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Showing posts with label Newsweek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newsweek. Show all posts

Tuesday 19 August 2014

USA Today: US print newspapers break-ups without financial support


Washington (AFP) - Following an unprecedented series of spinoffs by major US media companies, the print news industry now faces a rocky future without financial support from deep-pocketed parent firms. 

The wave of corporate breakups comes with newspapers and magazines struggling in a transition to digital news, and shareholders of media conglomerates increasingly intolerant of the lagging print segment.

Gannett, publisher of USA Today and dozens of other newspapers, became the latest to unveil its plan, splitting its print and broadcast operations into two separate units in a move to "sharpen" the focus of each.

This follows the recently completed spinoff by Tribune Co. of its newspaper group, which includes the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, and Time Warner's separation of its magazine publishing group Time Inc.

Two other newspaper groups, EW Scripps and Journal Communications, announced last month they would merge and then spin off their combined newspaper operations while creating a separate entity focused on broadcasting and digital media.

The trend arguably took hold last year with Rupert Murdoch's split of his empire into separate firms focused on media-entertainment and publishing -- 21st Century Fox and the newly structured News Corp.

- 'Cast out of house' -

The wave of spinoffs "certainly plays into the perception that these are children being cast out of the house by their parents," said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Pew Research Center's Journalism Project.

Newspapers were snapped up by media groups in an era when print was hugely profitable, but other segments of the media conglomerates are now driving profits, such as local television.

"The market doesn't think much of the newspaper industry's future," Jurkowitz said.

Industry consultant Alan Mutter argues that publicly traded newspaper firms still produce an average profit margin of 16 percent, higher than that of Walmart and Amazon.

But Mutter said on his blog that profits and newsroom staffing have taken a huge hit in recent years, and that newspapers have failed to do enough in the digital arena.

"Rather than reliably 'owning' their audiences as they once did in print, the internal metrics at every newspaper show an increasing dependence on the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter to generate the traffic that is the lifeblood of any media enterprise," he said.

Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, said newspapers are recovering from the negative impact of earlier corporate tie-ups.

"It's really corporate debt and the expectations of Wall Street that have done as much to damage the newspapers business as Craigslist," Kennedy told AFP.

"Newspaper margins are still pretty good. And when you have newspapers owned by private companies without debt, some of them are doing pretty well."

Some analysts say that the breakup of big media firms may force publishers to create ways to connect with readers online. "The real problem with newspaper industry has not been with the dead tree part, it is the failure to monetize the digital eyeballs," Jurkowitz said.

"Unless there is an increase in digital revenue streams it's hard to imaging them getting out of the situation they are in."

The industry is closely watching the efforts of newspapers like the New York Times, which is experimenting with new digital access plans, and the Washington Post, which under new owner Jeff Bezos has boosted online readership to record highs.

- 'Not the death phase' -

Kennedy said that while newspapers may be profitable and an important part of the community, they may not be able to meet Wall Street's expectations for growth.

"It's not a growing business," Kennedy said.

Private owners can still keep the business in the black, said Kennedy, citing the record of Boston Globe's new owner, sports magnate John Henry.

But he said that newspapers need to make considerable investments "to make a smart transition to digital" in the coming years.

Peter Copeland, a former Scripps Howard News Service editor and general manager who now is a media consultant, said the breakups are logical and generally positive for newspapers.

"It's better for the newspapers and TV to be separate," Copeland said. "They were never a match. They are very different businesses."

Now, he said the owners "will be able to focus 100 percent on the newspapers."

Copeland said newspapers may end up severing their corporate ties and going back to their roots of local and private ownership.

"Newspapers always had difficulty" being part of corporate empires, said Copeland.

"I think newspapers are entering another phase. It's not the death phase, it's just another phase in the life cycle." - AFP

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Thursday 7 June 2012

Sexy Advertising On the Rise


Magazine ads are becoming bolder.
CREDIT: StockLite, Shutterstock

Don't blush, but chances are the magazines you read are getting sexier.

Sexy advertisements are up in magazines from Playboy to Time and Newsweek to Esquire, according to new research from the University of Georgia. Since 1983, the percent of ads using sex to sell products rose from 15 percent to 27 percent by 2003.

Though sexual imagery is used to sell almost everything, even banking services, the bulk of the increase has come in ads for impulse buys: alcohol, entertainment, beauty supplies. These products have long clung to the "sex sells" maxim, said study researcher Tom Reichert, a professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Georgia.

"Advertisers use sex because it can be very effective," Reichert said in a statement. (Past research has suggested, however, that sex doesn't sell to female readers, with sensual advertising images leaving women bored and uninterested.)

Sex sells

Reichert and his colleagues analyzed 3,232 ads published between 1983 and 2003 in six magazines: Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Esquire, Playboy, Newsweek and Time. These magazines were chosen because they have large circulations, include titles that appeal to both men and women, and because they have been included in past studies, allowing for easy comparison across time.

About half of the advertisements included models. Researchers analyzed these ads based on how sexily the models were dressed and whether they were engaging in physical contact, such as kissing or simulated sex, with another model. [Sex Quix: Myths, Taboos & Bizarre Facts]

The ads for health and hygiene products were the sexiest of all ads, with 38 percent containing sexual imagery across the three-decade study period. Beauty came in second, at 36 percent. Drugs and medications, which include weight-loss supplements, came in third with 29 percent of ads containing sexy models.

Just more than a quarter, or 27 percent, of clothing ads showed sex appeal during the study period, compared with 23 percent of travel ads and 21 percent of entertainment ads.

The overall uptick in sexiness was driven by increasingly sex-obsessed ads for alcohol, entertainment and beauty products. In 1983, only 9 percent of alcohol ads used sex to sell booze. Today, that number stands at 37 percent. Sexually arousing entertainment ads increased from 10 percent in 1983 to 33 percent today, and 51 percent of beauty ads now include sexiness, compared with 23 percent in 1983.

Modeling sexuality

Women are overwhelmingly the vehicles by which advertisers portray sexuality, the researchers found. That trend has held for three decades. In 1983, 11 percent of all advertisements contained sexy women, and only 3 percent contained sexy men. As of 2003, 22 percent of ads included sexy ladies, while only 6 percent featured smoldering hunks.

Sexy images popped up in odd places, including in 5 percent of advertisements for financial products in 2003. But for the most part, advertisers use sex to sell products that people might buy on a whim, such as a new flavor of vodka or a papaya-scented lotion. Only two categories — charities and computer companies — never used sex in their ads in this sample.

"Sex is not as effective when selling high-risk, informational products such as banking services, appliances and utility trucks," Reichert said.

The researchers reported their results online in May in the Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising

By Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
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