Tuesday 11 December 2007

And here's someone else filling in the pieces

I don't want to bang on about the IHT's opaque coverage of an important business story, but here's another example, this time from http://financialskeptic.blogspot.com/

Again it's worth quoting in full, with my observations in bold that are missing from the IHT's own coverage and which I have already touched upon in this blog before George Gutowksi at his blog.

Bottom line, numerous blogs and adage.com, just to cite one example of a more MSM outlet, are exposing the sham that is the IHT's business coverage of its own story.

Reuters on International Herald Tribune; Noise, Content or Just Market Share
Reuters Group (RTRSY) soon to be acquired by Thomson Corp (TOC) has displaced Bloomberg LP and will now be providing content to the International Herald Tribune which is also now owned by New York Times (NYT). The deal is interesting because the revenue model calls for Reuters to participate in advertising revenues that the business news section of IHP generates. Before Bloomberg just received a syndication fee and cashed their cheques. [
IW: Actually it's not certain that Bloomberg was banking any cheques at all; rather they may well have been sending them to the IHT, and putting the cost under the marketing and promotion budget] Reuters and IHP/NYT all compete with Dow Jones/WSJ and News Corp (NWS) so there is a certain alignment of battle order as troops are moved around the competitive landscape. What is interesting is that Bloomberg has allowed itself to be replaced. Did Bloomberg not believe in IHP's ability to generate ad revenues? Is Bloomberg news that different than Reuters news, in the IHP context? We are talking headlines and the first few paragraphs of the real story. This is a fairly nice place for NYT to experiment with the model and develop a savvy if there is one to be developed. Does NYT not have their own business news division. I know I know not all news gathering services are the same and there is a certain amount of under coverage in one area that another service may be well positioned to cover off.I am not convinced that the Reuters contribution will have a measurable impact on IHP. There was some smoke obscured commentary about still relying on their own staff and writing the same amount of stories.But its all about "Follow the Money" and no information was released about the money. So how does the business reader follow the story?
http://financialskeptic.blogspot.com/2007/12/reuters-on-international-herald-tribune.html

No comments: