Four of the country’s leading media companies today reported the creation of quadrantONE , a new online sales organization focused on premium advertisers seeking high-quality audiences and national reach. Investors in the new network include Tribune Company, Gannett Co., Inc., Hearst Corporation and The New York Times Company.
The Tribune Company is a large American multimedia corporation based in Chicago , Illinois . It is the nation's second-largest newspaper publisher, responsible for the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Hartford Courant, and the Baltimore Sun, among others. Through other subsidiaries, the Tribune Company also owns Tribune Broadcasting, Tribune Entertainment, Tribune Media Services, and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
Gannett Company, Inc. is a publicly traded media holding company based in the United States and is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher as measured by total daily circulation. Its assets include the national newspaper USA TODAY, and the weekly USA Weekend. Its largest non-national newspaper is The Arizona Republic in Phoenix , and other large newspapers include The Indianapolis Star, The Des Moines Register, The Honolulu Advertiser and The Detroit Free Press. Gannett Company, Inc. was founded in 1923 by Frank Gannett in Rochester , New York . The company was headquartered in Rochester , New York until 1986 when it relocated to Arlington , Virginia . In 2001, it moved to its current headquarters in Tysons Corner, a suburb of Washington , D.C. The name of the company is pronounced "guh-NETT", with the emphasis on the second syllable.
The Hearst Corporation is a privately-held American-based media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower in New York City , USA . Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media. The Hearst family is involved in the ownership and management of the company.
Hearst Corporation is one of the largest diversified communications companies in the world. Its major interests include 12 daily and 20 weekly newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, and Albany Times Union; nearly 200 magazines around the world, including Cosmopolitan and O, The Oprah Magazine; 28 television stations through Hearst-Argyle Television which reach a combined 18% of U.S. viewers; ownership in leading cable networks, including Lifetime, A&E, The History Channel and ESPN; as well as business publishing, Internet businesses, television production, newspaper features distribution and real estate.
The New York Times Company is an American media company. It is best known as the publisher of its namesake, The New York Times. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. has served as Chairman of the Board since 1997.
Uniting the online audiences of quadrantONE’s participating media companies, large national advertisers can immediately reach tens of millions of unique visitors in the country’s top markets. Each participating company has agreed to dedicate advertising inventory to quadrantONE, so the network can offer customized online campaigns on a highly competitive basis.
The network has a reach of nearly 50 million monthly unique visitors and covers 27 out of the top 30 markets. quadrantONE will, for the first time, offer advertisers the capability to consistently deliver their brands and messages on a national scale through advertising with the well-established and trusted online newspaper and broadcasting sites of the participating media companies.
The network will cover the nation’s top markets including New York , Los Angeles , Chicago , San Francisco , Boston , Atlanta , Houston , Phoenix , Detroit , Dallas , Philadelphia , Washington , D.C., Baltimore , Cincinnati , Denver , Minneapolis/St. Paul, Orlando , San Antonio , Sarasota , Ft. Lauderdale , San Jose and Albany , N.Y. A full list of participating Web sites is available at www.quadrantONE.com.
Source: By Pravda.ru
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#1 Citizen Kane comes to campus
Quadrantone is another threat to the thriving college newspaper business. The big newspaper conglomerates are already trying to get their foot in the door on college campuses. It's too bad that students and college admininstrators can't see through the motives of the USA Today Readership program and Quadrantone.
If your school is approached by the Gannett/USA Today Collegiate Readership Program, I hope that you will consider this: They want to steal your college newspaper advertisers! They will financially beat your college newspaper down by drastically reducing your ad revenue so that they can either take over your college newspaper if it has potential for profit or simply put it out of business.
The USA Today Collegiate Readership Program has been cleverly marketed to colleges and universities across the country as a way to enlighten our students and improve the journalism skills of the campus newspaper writers. On Feb. 15, 2008 a joint initiative called Quadrantone was announced by Gannett, The Tribune Newspapers, Hearst Corp and the New York Times. This program creates an unprecedented on line advertising platform that will allow this newly formed oligopoly to offer localized on line advertising on their member online newspaper websites to local advertisers who have relied on the college newspaper to reach students. With Quadrantone, even the on line editorial content can be customized to reach different demographic groups.
Here is the bottom line- This USA Today program is nothing more than a surreptitious way to curry favor with students and administrators under the guise of providing a valuable educational service to our community. Make no mistake about it. The goal of the USA Today readership program is not to enlighten our students and broaden their perspectives as they would have you believe. Their sneaky plan involves bringing USA Today and usually the New York Times on campus along with the local metropolitan newspaper (usually a Gannett publication)- often “free of charge” to the students but paid for by the college administration or student government association. That way the program can count all of their newspapers on campus as paid circulation to justify ad rate increases. The typical metropolitan newspaper is written on an 8th grade reading level. Is that the kind of education and enlightenment that our students can look forward too?
