- Although iOwn.com has been incorporated into Classified Ventures'HomeScape.com, the online-lending company, formerly known as Homeshark.com, continues to be dogged by financial problems, owing its former employees millions in unpaid vacation, severance ad retention bonus packages. (Inman.com)
- The Gazette in Colorado Springs, Colo., will link its print readers to its Web site using a handheld scanner developed by GoCode, Inc. Meanwhile, Parade magazine began distributing CueCat scanners to its readers Sept. 10 (The Digital Edge).
- ScreamingMedia.com adds syndicated text and photos from The Jerusalem Post in Israel, The Washington Times and the Los Angeles Daily News.
- RealCities.com, a network of city and regional Web sites, launches a Sidney 2000 Olympic Games site RealCities.com/rc/reports/olympics.htm). Visitors can access breaking news, photo slide shows and in-depth coverage of events.
- APBOnline.com, operator of a crime news Web site that filed for bankruptcy protection in July, receives no bids for its assets (Reuters.com)
- The Boston Globe offers full-text archives dating to 1979 for free during September at Boston.com/freearchives.
- Monster.com launches ChiefMonster, a job-posting and career Web site for senior-level executives (Adweek.com)
- To help ensure its success in the Internet arena, The New York Times Co. offers its employees affordable personal computers, printers and unlimited Internet access for home use through a program with PeoplePC Inc. of San Francisco. Meanwhile nytimes.com is selected as one of the top 10 news sites by Galaxy, an Internet directory.
- Industry analysts speculate that Tribune Co. may be building its own network of national sites that it will either operate by itself or as a team effort with Knight Ridder. They recently partnered with KnightRidder.com to acquire CareerBuilder (TheStreet.com).
- NBC and Tribune Co. make their broadcast feeds available to The FeedRoom, a fledging broadband news service. NBC and Tribune, among other partners, also invest $30 million in The FeedRoom (CNETNews.com).
- The Village Voice offers a subscription-based classified alert service called VoiceM@il that promises e-mail leads on apartments, jobs and auditions in New York City before they appear in print (Classified Intelligence Report).
- Newspapers battle with the Associated Press over whether the organization's agreements with portals and other online-only destinations damage publishers' online readership. The battle has been raging since 1998 (The Digital Edge, The Wall Street Journal, 8/31).
- The Boston Phoenix taps Rhinowire to format entertainment listings and other content, and beam them to cell phone users.
- The Wall Street Journal's Weekend Journal makes its Web debut soon. The site may be advertising supported and free, setting it apart from the Journal's flagship site operating under a paid subscription model (Ad Age).
- The Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill., teams up with BVM Olenti Communications to deliver content to a network of Internet-based kiosks in libraries, colleges and bookstores.
- The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Denver Rocky Mountain News and Parade magazine will send subscribers a small, handheld scanner, known as a CueCat, to swipe bar codes printed next to classified ads or articles. The bar codes connect readers to the newspapers' Web sites for more information. Amsterdam's News.nl is testing similar technology called JumpCodes (The Washington Post, 8/31).
Extended
New Media Index
An Ongoing Wrap-Up of Key Developments on the Interactive Frontier
More recent news items are at the beginning of each section. For just
the most recent news, visit the NAA New Media Federation's Digital
Edge. Also be sure to read Presstime's monthly new-media
commentary.
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[ Strategic Moves | Online-Newspapers | Public Policy | Trends | TV/Video | Technology | People ] |
"Something that takes 500-to-600 editors to produce is not going to be free. Then, we were just more stubborn than everyone else in being determined to make this model work."
