Newspaper model - Is the Boston Globe viable? If so, how? - NYTimes.

What happens to the Boston Globe will say a great deal about the state of the crisis, or crises, in the US newspaper world. This is a venerable institution serving as "the" daily newspaper for the Boston market, and for much of New England.

Having been acquired by the New York Times Co. for a very large sum from the family that owned it for generations, it has proven to be a very poor performer for the Times.

The attached talks about two possible bids, one from a group that prefers a more non-profit or civic approach to running a newspaper, and the other from a member of the family that used to own the paper.

What is important here for managing the crisis is what ultimately happens and how do we get to that point. Will the Globe be a newspaper in any sense of that word in the future? Will it simply die? Will it become entirely electronic? What role will journalism play in its future? How will the market be served if there is no Globe? There are many "learnable" questions here and the next several weeks bear close scrutiny so as to learn from whatever happens.

Profit and loss - Is the Washington Post making money? - Huffington Post

In considering how other newspapers are doing in the midst of the crisis, the nature of many newspaper companies gets in the way. The news of these numbers from the Washington Post Company is a good example. While the parent company wound up reporting a profit for the second quarter of 2009, the newspaper division sales dropped 14%. This is so because many years ago, the parent company went into the business of providing educational training and test preparation services for young people and that has turned out to be the most successful part of the overall company. So we must remember to look at newspaper performance in addition to overall successes and failures.

Technology - Understanding and using what gets collected about newspaper customers - NYTimes.com

For traditional newspaper advertising, there has been little concern about specific newspaper customers and what newspapers could tell advertisers about those customers. It just was not possible. The customized newspaper in print never materialized.

In the web, the technology is racing to provide that information in an increasingly comprehensive manner. Newspaper managers have to learn a whole new lingo and a new way of relating to newspaper customers and advertisers.

New models - Microsoft/Yahoo! and the question of scale - NYTimes.com

Many newspapers are very large businesses, but compared to what Microsoft and Yahoo! are putting togeter, most look quite small. How does a newspaper manager best come to grips with the immensity of an undertaking such as this and the whole concept of scale when it comes to the world of the internet?

Financial - The risk of false hope and missed crises - Reflections of a Newsosaur

Alan MUTTER does an excellent job of deflating some of the enthusiasm that followed a few financial reports from newspaper companies recently.

My concern is that most newspaper people believe we can "get through" the crisis that newspapers now face, but they are missing, in my view, the fact that newspapers face multiple crises, as MUTTER points out, and while the economy is bound to improve, the evolution of the other crises does not appear to be in newspapers' favor.

Whether I am right about this or not is one of the key conversations we hope to have at Managing the Crisis.

Customers - The Harry Potter Effect? - Baylor University

This study from Baylor University in the US suggests that the millions of young readers of the Harry Potter series may have been led away from newspapers by what they read. Just as newspapers need to solve the crisis of who is coming into the field, so, too, do they have to confront of the challenge of growing new readers. What actions could a newspaper manager take to deal with what this study concludes?

Alliances - BBC? - BBC

Perhaps "Managing the Crisis" will provide an opportunity in London to talk with some of the BBC people directly about this move to share video content with newspapers.

Alliances - Microsoft? - Telegraph.co.uk

Alliances have become a much more important part of newspaper life than they ever used to be. In this article, several tough choices are presented for newspapers at least in the UK as they confront both MSN's site, but also the emerging combined forces of Yahoo! and Microsoft.

How does a manager sort through these options and stay ahead with so much of the marketplace being shaped by others who often throw merely self-serving bread crumbs in the direction of newspapers?

Shifting revenue - How to manage online revenue growth? - paidContent

As managers search constantly for new newspaper models, this report caught my eye. If correct, 67% of revenue within the FT Group now comes from online businesses. That's a remarkably high number, especially when added to the report that this revenue is growing once again.

Understanding customers - What can newspapers learn from Walt Disney? - NYTimes.com

Newspaper managers have much to learn, even during a crisis, from unexpected places. In the midst of everything else, recognizing the importance of what Disney is doing seems to be quite important for newspapers (and others). How to assign something like this an appropriate management priority?

Changing revenues - Is circulation income really growing? - Columbia Journalism Review

How to manage revenue stream changes during this crisis?

Public policy - Can changes in law or policy affect crisis management? - Poynter Online - Romenesko

As always, part of managing through any difficult period includes the need to consider public policy and law and always to ask the question whether changes in either can help address the crisis or what follows it.

"Fleet Street goes out with le whimper" - GlobalPost

Here is one reporter's take on the national newspaper scene in London, led by the exit of Agence France-Presse from Fleet Street, the last news operation to leave that part of town, the reporter writes. It is hard to read this and not think how big the crisis, or at least the challenge, is today for newspapers of "yesteryear".

"Marketing Small Businesses With Twitter" - NYTimes.com

One of the challenges in managing the crisis is the continued evolution of new technologies that, either positively or negatively, impact newspaper operations and cusotmers. Take Twitter, for example, a newspaper manager needs to be following not only how it directly affects the newspaper in so many ways, but also how people at that newspaper are using it individually, and how customer are using it -- as reported in this piece.

"Investing in blogs" - Financial Times

How many blogs have been created within a newspaper enterprise and developed to the point of where they contribute significant revenue to the newspaper organization, or have become attractive enough that they have been sold at a profit to others? If one were to think of the organizations best equipped in any market to launch new blogs or other websites that ought to be successful, wouldn't newspapers figure prominently on such a list? If not, why not?