Good morning. Here are 10 media stories.
- Fox News beat broadcast networks on election night
It also crushed in 2010, the last Republican wave. (NYT) | “Fox News is normally the dominant player in cable news, but its high ratings on Tuesday may have been partly influenced by the nature of the 2014 electorate.” (Politico) | Related: “Think of the GOP’s Senate takeover as a full-employment act for Washington reporters,” Jack Shafer writes. (Reuters)
- Earnings season update
News Corp saw overall revenues rise, but ad revenue at its print newspapers fell 7 percent over the same period the year before. Strong results at its book division (including recently acquired Harlequin) and other businesses drove an overall growth in revenue at the spun-off company. (Capital) | Torstar, which sold Harlequin to News Corp, saw a 7 percent drop in revenue over all. It plans to drop the paywall at its Toronto Star next year. (Poynter) | Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. saw revenues rise 48 percent. (Sinclair) | Gray Television’s revenue was up 49 percent. (Ticker Report) | Tribune Publishing saw a decline in ad revenue but CEO Jack Griffin thinks the company’s entry into the digital marketing services market could be a bright spot. Also, gulp: “We have much work to do to get operating margins in line with our peers.” (Poynter) | Related: Tribune Publishing paid $23.5 million for the Sun-Times’ suburban papers. (Robert Feder)
- Layoffs at The Weather Channel
“As many as 40 staffers are being cut from the ranks of senior producers, show producers, and weather producers,” Chris Ariens writes. TWC is reorganizing and had layoffs last month, too. (TVNewser) | ICYMI: Claire Suddath‘s great story last month about TWC’s digital strategy. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
- Happy birthday, banner ads
The form’s persistence “illustrates the snowballing dangers of new technology,” Farhad Manjoo writes: “Once an innovation becomes marginally accepted, its early success can quickly mushroom into dominance, even if pretty much everyone agrees that it is no good.” (NYT)
- Newsletter links to story about newsletters
Vox, FT, Time and Quartz lay out their strategies. (Digiday) | Reup! “How Time’s email newsletter achieves a 40 percent open rate” (Poynter)
- Feds approve sale of station to Pluria Marshall Jr.
His acquisition of KLJB in the Quad Cities “is an important step in fulfilling Nexstar’s commitment to incubate broadcast station ownership by minority-owned companies, which is also a key FCC initiative.” (New America Media) | Marshall also plans to purchase KMSS in Shreveport, Louisiana, and KPEJ in Odessa, Texas. (BlackPressUSA) | Last December Joseph Torres and S. Derek Turner reported that no black-owned and operated full-power TV stations remained in U.S. (Free Press)
- Newsweek crowd-funds an investigation
“Funding the project doesn’t just mean paying for one magazine story to be written; [writer Mandy] Van Deven will be using the funds raised to spend months embedding within college campuses; interviewing students, schools administrators, sexual assault experts and more; and publishing regular updates on her findings, as well as intermittent in-depth reports and other features.” (Newsweek) | It’s using Beacon, which was also the company HuffPost used to fund its Ferguson fellowship. Beacon co-founder Adrian Sanders tells Mathew Ingram: “It’s not up to Beacon about how and where news organizations should spend their dollars, all we’re doing is saying: Here’s a chance to do more with new revenue models and create a hyper-engaged readership around this editorial at the same time.” (Gigaom)
- The last season of “The Newsroom” starts Sunday
It’s the show’s last season. “Co-star Olivia Munn said the series’ legacy is that it inspired a new crop of journalists.” (AP)
- Front page of the day, curated by Kristen Hare
The Virginian-Pilot’s front page may remind you of “Anatomy of a Murder”‘s titles. (Courtesy the Newseum)
- Job moves, edited by Benjamin Mullin
Casey Newton is now Silicon Valley editor at The Verge. Previously, he was a senior reporter there. (Poynter) | Dean Chang is now metro print editor at The New York Times. Previously, he was city editor there. (Capital) | Mitch Perry will cover local politics at Extensive Enterprises Media. Previously, he was news and politics editor for Creative Loafing Tampa. (saintpetersblog) | Javier García is now vice president and general manager of multicultural services at Comcast Cable. Previously, he was general manager of U.S. Hispanic business at Yahoo. (Media Moves) | Zander Lurie will be senior vice president of media at GoPro. Previously, he was an executive at Guggenheim Digital Media. (Forbes) | Job of the day: The Elkhart Truth is looking for a page designer. Get your résumés in! (Journalism Jobs) | Send Ben your job moves: bmullin@poynter.org.
