Down to the wire for Dow Jones

The deadline is 5 p.m. ET today for the Bancroft family to decide whether or not to sell Dow Jones to News Corp. WSJ reports that negotiations are too close to call. (Sub req.)

2 comments July 29th, 2007

NowPublic lands funding, challenges ‘hyperlocal’

The citizen journalism site NowPublic — which is partnered with the Associated Press — just landed $10.6 million in series A funding. In many respects, NowPublic may be one of the only “citizen journalism” success stories out there right now. CEO Len Brody may surprise you with this interview on GigaOm. “I’m not a believer in local anymore,” he said. “I used to think that hyperlocal was what mattered to people, but for 35 and under especially, the concept of local is very different. Like Facebook publishing the news feed… it’s changed from hyperlocal to hyperpersonal.” Brody said weather, traffic and crime are becoming commodities, and while local politics may have some differentiation, nobody cares about it anymore.

That’s a very bold statement. Thoughts everyone? (Link via PaidContent)

10 comments July 29th, 2007

Memphis Fox station launches blog aggregator

WHBQ-TV in Memphis has debuted OnMemphis, a city blog aggregator. Web manager Darrell Phillips said the site launched three weeks ago and “it’s doing well already and we haven’t even begun to market it.” Screen grab…

9 comments July 29th, 2007

Spiked column shows up online

LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein wrote a piece that proposed that his struggling paper follow the lead of Prince, who gave away 2.9 million CDs inserted into editions of The Main newspaper in the U.K. Despite the fact that Goldstein was just trying to help his paper, an editor killed the column. But it ended up on LAObserved, nonetheless.

Add comment July 29th, 2007

Station picks worst possible call letters

A Honolulu newspaper had to point out to KM Communications that the call letters it selected for its new low-power digital station in Maui were… well, highly objectionable. The new station name? KUNT. “(It’s) extremely embarrassing for me and my company and we will file to change those call letters immediately,” wrote Kevin Bae, VP of KM Communications. (Thanks, discreet_chaos for the link of the week!)

23 comments July 29th, 2007

AP to close down its ASAP service

The Associated Press will shutter its ASAP service on October 31. ASAP was started in 2005 as a way for the AP to reach out to the younger, bloggier audience: ASAP offered multimedia, web-centric packages of materials. The AP says the division was simply not a financial success. It plans on using some of the ASAP multimedia elements in other AP offerings.

7 comments July 29th, 2007