like we’re social media, live,” he said. “They’re just talking to each other. They’re just posting.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=6748536f33a44b10925f951c49b836b3

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Economix Blog: Nancy Folbre: The Green Jobs Numbers

September 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

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Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Now, more than ever, prospects for “green jobs” are being treated as a red flag in partisan debate.

Today’s Economist

Perspectives from expert contributors.

Media Matters, a nonprofit watchdog group, has documented a Fox News report proclaiming that the costs of green jobs exceed the benefits. A recent New York Times article, pointing to lackluster programs in California, concluded that “public efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed.” A column by David Brooks in The New York Times was pointedly titled “Where the Jobs Aren’t.”

In reaching for bipartisan support in his jobs speech on Thursday, President Obama avoided the word “green” altogether, though his proposed increase in infrastructure spending could involve investments in improved energy efficiency.

But green jobs still hold considerable promise. While it’s not hard to find examples of programs that haven’t lived up to expectations, considerable evidence demonstrates the actual and potential employment impact of efforts to improve environmental sustainability.

Not that green jobs are easy to define. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is currently in the process of developing an official measure, but employment that either saves energy or increases use of energy generated from renewable sources clearly falls into the category.

In February, the Economic Policy Institute and the Blue-Green Alliance released a comprehensive analysis of the employment impact of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act expenditures aimed in this direction, dominated by efforts to improve energy efficiency in buildings and to promote low-carbon transportation.

The study estimates an increase in direct employment of about 367,000 jobs, while indirect employment effects came to about one million – not a cure-all for an economy with more than 14 million unemployed, but a significant contribution.

The cost per job created varied considerably, and not all programs have moved forward as quickly as they should have. But as a report from Think Progress carefully documents, sensationalized assertions of a million dollars or more spent per job are misleading. Overall, the costs of green jobs creation, whether funded with public or private dollars, are lower than those in most other sectors of the economy, at an average of about $60,000 each. These jobs are likely to last for years, generating private cost-savings and important public benefits.

Retrofits to improve the energy efficiency of our existing building stock offer a particularly high rate of return.

A recent Brookings Institution report calls for broader attention to “clean jobs,” defined as those in establishments that produce or add value to goods and services with an environmental benefit, such as reducing pollution or natural resource depletion.

By this definition, the clean economy is a pretty small slice of the United States economy, accounting for only about 2 percent of all jobs. But it’s now bigger than the dirtiest slice, related to production of fossil-fuel based energy.

The analysis by Brookings of employment trends on the county level between 2003 and 2010 shows that jobs in wind energy and solar photovoltaics represent a small but rapidly expanding part of the larger clean economy.

The report also points to a growing share of private venture capital moving in this direction: 16 percent in 2010, from 2 percent in 1995.

So why not rely entirely on the private sector? The biggest gains from investments in new renewable-energy technologies are not easily captured in private transactions, because they produce environmental services that are largely unpriced. Companies can sell consumers with a conscience a “share” in global greenhouse gas reduction – that’s what the growing business of carbon offsets is all about. But consumers who don’t pay also get the benefits, creating a strong temptation to free ride.

Companies can’t market to the consumers likely to benefit most, because they haven’t yet been born. Conventional fossil fuels are cost-effective now only because the environmental costs are dumped into a global commons that imposes costs on other people and future generations.

Public policies could remedy this problem, by imposing a tax on carbon emissions so that their market price better approximates their social cost. Adopting clean-energy standards would also increase demand for clean and green production, giving private companies greater incentive to invest.

The Brookings report explains that Germany, carrying out such policies, attracted investments from major American corporations including Google, First Solar and Good Energies. Between 2004 and 2009, German employment in renewable energy increased to more than 300,000 from 160,000.

Globally, the green jobs numbers look pretty strong. Unfortunately, in the United States, the possibilities for bipartisan collaboration still look very weak. Flag-waving is so much easier.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=34d29c9f3ea730561612cbf0a31eef71

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Hackers Commandeer a Fox News Twitter Account

July 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Twitter account, @foxnewspolitics, one of many operated by Fox News, claimed that the president had been fatally shot while campaigning in Iowa, but gave no source for the news. On Monday morning, FoxNews.com first posted a brief statement saying that the reports were incorrect, and that it regretted “any distress the false Tweets may have created.”

