Bloggers: FTC has new guidelines for endorsements

Are bloggers subject to the same conflict of interest standards as journalists? Is disclosure enough or should bloggers not take any sort of product in exchange for reviews. Are bloggers journalists?

The FTC is attempting to tackle some of these questions in their new Final Guides governing endorsements, testimonials.

The Guides, which were last updated in 1980, spell out how advertisers need to act to disclose connections between the company and people endorsing the product.

It will be the “material connections” segment of the new guidelines that will create most uproar among consumers who regularly endorse products.

The new guidelines include expamples of:

' "material connections" (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.'

What do you think? No surprises here for business journalists, right?

Copy edit online marketing industry news in New York

Incisive Media is looking for a copy editor at its headquarters in New York.
The editor will work at ClickZ, an online industry publication covering interactive marketing and advertising. Preparing columns, articles and statistics for publication will be the copy editor's central responsibilities. Other responsibilities of the copy editor include:

• Writing headlines and display text
• Fact checking
• Coding copy
• Proofreading newsletters
• Formatting photos
• Processing freelance payments
• Responding to reader queries
• Coordinating the ClickZ awards program
  

Candidates should have a bachelor's degree in journalism, communications, English or a similar field as well as two years' experience copy editing full-time. Applicants should have experience at a newspaper or an online magazine and knowledge of Associated Press and Chicago Manual style.
To apply, e-mail your resume and a cover letter with your salary requirements to opportunities@incisivemedia.com with the position code "CE-JJ" in the subject line.

Learn more about the position here.

IMAGE CREDIT: clickz.com

Freelance via telecommute

A freelance writer is wanted for SmartBrief Incorporated's advertising beat. The job is a telecommuting position and applicants can be located anywhere in the country.
The writer will cover the advertising industry and create daily online business/consumer news e-mail publications. The writer will be expected to find relevant information for executives on the Web and summarize it. Whoever is hired will also work with editors to produce briefs.
Applicants should have previous experience covering the advertising industry at a newspaper, journal or trade publication. All candidates will be asked to take a timed writing test.

To apply, e-mail a resume and cover letter to jobs@smartbrief.com with Advertising Beat Freelancer in the subject line.

To learn more about the job, look here.

Pinching Forbes

The New York Times reported today that even Forbes is feeling the squeeze of the economy.
While Forbes magazine has 920,000 subscribers, its average issue price has steadily decreased and its ad pages are down 15 percent in the first quarter compared to last year.
The article reports Forbes has stopped matching contributions to its 401k program, laid off roughly 100 of its 1,000 employees since November and started five-day unpaid furloughs for its staff.
In the story, Mark M. Edmiston of AdMedia Partners asserts Forbes isn't worth half the $75 million its worth has been estimated in the past.
Yet the Times reports that Forbes' misery isn't without company, with the Publishers Information Bureau listing revenue of over $338 million for Forbes, $276 million for Fortune and $236 million for BusinessWeek.
The story shows the recession is impacting both people's demand for Forbes' economic content and its employees' desire to cover it. From the story:

“Everyone here likes the magazine, the people who run it, and most of us believe in the mission,” said one editorial employee who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak with a reporter. “But that sense of mission is sort of hard to sustain when most of the news is bad. Capitalism is a less sexy topic for everyone, including us.”

View the story here.

Is covering capitalism less sexy for you? What do you think about the struggling of Forbes and its competitors? Comment and let use know.

Wired: editorial success and ad failure

An article in today's The New York Times details the challenges faced by Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine.
On one hand, the magazine has been a success editorially under Anderson's leadership. Wired won three National Magazine Awards last month.
But the story details how the magazine has lost 50 percent of its ad pages this year, a number that ranks it "among the worst off of the more than 150 monthly magazines measured by Media Industry Newsletter. Only Portfolio, which Condé Nast shut down last month, and Power and Motoryacht fared worse."
To read the full story click here.

WSJ to introduce micro-payment service

The Financial Times reports that News Corp has plans to take its paid content model one step further.
This year the company will introduce a micro-payment service that allows visitors to pay for individual articles and premium subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal’s website.
From the story:

"The move will position the Journal as the first big newspaper title to adopt a model many are cautiously studying as they seek to reduce their dependence on plunging advertising revenues. It comes as John Kerry, the senator leading congressional hearings on the future of journalism, told the FT it was conceivable that publishers could be given limited exemption from antitrust laws to discuss online models."

