Business Insider: From Celeb Pics To The WSJ, News Corp Will Charge For Everything Online (NWS)
Thursday, 6 August 2009, 19:05
"[Rupert Murdoch] overestimates the value of celebrity scoops. TMZ broke the story of Michael Jackson's death. We know this because we watch the Web publishing space obsessively. Most people don't. TMZ got a lot of traffic breaking the story — 33% over its previous record. But Yahoo, which was even a little late to the story, crushed it too, setting all-time record in unique visitors with 16.4 million people. Yahoo's front page story “Michael Jackson rushed to hospital” saw 800,000 clicks in 10 minutes."
paidContent: TMZ Brings Ad Sales In-House With Telepictures; Future After AOL Spinoff Under Spotlight
Thursday, 16 July 2009, 07:47
"TMZ.com has been profitable since it launched, but remains to be seen how it looks this year and next, especially if it goes completely independent of AOL. No one would confirm the revenues, but they are likely in the $15 million range."
Monday Note: The end of the breaking news — as we know it
Sunday, 12 July 2009, 18:44
"[The] TMZ guys work exactly like the tabloid press of the 50’s or 60’s. At the time, the motto was: Whatever It Takes (to grab the news and beat the competition). As the main street media (not only in the US but in Europe as well) abandoned this attitude, became complacent, they left the field wide open to a new breed of agile outfits like TMZ. The celebs site does what it takes to get the scoop first, including paying for useful tips, as Harvey Levin acknowledges"
Advertising Age: AOL Cracks Web Publishing — Sans Time Warner
Tuesday, 30 June 2009, 11:27
"The model goes something like this: Find a vertical with an audience attractive to advertisers, brand it (Daily Finance, Asylum, Lemondrop, Politics Daily), hire five to seven people to run it and plug in AOL's traffic fire hose. Repeat. They're the antithesis of the kind of quality standards Time Inc. and Condé Nast tout, relying largely on aggregation, blogging and traffic-goosing tricks such as provocative slide shows. But unlike the print publications trying to port their cost structure to the web, these publications can be cash-positive from the start."
Advertising Age: AOL Cracks Web Publishing — Sans Time Warner
Tuesday, 30 June 2009, 11:27
"The model goes something like this: Find a vertical with an audience attractive to advertisers, brand it (Daily Finance, Asylum, Lemondrop, Politics Daily), hire five to seven people to run it and plug in AOL's traffic fire hose. Repeat. They're the antithesis of the kind of quality standards Time Inc. and Condé Nast tout, relying largely on aggregation, blogging and traffic-goosing tricks such as provocative slide shows. But unlike the print publications trying to port their cost structure to the web, these publications can be cash-positive from the start."
SEOmoz: A Bad Day for Search Engines: How News of Michael Jackson’s Death Traveled Across the Web
Monday, 29 June 2009, 13:25
"The events of Thursday demonstrated that Google is falling behind in the emerging real-time web. It was 3 hours and 17 minutes after TMZ first announced Michael Jackson had experienced cardiac arrest before it appeared as a auto completion suggestion on Google's homepage. In the computer age that is a huge amount of time. It is 3 hours and 17 minutes during which consumers may choose to go somewhere other than Google to get the information they want."
Silicon Alley Insider: Here Comes The AOL Blog Rollup (TWX)
Monday, 29 June 2009, 08:09
"Despite the [recent acquisition of Patch Media and Going Inc], AOL has mostly grown its publishing business organically, rapidly launching and ramping up sites like Politics Daily and Daily Finance in a matter of a few months. (The company is now regularly hiring high-end journalists, such as its recent hire of ex-Portfolio.com media writer Jeff Bercovici for Daily Finance.) Meanwhile, TMZ, its home-brewed entertainment news site, has been a hit, too, recently breaking the news (and leading coverage) of Michael Jackson's death."
New York Times: TMZ Was Far Ahead in Reporting Jackson’s Death
Saturday, 27 June 2009, 05:48
"On Thursday, [TMZ] not only scooped every other outlet by announcing Michael Jackson’s death, it apparently beat the coroner’s office, too — by six minutes. … The blog … seemed to have sources everywhere: at Mr. Jackson’s mansion; in the ambulance; and in the corridors of the U.C.L.A. Medical Center. TMZ’s short post about the death was published at 5:20 p.m. Eastern time. For more than an hour, TMZ was essentially the only outlet claiming that Mr. Jackson was dead. "
New York Times: TMZ Was Far Ahead in Reporting Jackson’s Death
Saturday, 27 June 2009, 05:48
"On Thursday, [TMZ] not only scooped every other outlet by announcing Michael Jackson’s death, it apparently beat the coroner’s office, too — by six minutes. … The blog … seemed to have sources everywhere: at Mr. Jackson’s mansion; in the ambulance; and in the corridors of the U.C.L.A. Medical Center. TMZ’s short post about the death was published at 5:20 p.m. Eastern time. For more than an hour, TMZ was essentially the only outlet claiming that Mr. Jackson was dead. "
Los Angeles Times: TV misses out as gossip website TMZ reports Michael Jackson’s death first
Friday, 26 June 2009, 10:45
"With the death of pop star Michael Jackson, TMZ gave the most potent demonstration yet of its ability to stir the pot of entertainment news. The gossip site once again left TV networks and other traditional media outlets scrambling in its wake, even as they attempted to distance themselves from a source widely regarded as salacious, if not disreputable."