The six messages were removed around noon on Monday, about 10 hours after being posted, but not before attracting a flurry of attention.

Because of the seriousness of the content, senior Secret Service officials held a conference call Monday morning to discuss the posts, said a law enforcement official who requested anonymity because of the investigation into the matter.

A spokesman for the Secret Service, George Ogilvie, said, “We are investigating the matter and will be conducting appropriate follow-up.” The White House declined to comment.

In a statement Monday afternoon, Twitter indicated that its own servers had not been broken into; instead, the e-mail account associated with the specific Twitter feed had been compromised, and from there the hacker or hackers had been able to gain access.

Twitter referred other questions about the incident to Fox News; a spokeswoman there did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FoxNews.com Twitter account for political news, which has about 36,000 followers, had been dormant since Friday, but at about 2 a.m. Monday, a message was posted there that eerily presaged the posts that would follow about the president: “just regained full access to our Twitter and email. Happy 4th.” The next post said that the president “has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July indeed.”

The next one said he had been “shot twice in the lower pelvic area and in the neck; shooter unknown,” and offered the disturbing detail that he “bled out.” The next post said that the president had been shot at Ross’s restaurant in Iowa.

The last message stated: “We wish @joebiden the best of luck as our new President of the United States. In such a time of madness, there’s light at the end of tunnel.”

Mr. Obama had been spending the weekend with his family at Camp David, and returned to the White House on Sunday, according to the official schedule.

FoxNews.com posted a short statement early Monday explaining what had happened: “Hackers sent out several malicious and false Tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated. Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family. The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false Tweets may have created.”

Twitter accounts are hacked from time to time, but Monday’s incident attracted national attention because an assassination had been mentioned and a major news organization had been affected. Increasingly, news organizations like Fox News have embraced Twitter as a means of promotion and interaction with readers.

The false Twitter posts about Mr. Obama seemed even more provocative because Fox News is widely perceived to be a voice of opposition to the Obama administration. On Monday, thousands of people on Twitter poked fun at the incident and at Fox News by pretending to guess Fox’s Twitter passwords.

A spokeswoman for Twitter, Carolyn Penner, would not address why the posts to the Fox News political account on Twitter stayed up so long, nor would she address reports about who was responsible.

A group calling itself the Script Kiddies claimed responsibility for hacking the Fox News Twitter account, according to Adam Peck, the outgoing editor of Think, an online student magazine operated at Stony Brook University on Long Island, who said he had communicated via instant message early Monday with a member of the group.

The Script Kiddies, Mr. Peck said, had posted to its own Twitter account that it hacked the political Twitter account of Fox News and wanted to speak to The Huffington Post, supplying an address at the instant-messaging service AIM. Mr. Peck, 23, said he figured he would try the address as well.

The first conversation took place around 12:38 a.m., Mr. Peck said, before the inflammatory posts to Twitter appeared. “We did ask them what their purpose was,” Mr. Peck said. “They said that they did align themselves with Anonymous and the antisec movement,” he added, meaning “antisecurity movement,” or hacking efforts intended to uncover information corporations or governments are trying to hide.

In the instant message, the person claiming to be a representative of the Script Kiddies said to Mr. Peck that there “will always be a group of people that need to stand up for everyone else and attempt to keep the governments in balance with its people.” The person claimed to be a former member of the better-known hacker group Anonymous.

According to the instant-message record, which Mr. Peck provided to The New York Times, the person with whom he communicated at Script Kiddies said that Fox News “was selected because we figured their security would be just as much of a joke as their reporting.”

Mr. Peck said he again contacted to the Script Kiddies when the first postings about the president were published, asking if the group had hacked the Twitter feed.

Mr. Peck said he received a message in response: “I cannot confirm that at this time. Stay tuned.”

Adding to the confusion, the Twitter account for the Script Kiddies at some point seemed to disappear, Mr. Peck said. He said he started “frantically searching elsewhere to find corroboration of this story.” But after 10 minutes of not finding it anywhere online, he said he figured it was the work of the Script Kiddies.

Several news reports have referred to Think’s interview, but for a time on Monday, the link to the interview was disabled. Mr. Peck, who will be graduating in December with a degree in journalism, said he suspected that the shutdown happened because of overuse.

