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With much of the drama largely over and the merger going ahead, a few days ago Dow Jones and News Corp filed preliminary documents outlining the merger of the two companies.  The filings, which are required under securities law, are extensive in length, “preliminary” in form and heavy on legalese, but they  provide an incredibly detailed window in to the events leading up to the merger announcement as well as the terms eventually agreed on. 

The documents show, behind the scenes the soap opera characterized in the board room barely scratched the surface of the true level of corporate intrigue. Click to Read More

Sometimes things happen in threes; at least that is the superstition.  Yesterday was literary triplicate.  In three unrelated announcements, the book publishing world saw an acquisition, a product introduction and a website makeover.

On the merger front, in the niche of author driven self-publishing services, Author House acquired rival iUniverse for undisclosed terms.  Both companies, which compete against Amazon (via its Book Surge Division), Lulu and smaller services like Blurb, provide a range of services for handling book design, layout, printing and post-print marketing.

In the remodeling realm, Google (which along with Amazon and Microsoft has been racing to scan and archive books for some time now) introduced Click to Read More

After a year of deliberating, the New York Times has finally begun to embrace the changes sweeping the media industry.  Their personalization service, MyTimes officially launched Thursday

The project originally began in April of 2006 with a beta launch.  For the past year they were testing the customizable front page and  RSS reader against pools of users to figure out what level of functionality best fit their customers.  The offering released today is light compared to competing services but it does embrace Web 2.0 features. MyTimes allows editors to make content recommendations and readers can indulge with widgets (mini-feature applications) like Flickr photos, bookmarks, and weather data to add additional functionality.    Multiple pages, organized by content or otherwise, are also possible.  Click to Read More

Today’s a witching day for Tribune Co.  After months of waiting the shareholders of the media giant will converge on Chicago to issue their votes of Yay or Nay on Sam Zell’s $8.4b leveraged buyout. As much as the deal should be a foregone conclusion, there’s enough uncertainty to make for a crazy day… even with shareholder approval almost assured. 

Leading the charge of trouble is the company’s growing debt.   Tribune already borrowed $7b to buy back shares as part of the deal.  It is obligated to repay $1.5b of that within two years.  The company will also borrow more than $4b more to buy out additional shares. 

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When it comes to business news, there are usually a few good takeover or acquisition rumors floating around.  They make good water-cooler conversations and fuel the tanks of curiosity.  Sometimes the stories pan out and “unconfirmed sources” turn out to be accurate insider gossip, other times, the comments prove yarns worthy of super market tabloids.

Tuesday, the publishing industry was the day’s hot topic with two unrelated, and  both unconfirmed, stories in the rumor mills and on the coconut telegraphs.

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It was long held that to buy Dow Jones (and its Wall Street Journal property) a buyer would have to hit a mythical number above $60 a share called the Hammer Price (named after a longtime Bancroft family lawyer who years ago turned away offers from the Washington Post and New York Times for being too low)

In May, when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. launched a friendly takeover attempt, they hit that number (and offering it represented a 65 percent premium over the April 30th closing price for the stock).  By legend, it should have been enough to close a deal.   Legend wasn’t reality.   In an up and down roller coaster of on-again, off-again reports, as recently as yesterday, it was looking like even the Hammer Price wouldn’t be enough to take control of the historic media property. Now it’s looking like the tides have changed again.

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One of the tenets of the Web 2.0 world is user-generated content, the idea that anyone can use a few easy internet tools to publish their works – a blog, an article, a video, a picture, whatever you want. 

With Web 2.0 there are fewer editors, fewer barriers.  That obviously brings with it pros and cons.  On the one hand it gives voices to hundreds of thousands of people who might otherwise not have been able to get past the gatekeepers.  There’s an opportunity for anyone to find an audience.  On the other hand, well, it gives voices to hundreds of thousands of people who might otherwise have not been able to get past the gatekeepers.    Everyone is able to judge for themselves what is worth paying attention to and what isn’t, but sometimes the gatekeepers (the editors, the A&R people, the talent scouts) functioned as as a useful filter.  Web 2.0 often lacks that – for better and for worse.   The challenge in the new media world is finding what you want; separating the metaphorical wheat from the chafe, finding the diamonds and throwing back the coal.

In journalism, outside of blogs and those equipped to build and host their own websites, one of the Web 2.0 companies embracing user generated content for news has been NowPublic. Now, thanks to a new financing, they’ll soon become more widely known.

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