Google relaxes rules on free news stories, plans subscription tools

SAN FRANCISCO — Google announced on Sunday that subscription news websites would no longer have to provide users three free articles per day or face less prominence in search results, relaxing its rules following complaints from media giants like News Corp that their sales were suffering.

For the last decade, Google’s “first click free” policy helped ensure that non-subscribers wouldn’t be stifled by paywalls when they clicked on news articles from searches.

Google, the largest component of Alphabet Inc, had contended that free samples would lead to increased subscriptions.

But apart from a few publications, online subscriptions haven’t taken off as intended, and media companies such as Wall Street Journal parent News Corp. increasingly complained that freeloading users were cutting into sales.

This year, the Wall Street Journal stopped abiding by Google’s policy, corresponding to a drop in search rankings but an increase in subscriptions.

“Over the last year, we got clear indications that, yes, it was going to be important for publishers to grow subscription revenues,” said Richard Gingras, Google’s vice president for news.

He said the number of news outlets with paywalls had reached a critical mass in the last year, to the point that it made sense for Google to start developing tools for them.

Google is now counting on the relaxed rules and subscription software that is under development to stop the Wall Street Journal and other publishers from holding back valuable content.

From hereon, publishers will be able to choose how many, if any, free articles they want to offer to Google searchers.

Google also plans to launch free software in the coming months for publishers that enables users to pay for content with credit card information that they’ve previously supplied to the search giant.

The goal is to facilitate fast purchases that could take as little as a single click, Gingras said. Customers’ names and emails would be shared with the publishers.

A separate tool would give publishers data on how to maximize sign ups with personalized offers. Gingras said Google hasn’t determined whether it may charge a fee to recoup costs of that program.

“Google search is valuable because there’s a rich ecosystem out there,” Gingras said. “To the extent the web is healthy, that’s very good for our core business. Our objective is not for this to be a new line of business.”

Facebook, Alphabet’s top rival in online advertising, is working on similar subscriber registration tools. Apple released support for subscriptions within its News app last year.

source: interaksyon.com

Pearson says in talks to sell its 50 percent stake in The Economist

LONDON - Britain's Pearson said on Saturday it was in talks to sell its 50 percent stake in The Economist Group, publisher of The Economist newspaper.

The move comes on the heels of Pearson's sale of the Financial Times newspaper to Japanese media group Nikkei, announced this week as its focuses on its education business.

"Pearson confirms it is in discussions with The Economist Group Board and trustees regarding the potential sale of our 50 percent share in the group," the company said in a statement on Saturday.

"There is no certainty that this process will lead to a transaction."

Pearson did not name the potential buyers.

People familiar with the matter said, however, that the group of families and staff and former staff that own the remaining 50 percent are talking to Pearson but need to raise cash to fund the deal.

The co-owners of the weekly publication, which had a paid circulation of 1.6 million at the end of 2014 and reported 67 million pounds in annual operating profit in June, have greater voting rights than Pearson, which holds only B shares.

Any change of ownership would need the consent of the holders of the A shares, which include the Cadbury, Rothschild, Schroder and Agnelli families, an analyst told Reuters on Friday.

It would also need to be approved by trustees who are tasked with preserving the independence of the ownership of the company and the editorial independence of the title.

The families were unlikely to back any plans by Pearson to sell to a third party, industry bankers said.

Bernstein analyst Claudio Aspesi estimated the stake could be worth 300 to 400 million pounds, based on a multiple of 15 times its net income of 46 million pounds.

It is unlikely that any offer would reflect the same rich multiple that Nikkei agreed to pay for the Financial Times.

The Japanese company had been in competition with Germany's Axel Springer to win control of the trophy asset.

Beside The Economist itself, the group operates several subsidiaries including The Economist Intelligence Unit, Economist Events and Economist Corporate Network.

A deal would likely take several weeks to be agreed, a source close to the situation said on Saturday.

source: interaksyon.com

Hike in price of newsprint looms, as inquiry points to surge in imports

MANILA - The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) today said preliminary evidence points to an influx of newsprint imports, hence a ground to slap additional duties to protect the domestic industry.

“Based on DTI’s review of the evidence presented in the said petition, a prima facie case exists to justify the initiation of a preliminary safeguards investigation,” the agency said in a statement, referring to the petition for safeguard measures filed by Trust International Paper Corp (Tipco).