--Thomas Baker of Dow Jones Interactive on The Wall Street Journal's ability to squeak profits out of its subscription-based World Wide Web site, as quoted by The Seybold Report on Internet Publishing, Vol. 4, No. 12
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STRATEGIC MOVES
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Job hunters still rely on newspapers' help-wanted ads. Despite the growing popularity of the Internet as a career-development and recruitment tool, job seekers and human-resources managers say print newspaper classified ads prevail as the best job-hunting method. Online advertisements garner too many resumes, human-resources managers say, forcing companies to wade through a sea of applicants. Similarly, few job seekers find employment via the Web. While 75 percent of job hunters with Internet access searched online employment ads, only 4 percent reported landing a job via the Web, says Greenfield Online. Further, only one-fifth of online job hunters find satisfaction with the quality of Internet job postings. Meanwhile, online U.S. job listings fell more sharply in the week ending Aug. 21 than during any other week after March 1999, reports the JobOptions/BTM Job Listing Index. Despite the disappointing results of online job ads, analysts say online recruiting has yet to reach its potential. Money spent on print ads eventually will shift to the Internet, they predict. Companies are expected to increase spending for online recruiting by 52 percent and cut spending for print ads by 31 percent by 2004, according to Forrester Research Inc. Jupiter Communications Inc. also forecasts a significant spending shift, with almost 8 percent of revenues from print ads reallocated to the Internet by 2005 (The Industry Standard; The Digital Edge). |
Thomson Newspapers shutters Flywheel Media, its interactive division, after failing to find a buyer. Flywheel had relationships with more than 800 North American newspapers (The Digital Edge).
The European Union-sponsored WINDS project tests its electronic newspaper delivery system in October, offering II Sole 24 Ore and Le Monde subscribers the option of receiving either the entire newspaper or selected articles in PDF format.
Thomson Corp. and telecommunications company BCE Inc. create a $2.7 billion multi-media company linking Canada's strongest media brandsÑCTV, the country's leading private broadcaster, The Globe and Mail in Toronto and Globe Interactive, globeinteractive.com Canada's leading Internet portal. (The New York Times, 9/16).
cjonline.com, the electronic edition of The Topeka Capital-Journal, allows sports fans to access stories and real-time scores on their PCS-enabled wireless phones.
AdStar.com andLandlord.com sign an agreement allowing Landlord.com users to advertise rental properties using Advertise123.com Web-based classified ad-order and entry service, now representing more than 115 newspapers. Meanwhile, Adstar.com signs a contract to power the online classified ad services of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution (The Digital Edge).
Thomson Corp. and The Woodbridge Co. Ltd. create a multi-media company linking Canada's strongest media brands: CTV, the country's leading private broadcaster, The Globe and Mail in Toronto and globeinteractive.com, Canada's leading Internet portal. (The Digital Edge).
Cox Interactive Media signs a three-year agreement with the California Federal Bank, which will sponsor channels on multiple CIM sites in California (The Digital Edge).
FoxSports.com fortifies its high-school sports coverage by partnering with Student Sports Inc. to create FoxStudentSports.com(Internet.com).
The Portland Press Herald in Maine contracts with Pentawave Inc.'s IdealHire software and job-matching technology. The software also is used by the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo., The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller Times, the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Knoxville (Tenn.) News-Sentinel, the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., and the Ventura County (Calif.) Star .
Cox Interactive Media sells off or shutters all but one of its national Web sites. After three years of launching a bevy of sites, the Atlanta-based subsidiary of Cox Enterprises will focus on local portals. Only Fastball.com survives (The Digital Edge).
eBay enters the real-estate market, selling houses, land and commercial real estate. Meanwhile, Microsoft's HomeAdvisor Technologies raises more than $100 million from top mortgage companies to back its online real-estate and home-buying services (Reuters).
Koz.com and Internet Tradeline Inc. will combine their online-community and e-commerce services to create an online network of more than 600 local Web sites, including those of newspapers, television and radio stations.
As publishers continue to investigate online business models, Media General starts an interactive division that will focus on business strategy, product development and interactive media operations. Start up is set for January; the division is expected to be fully operational next summer. Meanwhile, Freedom Communications splintered its interactive group, returning fiscal control to Freedom's traditional media business divisions.
Classified Ventures closes auctions.com to devote its resources to cars.com and HomeScape.com. The site shut down Aug. 31 (The Digital Edge).