Once the USA Today Collegiate Readership program gets the local metropolitan newspaper on the college campuses, their goal is to steal college newspaper advertisers by offering below market display ad rates to local advertisers and below market on line ad rates through the Quadrantone platform. Gannett and the other large newspaper conglomerates share a common goal- put the college newspapers out of business or buy them for a fraction of what they are worth.
Why are they doing this? The average age of today’s metropolitan newspaper reader is 56 years old! The newspaper industry has the same dilemma as the tobacco industry. Their older customers are hooked but the new generation is not buying. When today’s readers die, so goes their readership. Therefore, to survive, Gannett and the other Quadrantone members are aggressively trying to establish a foothold on college campuses.
A few days after the local metropolitan paper and the two national papers are made available for free in nice shiny racks on the college campus, the multitude of ad reps for the local metropolitan paper and Quadrantone will be calling on every local business within a 10-mile radius of the campus and they will of course call EVERY national advertiser that has used the local college paper in the last 5 years. They will offer the college newspaper advertiser a display ad rate so low that the advertiser will jump ship. Now that Quadrantone can offer locally targeted online advertising, the college newspapers that have local online advertising revenue will no longer be able to compete.
"Citizen Kane" is often considered by movie critics to be the best
>movie EVER PRODUCED.
"Citizen Kane" is a 1941 mystery/drama film. Released by RKO Pictures,
it was the first feature film directed by Orson Welles. The story
traces the life and career of Charles Foster Kane, a man whose career
in the publishing world is born of idealistic social service, but
gradually evolves into a ruthless pursuit of power."- Wikipedia
It supposedly centers around the life of William Randolph Hearst, the
undisputed giant in the newspaper industry in the early 1900's. He
tried everything he could to ban the movie from reaching the theaters
and almost succeeded. If you want to see what corporate greed in the
newspaper industry looks like, watch the movie.
But don't worry. When all looks lost, Gannett or some other newspaper giant might come to the rescue and buy out your college newspaper if it has the potential for profit. If not, they will just kill it by practically giving away their ads to the college market advertisers. If the college paper gets bought out, the students that are left now work for a huge multimedia conglomerate, and they can kiss goodbye the editorial freedom they have taken for granted.
If the students start working for Gannett, they better not say something that Gannett does not agree with in the college paper, especially when it comes to politics. Study Gannett’s political mindset and commit it to memory or risk being shown the door. Gannett knows how the game is played. Gannett has already bought an independent college newspaper in Florida and is about to buy another student newspaper in Colorado. This is just the beginning. The alarming fact is that the USA Today Collegiate Readership Program marketers have duped students and their administrators into thinking that their motives are purely altruistic. That should insult the collective intelligence of our future leaders.
The student newspaper, the last bastion of true freedom of expression in the print media, is slowly being destroyed by a modern day Citizen Kane.
#2 I think you are on to something
USA Today and other Newspaper conglomerate Collegiate Readership Programs have flatly denied in print articles that they want to steal your college newspaper readers. “Gannett dismissed any suggestion that it planned to conquer student journalism.
"There is no grand Gannett strategy," said Tara Connell, a spokeswoman at its headquarters in McLean, Va. "Gannett is not looking to buy college newspapers. We look at all sorts of things." (quoted in numerous online publications)
Oh really? Read this article from The Rocky Mountain Collegian on Mar. 7.
http://media.www.collegian.com/media/storage/paper864/news/2008/03/07/News/Gannett.Csu.Turned.Down.Sale.Of.Collegian.Partnership.Dismissed-3258500.shtml
Excerpt from the University of Alabama Crimson and White online 2/13/08:
“Barbara Hall, the USA Today representative who coordinated the UA (university of Alabama) program, said USA Today is trying to create a "learning environment on the University campus through the reading of newspapers."
"If they're only interested in increasing student readership, why doesn't [USA Today] just give away the papers for free?" Isom (from the Crimson and White) asked.
“Asked that question, Hall said she did not know, except that newspapers cost money to produce and distribute. She said, however, that USA Today is more for businessmen and that the paper "is not going after the college market anytime in the near future." End of quote (Crimson White Online- 2/13 /08)
Remember- only paid circulation is recognized by the Audit Bureau of Circulation- the oversight organization that verifies circulation numbers that newspapers use to increase their ad rates. That Mrs. Hall, is why you can’t give away your newspapers, but of course you knew that already didn’t you? Just another example of the double talk that Gannett is known for.
By the way- it is generally accepted that the USA Today Collegiate Readership program was started at Penn State. USA today would have us believe (per their website) that Penn State hatched the idea and USA today blessed it. Following is a link to an article published in 1989- 8 years before the "first USA today readership program."
http://www.computer-business-review.com/article_cg.asp?guid=63A19049-91C9-4ACB-B52F-114578D44C62
If they are not interested in acquiring college newspapers or “partnering,” why are large newspaper corporations lobbying almost every college and university in the United States, sometimes for years, to get their papers on your campus? Every free paper on your campus takes readers and advertisers away from your college newspaper. One can only read so many newspapers.
Sincerely,
A. Rooney