Tipco is the country’s lone producer of newsprint, a raw material in producing newspapers, books, magazines, notebooks, pad paper and wrappers.

Citing data submitted by the local monopoly, newsprint imports rose 792 percent to 26,356 metric tons (MT) in 2011 from 2,956 MT in 2007. During the January to August 2012 period, a record 31,462 MT of imported newsprint entered the country.

Majority of the newsprint imports in 2008 came from China and the UK. From 2009 to 2012, bulk of imports came from South Korea and the UK.

The DTI said the safeguard investigation on newsprint, which the Philippine government initiated last September 20, covers domestic production and importation from 2007 through August 2012.

“DTI has notified all interested parties and has required them to submit their reply and other evidence or information relevant to the said investigation. The investigation will make a preliminary determination whether the increasing volume of imported newsprint is causing serious injury to the local producer of newsprint,” the agency said.

Once the DTI determines that newsprint imports have indeed injured Tipco, the agency will forward the case to the Tariff Commission for a formal investigation.

The Philippines’ World Trade Organization (WTO) mission in Geneva earlier notified the trade body’s Committee on Safeguards of a safeguard investigation on newsprint, citing “serious injury to the local newsprint industry as indicated in their declining market share, production, sales, capacity utilization, productivity, profitability, price suppression, depression and undercutting.”

Covered by the investigation are newsprint in rolls or sheets weighing no more than 55 grams per square meter with Asean Harmonized Tariff Nomenclature (AHTN) Code 4801.00.10 as well as other newsprint with AHTN Code 4801.00.90. These products have most favored nation (MFN) rates of duty of seven percent. MFN rates refer to tariffs slapped on goods from outside Asean.

Additional safeguard duties may be put in place to provide a “seriously injured” domestic industry relief against imports, if the volume of fairly-traded, “like” or directly competitive imports exceed a trigger level or if their prices fall below a trigger price.

source: interaksyon.com

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to buy the Washington Post

Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos will buy the Washington Post newspaper for $250 million in a surprise deal that ends the Graham family’s 80 years of ownership and hands one of the country’s most influential publications to the tech entrepreneur.

Bezos, hailed by many as a visionary who helped transform Internet retail, called his acquisition a personal endeavor and reassured Post employees and readers he will preserve the paper’s journalistic tradition, while driving innovation.

The acquisition, the latest in a flurry of recent media deals including the New York Times Co’s sale of the Boston Globe for $70 million, is a further indication of the unprecedented challenges newspapers face as advertising revenue and readership decline.

Shares of the Washington Post Co climbed more than 5 percent to $599.85 after hours – their highest level in almost five years.

“I understand the critical role the Post plays in Washington, DC and our nation, and the Post’s values will not change,” Bezos said in a letter addressed to employees and published on the newspaper’s website.

“There will of course be change at the Post over the coming years. That’s essential and would have happened with or without new ownership,” he added. “We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment.”

Bezos, who has built Seattle-based Amazon.com into a shopping and online technology force over the last two decades, made a small foray into media earlier this year with a small investment in Internet news site Business Insider.

The Washington Post, home to journalists as the “Watergate” team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, is among the rapidly dwindling number of U.S. newspapers with a profitable business – a function of the rapid migration of readers to Internet and other digital media sources.

Warren Buffett owns a slice of its parent company, Washington Post Co, whose operating income has plummeted almost 40 percent since 2008, to $146.2 million in 2012.

“I doubt it is a financially oriented investment for him as much as a chance to play a more important role as a steward of an important public trust/asset,” said James Barksdale, President of Atlanta investment firm Equity Investment Corp.

Barksdale said his firm did not own Washington Post shares because he thought they traded higher than he thought justified, “probably due to the Buffett halo,” he added.

Bezos will buy the Post along with other newspaper assets from the Washington Post Co. Amazon.com is to be kept separate from the Post deal, according to the Washington Post.

The deal, which caught many industry watchers by surprise, was arranged in private by Allen & Co. It comes on the heels of near-unprecedented media deal activity this year, with the Globe transaction announced just over the weekend, the Tribune Co hiving off its publishing and broadcasting businesses and the Los Angeles Times reportedly up for sale.