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer launches PImobile,delivering headlines, weather forecasts and traffic information to Web-enabled cellular phones.
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ONLINE
Additional newspaper-related developments:
[ Top ]
PUBLIC POLICY
Four freelancers recently were dismissed from The San Diego Union-Tribune for refusing to sign a contract that would give the newspaper the right to resell their work in any format, including electronic republication, with no additional payment (office.com).
Federal antitrust attorneys say they will block the proposed $165-billion merger of American Online Inc. and Time Warner Inc. unless the companies agree to let competitors use their high-speed cable lines. Federal regulators may also force AOL to allow rivals to use its popular instant-messaging service (The Associated Press, 9/5; CBS.Marketwatch.com).
A United Nations arbitrator ordered a Pennsylvania man to give Dow Jones and Co. two Internet addresses, wallstreetjounal.com and wallstreetjournel.com, based on the misspellings of the newspaper's name. The sites had been used to create unauthorized links to the paper's online edition (The Associated Press).
The New York Times, The Washington Post, Gannett Co., and CNN sue GoSMS.com for taking news articles from their Web sites and transmitting them to wireless telephone users. The suit, filed in federal court in New York, alleges that GoSMS.com is infringing on copyrights and trademarks as well as providing false advertising and unfairly competing against the publishers' own Internet sites (AP).
A Dutch court rules that online-news services may link directly to newspaper Web sites (Reuters).
[ Top ]
TRENDS
Online advertising is expected to grow during the next four years, making the Internet the fourth-largest ad medium behind television, radio and newspapers, according to a study by Jupiter Communications Inc. of New York City (CNET News.com).
The average life span of an online ad is three weeks or less, found a study by AdRelevance (New York Times, 8/28).
Print and broadcast media usage is declining in Europe due to increased Internet use, finds a study conducted in Great Britain, Germany, France and Sweden by AdLINK Internet Media AG. Nearly 30 percent of the 1,310 respondents said they were reading fewer newspapers and periodicals (The Digital Edge).
Visits to U.S. newspaper portals increased by 30 percent in June over the same period last year, according to a new index by PaineWebber.
One out of five visitors to a news site leaves unhappy and nearly half won't return, finds a study by cPulse, an Internet satisfaction monitor. Visitors to 123 Web sites between Jan. 1 and July 1, 2000, were interviewed while using the sites via pop-up based technology. Respondents cited poor content organization and the inability to locate articles quickly (The Digital Edge).
The wireless data market will grow from 170 million subscribers worldwide in 2000 to great than 1.3 billion in 2004, predicts market research firm Cahners In-Stat Group (The Digital Edge).
Visits to real estate Web sites increased 75 percent this summer compared to the same period last year, reports The NPD Group Inc. and Media Metrix of Port Washington, N.Y.
Print personal ads appear to show signs of severe Internet attrition. The Atlanta Constitution and Journal reports revenue from personal ads plummeted 90 percent in the last five years and plans to stop publishing personals early next year. Meanwhile, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies reports that revenue from personal ads dropped more than 13 percent in one year because of competition from the Internet (accessatlanta.com).
Local newspaper and city guide Web sites have significantly more users, raise more money and devote more employees to their sites than Web sites owned by local television stations, according to a study by Frank N. Magid Associates Inc. of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Among tight competition for online advertising, only 8 percent of Web ad dollars go to news and information sites, according to a Los Angeles Times article (latimes.com).
Increased online-ad revenue will drive down the number of print-newspaper ads, predicts a report by Jupiter Communications Inc. A recent survey of 32 marketing executives found that 73 percent plan to increase their online ad spending in the coming year, compared with 43 percent who plan to boost magazine ad spending and 17 percent who plan to buy more newspaper ads (Silicon Valley.com).
The market for wireless e-commerce solutions in the United States will grow 1,000 percent to $1.2 billion by year 2005, forecasts Datamonitor (ecommercetimes.com).
--Compiled by Lisa Rabasca, Presstime Staff Writer.