Bible of newspaper biz reincarnated under new owner, Duncan McIntosh
Good news: Editor & Publisher, the bible of the newspaper business, is back from the dead and will be published by Duncan McIntosh. Mark Fitzgerald, an E&P veteran, is the new top editor. Online reporting has resumed, and a February issue will appear. Duncan McIntosh is a boating magazine publisher—it also organizes boat shows. Separately and also on the positive in the newspaper world:
–The Washington Post newsroom staff will not participate in single-sponsor conference as a rule, at least when the topic relates to a company’s business, and there are other policy improvements, such as a requirement that the conferences with people in the news be on record. An uproar arose last year when the Post was inviting corporations to sponsor issues-related salons at the publisher’s house. The Solomon Scandals is in part about a corrupt and very imaginary D.C. paper, and I would rather not see real life imitate me.
–Real estate advertising is on the rise, at least slightly—which is good as long as newspapers don’t let it influence coverage, as happens in Scandals.
Papa Charlie review update: Lookin’ like Saturday, tomorrow, and I’m expecting perhaps 1,500 words, much longer than I was thinking originally.
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Ad biz’s Gordon Gekko sees lines blurring between news and ads—and WANTS news biz to shrink
Sy Solomon the imaginary real estate tycoon is pals with the imaginary George McWilliams, executive editor of the imaginary Washington Telegram. Along the way, Sy is also one of the Telegram’s biggest advertisers. But at the very least the newspaper in The Solomon Scandals cares about the appearance of a wall between the editorial and business sides—the old church-state routine.
In the future, the Telegram actually could look like a paragon of purity. Martin Sorrell, the British CEO of the U.K.-based WPP Group, perhaps the biggest advertising-related holding company, predicts that ad agencies will be getting “very much more involved” in content development. He also says, according to Advertising Age, that “the lines between advertising and editorial are going to get much more blurred over time whether we like it or not.” This isn’t theoretical if you extrapolate from his company’s past behavior and his current thinking. “We do, in one market in Spain, have a minority interest in one of the television channels, and the model is a very interesting model.”
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