MarketWatch.com gets a makeover

Reuters reports that MarketWatch.com launched a redesigned Web site today, one that's aimed to attract sophisticated professionals and bring in a wider class of advertisers.
According to the report, the site's new design packs in more content, stock quotes on demand, customized data and charts. It will also offer breaking news, analysis and market data in automatic updates.
From the story:

"It also plans to refine its focus on markets coverage, increase its technology story coverage, step up its presence overseas in places such as Japan, Israel and Canada and emphasize commentary -- a growing trend among news outlets trying to branch out beyond offering "commodity" daily news."

Star-Ledger announces cuts

George Arwaday, publisher of The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, sent a memo to employees Thursday detailing new pay and benefits cuts at the paper. The entire memo has been posted to Poynter's Romenesko blog.
From the memo:

The first $40,000 of your new combined annualized income will be cut by 5%. If you make more than $40,000, your next $40,000 in income up to $80,000 will be cut by 10%. Any annualized income over $80,000 will be cut by 15%.

In addition, Arwaday told employees that any bonuses they receive will be rolled into their salary and not delivered all at once at the end of the year.
In addition, all employees will now have to pay for 25 percent of their health care coverage. These moves were put in place to help offset a $20 million year-over-year drop in first quarter ad revenue.
To read the memo, click here.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch owner reports smaller loss

Lee Enterprises, which owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch among other papers, reported results for its second fiscal quarter Thursday.
The company posted a loss, but still fared better than it did in the previous quarter, according to the Associated Press via Yahoo! Finance.

The Davenport-based company lost $51.8 million, or $1.16 per share, in the quarter that ended March 29, compared with a loss of $713 million, or $15.90 per share. Excluding one-time costs, its loss was 7 cents per share.

Advertising sales were down 24 percent, with individual categories falling anywhere from 19 percent (retail ads) to 33 percent (classified).
In line with a common trend this quarter, the company showed losses in online advertising of 27 percent. Several other companies have shown similar losses online, where they had been experiencing solid growth for several years.
To read more, click here.

Washington Post Co. loses nearl $20 million in quarter

The Washington Post Company released its quarterly results Friday, which showed that the company lost $19.2 million in the quarter, according to The New York Times.

The newspaper division reported an operating loss of $54 million. And to punctuate that unit's decline, cable TV revenue overtook publishing for the first time. Now newspapers bring The Washington Post Co. less revenue than either cable or Kaplan education services, two units that have helped shield the company from the publishing industry's woes. The Washington Post Co. had seen nine straight quarters of declining profit before the loss this time around.

The year-over-year decline in revenue was due largely to a decrease in ad revenue of 33 percent, a figure that has not been uncommon for other large newspaper companies so far in 2009.
However, while most other companies are seeing online ad revenue increases in the general range of 10 percent, the Washington Post Co. posted an 8 percent loss in the category.
To read more, click here.

Former Star-Ledger employees start news site

Last year, New Jersey's The Star-Ledger bought out nearly half of its 330 newsroom employees in an effort to avoid shutting down or exploring a sale if costs could not be cut.
According to Editor & Publisher, 40 of those former employees have now started up their own news site, NewJerseyNewsroom.com.

The site, which so far has only Google ads but virtually no overhead, claims about 10,000 page views per week. It is mixing original reporting about the Garden State -- ranging form statehouse issues to sports -- along with links to other sites, including the Star-Ledger. An arrangement with Voice of America also allows the site to use that outlet's content.

No one working for the site is being paid yet, since they each have several months worth of salary payments remaining from their buyouts. This helps the new site keep costs low while it tries to attract readers, advertising dollars and funding.
To read more, click here.

Breaking: Portfolio shuts down

Folio is reporting that Condé Nast has shut down Portfolio magazine with staffers getting the news this morning. From the article:

"The magazine had watched ad pages plummet 60.9 percent during the first quarter, according to Publishers Information Bureau figures."

Read the full article here.

