Most daily newspapers (with the notable exception of the New York Times) just can’t bring themselves to unbundle their digital content, even though the warnings are getting louder. The UK’s quality national daily newspapers have chosen not to recognise that their digital services under-value a wide range of their best journalism by bundling it with…
Is this how Informa can get Reed Exhibitions?
The UK-based Informa Plc last year became the world’s largest trade show organiser with its £4bn acquisition of UBM. This week, it reported like-for-like operating profit increases of 8% in the first six months of 2019. Investors were cheered by the successful integration of UBM (give or take some wobbles with the former Advanstar fashion…
Can newspapers and magazines save each other?
Sixteen years after Apple’s iTunes store first enabled users to buy the song they wanted and not the whole album, magazine and newspaper publishers have not learned the lessons. Most continue to offer the same ‘package’ in digital as in print. They just don’t want to do anything that risks accelerating the decline of still-profitable print….
Is Cannes Lions a clue to the future of exhibitions?
Everybody loves live events. Newspapers and magazines look for rare rays of sunshine in performances and so-called experiential activity. They’re re-connecting with readers and searching for new profits. Trade shows have never been so hot: a decade of GDP-beating global growth rates has been followed by predictions of at least 5% CAGR throughout 2019-22. Exhibition…
Is Bustle the digital future of magazine media?
Bustle Digital Group (BDG), of the US, has acquired Nylon. The 20-year-old fashion, beauty, music and culture magazine with “an inclusive and strong feminist voice” has been digital-only for the past two years. It’s long been an innovative cult brand. Back in 2010, when the print magazine claimed more than 1m Facebook fans, readers were…
What Lebedev has done for UK media
It is 10 years since London’s only evening newspaper was acquired by the Lebedev family whose fortune had reportedly come from energy, banking and aviation interests in Russia. You could sense the relief of the Daily Mail Group which had sustained Evening Standard losses for the previous eight years and could not believe its luck in selling…
‘Her Campus’ goes global
It is exactly 10 years since Harvard University students Stephanie Lewis, Windsor Western and Annie Wang hatched the idea of an online magazine targeting college women like themselves. They had been working together on the college fashion magazine and decided to change it into a digital service with fresh weekly and daily content, primarily for women….
Clarion buys Media 10 Chinese shows
The Blackstone-owned Clarion Events has acquired the Design Shanghai and Design China Beijing exhibitions from Media 10, of the UK. Design Shanghai was launched just five years ago, followed by the Beijing event in 2018. While terms have not been disclosed, it is believed that Clarion has paid £34m for the events which are making…
AgriBriefing gets back to work
The UK-based food and farming media business AgriBriefing had hoped to complete an audacious three-way “merger” with Informa Agribusiness Intelligence (which was instead exchanged with IHS Markit) and Kynetec agri research – at the same time as switching its private equity backing. It has (for now) succeeded only in changing its funding partner. The company…
Hearst UK set for change
The 132-year-old Hearst Corporation is arguably the world’s oldest multi-media group as a 19th century newspaper publisher which invested in magazines and movies before Rupert Murdoch was born. It also has a fair claim to be the best. Not because it has consistently been the most successful in any or all of its chosen media…