“We’re not used to having all that much traffic,” he said.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 4, 2011

An earlier version of this article erroneously defined the “antisec movement” as meaning “anti-secrecy.” In fact it means “anti-security.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d319c69858de3864fe1d305be8601283

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Beck and Fox End Relationship Grown Cold

April 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Mr. Beck’s official departure was preceded by conversations over a period of months with the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes. Even as Mr. Beck and Mr. Ailes described how much they liked each other in an interview with The Associated Press, the message conveyed between the lines by both sides was that, despite ratings that would normally bring about an automatic contract renewal, this was a relationship that had grown cold — and run its course.

On Wednesday, the two sides made it official, announcing that Mr. Beck would end his top-rated show at some unspecified point later this year. His contract with Fox ends in December, but he is expected to sign off well before then.

Hired away from CNN’s Headline News in 2008, Mr. Beck found a home at Fox News, giving voice to disaffected Americans who were deeply troubled by President Obama’s election. He reached as many as three million viewers on some nights, setting time-slot records for Fox. Although his ratings have since declined — he averaged 1.9 million viewers in March — he still dominates the 5 p.m. hour among the cable news networks.

Notably, Mr. Beck became a daily broadcast platform for a libertarian strain of politics that is also evident in the Tea Party, a movement he embraced. Critics loudly condemned him for living with his own facts — but that only seemed to widen the conspiracy that he outlined each night, aided by a growing number of chalkboards in his studio.

But at that studio, he was unhappy from almost his first day on the job, which happened to be the day before Mr. Obama was inaugurated. Even in his first year, he was contemplating an exit from Fox and wondering if he could start his own channel.

Beck supporters presented a picture of constant sniping, planted stories about his declining ratings, and discomfort with his ability to build a career for himself outside the Fox News brand.

From Fox’s perspective, the facts about Mr. Beck’s run on the network have been public and indisputable. Among those were the refusal of hundreds of Fox advertisers to allow their commercials to be placed on Mr. Beck’s program, and a history of incendiary comments that attracted harsh backlash, including one where the host called President Obama a racist and another where he compared Reform Judaism to radical Islam. (He later apologized for both comments.)

Mr. Ailes suggested in the interview Wednesday that he was happy with the departure being characterized as either a cancellation or a decision by Mr. Beck to quit. Fox has retained all its other high-rated hosts in the past, but they didn’t come under the intense scrutiny that Mr. Beck has faced, nor the mass opposition from advertisers.

As onerous as that might have been to Fox financially, it did not seem to be an issue for Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of the News Corporation. In two recent comments to shareholders, Mr. Murdoch defended Mr. Beck. He said of the advertiser boycott, “They don’t boycott watching it. We’re getting incredible numbers.” He followed that by pointing out that even with his diminished ratings, Mr. Beck’s show provided a “terrific kickoff” to the lineup of Fox shows that followed.

But the ratings clearly could not overcome the fractures in the relationship. “By the end both sides had had enough,” said one executive who was involved in the decision to end the deal.

Mr. Beck’s new deal with Fox allows him to develop and produce new projects for Fox and its Web sites. But those projects are likely to amount to occasional specials and appearances, nothing more.

Mr. Beck is known to have contemplated an expansion of his subscription Web site and a takeover of a cable channel in whole or in part. Already, his growing media company produces several hours of shows on the Web each weekday.

A spokesman for Mr. Beck declined to say whether the agreement included a noncompete clause that would preclude Mr. Beck from hosting a TV show elsewhere for a period of time. On his show on Wednesday, Mr. Beck said to his viewers, “We will find each other,” adding later, “I’m going to be showing you other ways for us to connect.”

A senior Fox News executive, Joel Cheatwood, will join Mr. Beck at Mercury Radio Arts later this month.

Notably, descriptions of Mr. Beck’s future plans drew derisive comments in some quarters of Fox News, where they argued that Mr. Beck needed the huge platform of his Fox show to build his media empire.

At times, Mr. Beck and his managers said they sensed that Fox was retaliating in public, although they did not prove it.

Last month, when Mr. Cheatwood was first said to be moving over to Mercury, his Fox salary was suddenly leaked to a reporter. That day, a staff member who had been working with Fox on Mr. Beck’s show was asked if he could imagine working at an institution that would leak a salary figure. The staff member replied, “Not only can I imagine it, we’ve done it for 27 months,” referring to the precise number of months Mr. Beck had been at Fox. “It’s not fun.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=97afd1ba2753db7619e2c56efc15e0b9

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