Graham family relinquish their claim

Washington Post Chairman and Chief Executive Donald E. Graham, whose family owns the paper, explained his decision to part ways with the publication, which will continue to be headed on a daily basis by CEO Katharine Weymouth.

“As the newspaper business continued to bring up questions to which we have no answers, Katharine and I began to ask ourselves if our small public company was still the best home for the newspaper. Our revenues had declined seven years in a row,” Graham said in his letter to employees.

“Jeff Bezos’ proven technology and business genius, his long-term approach and his personal decency make him a uniquely good new owner for the Post.”

The transaction covers The Washington Post and other publishing businesses, including the Express newspaper, The Gazette Newspapers, Southern Maryland Newspapers, Fairfax County Times, El Tiempo Latino and Greater Washington Publishing.

Bezos is the world’s 19th richest person with a fortune of $25.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine. His other major personal project is called Blue Origin, which aims to be one of the first non-government funded ventures to send people and cargo into space, potentially winning lucrative contracts that were once fulfilled by NASA.

Bezos has already spent millions of dollars on this project, with millions more in the pipeline.

He did not elaborate in great detail on his motivations behind his latest deal on Monday. But in 2009, when asked at the debut of the Kindle 2 whether the electronic-reader could help print media, Bezos said he thought there were “genuine opportunities” to save journalism.

“And we’re excited about helping with that,” he added, according to the International Herald Tribune.

source: interaksyon.com

WikiLeaks begins publishing two million Syria emails

LONDON - WikiLeaks said Thursday it was publishing over two million emails from Syrian political figures dating back to 2006 but also covering the period of the crackdown on dissent by Syria's regime.

"Just now... WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria files, more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies dating from August 2006 to March 2012," said Sarah Harrison, spokeswoman for the anti-secrecy website.

The latest disclosures could throw fresh light on the workings of the Syrian regime and its interactions with allies in the run-up to and during the current bloody crackdown.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the 16 months of bloodshed in Syria have claimed more than 16,500 lives.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London seeking political asylum, said in a written statement: "The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria's external opponents.

"It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts.

"It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it."

WikiLeaks said the first files, released on Wednesday, reveal that Italian defence giant Finmeccanica has provided communications equipment to the Syrian regime since the unrest began.

The communications system was provided by Finmeccanica's subsidiary SELEX Elsag, in claims by WikiLeaks published by Italian magazine L'Espresso.

WikiLeaks' announcement comes a day after Russia denied having discussed with Washington offering exile to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

It also comes ahead of a meeting Friday in Paris of the "Friends of Syria" group of countries which support tougher action against Assad's government.

WikiLeaks said the 2,434,899 emails came from Syrian ministries including foreign affairs, finance and presidential affairs. There are around 400,000 emails in Arabic but also 68,000 in Russian.

Harrison said WikiLeaks could not comment on the full contents of the release, which is being organised in collaboration with media partners in countries including the US, Lebanon, Egypt, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

"This is a large data set. It will take time for these stories to come out," she said at a press conference in London announcing the release.

She refused to comment on how WikiLeaks had obtained the emails, telling AFP: "We never comment on our sourcing."

The publication comes amid continued wrangling between world powers about how the bloody conflict in Syria should be tackled.

Russia has indicated it will stay away from the Paris meeting on Friday after accusing the West of seeking to distort a deal struck last weekend for a political transition in the violence-hit nation.

Moscow's move to shun the gathering comes after UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan stressed that a ceasefire was imperative.

Assange, meanwhile, has been inside the Ecuadorian embassy since June 19 in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he sexually assaulted two female former WikiLeaks volunteers.

Assange denies the allegations, which he says are politically motivated. The 40-year-old Australian fears he could be extradited from Sweden to the United States, where he claims he could face the death penalty.

WikiLeaks enraged Washington in 2010 by publishing a flood of secret documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as more than 250,000 confidential US diplomatic cables that embarrassed a slew of governments.

The Syria files are WikiLeaks' first major publication since it began disclosing internal emails from the US-based intelligence firm Stratfor in February.

WikiLeaks was forced to suspend many of its publishing operations last October after Visa, MasterCard and PayPal refused to continue processing donations to the whistleblowing website.

source: interaksyon.com