Average time spent declines for many in March

Among the top 30 newspaper websites in terms of unique monthly visitors, most saw a decline in the average time spent per visitor in March, according to Editor & Publisher.

The average time spent per person at the NYTimes.com dropped by six minutes in March 2009 compared to the same period a year ago. The NYTimes.com has some company: The Wall Street Journal lost more than five minutes March 2009. So did Politico.
In fact, just over half of the top 30 newspaper Web sites (ranked by uniques) experienced declines in the average time spent per person.

Some sites enjoyed large gains, however. Both The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Newsday improved by more than eight minutes.
The New York Times was overtaken in first place by the Star Tribune, which lost about thirty seconds to finish with an average of over 32 minutes.
While the news can be interpreted negatively from an advertising standpoint, it can also be a sign that the number of unique users is increasing, which is the case for some papers on the list.
To see the list and read more, click here.

New York Times considers charging for content

At its annual conference Thursday, New York Times Company Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said that The New York Times is considering charging for some content again, according to Editor & Publisher.

Sulzberger did not specify any particular business model, but suggested the Times would look again at trying to get paid for its content. For several years, the flagship paper charged international users to access its site, and for a few years charged for access to opinion columns and other contents in its Times Select program.

Sulzberger did not say that the paper would stop running ads online, a practice he characterized as extremely successful.
He offered no time frame for a potential move beyond a statement that more information would be available "at a future date."
Click here to read more.

McClatchy hit hard by 1st quarter ad revenue

McClatchy Co. announced its first quarter results Thursday, and reported a drop in advertising revenue of just under 30 percent, according to Editor & Publisher.
Overall losses also exceeded analysts' expectations:

McClatchy reported a loss of $37.7 million, or 45 cents a share, from a loss of $993,000, or 1 cent a share, in the first quarter of 2008. Adjusted for certain items, such as severance payments from a wave of layoffs, the loss from continuing operations was $22.9 million, or 28 cents a share. The consensus of analysts had been for an 11-cent loss per share.

In more positive news, print revenue increased slightly, and when employment advertising is excluded, digital advertising was up 28.7 percent.
Click here to read more.

NYT ad revenue way down

Bloomberg reports that The New York Times Co. listed a 27 percent drop in first-quarter advertising revenue, expanding its net loss to $74.5 million.
From the story:

Times Co. cut jobs, slashed pay, halted its dividend and sold assets to help preserve cash after ad revenue slipped 13 percent last year. It’s seeking to sell its minority stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team and is negotiating additional pay and job cuts with unions. “It’s clear from these results that it’s a very, very bad environment for newspapers,” Edward Atorino, a New York-based analyst at Benchmark Co., said in an interview. “There’s no sign of relief.

Snippets: Murdoch interviewed on Fox News

Shareholders approved News Corp's purchase of Dow Jones today. Rupert Murdoch then appeared on Fox News.

Snippets from the interview...

• He plans to develop international editions of The Wall Street Journal.

• In regard to competition with The New York Times: "We are a long way in front now."

• Despite the success of the WSJ.com paid subscriber model, Murdoch talks of making the site free saying they'll cover the subscription revenue by increasing total online circulation (viewers) resulting in greater online advertising revenue. More eyes, more ad dollars.
  

• On how to get young people reading newspapers again: "Make newspapers better and more exciting."

• On making articles shorter: Murdoch wants to "keep the paper busy." Perhaps break stories in parts, "guts on the front page" and the rest inside.

• On Fox Business Network: "It's going well." Dow Jones and Fox Business Network will help each other.

Murdoch also talked politics and shared views on the writers' strike and its impacts on the industry.

Tribune's revenue down

The Tribune Company is reporting a drop in revenues for November. Publishing revenues were down 3.5 percent. Advertising revenues also took a hit, with much of the newspaper division hit by a 26.2 percent drop in classified advertising revenues.
According to the release, "Real estate fell 39.8 percent with the most significant declines in Chicago, the Florida markets, and Los Angeles. Help wanted declined 28.4 percent and automotive decreased 7.6 percent."
On a positive note: publishing operating expenses decreased in large part because of lower newsprint, compensation and marketing cash expenses.
For the full breakdown and short-term plans/projections, click here.