Reuters (NASDAQ:RTRSY) has a blog section at the bottom of most business stories at Reuters.com. It is called Business Blog Posts, and it is powered by Blogburst. Blogburst is part of blog syndication service Pluck. And, Reuters is one of Pluck's owners.

Complicated? Yes.

The business blogs that Reuters runs are mostly small, one-person operations like Phil's Stock World and Captain Currency. Some, like The Kirk Report and Bill Cara, are well regarded. But, Reuters does them a disservice. It keeps the traffic for their content when it runs on Reuters.com. So, Reuters gets the ad revenue on those pages. The bloggers get their names on Reuters, and a link back to their sites, which is probably rarely used.

It is interesting to note that none of the big business blog sites like SeekingAlpha or Ticker Sense run in the Reuters program. They understand that the deal is good for Reuters and bad for the blogs. They aren't prepared to let Reuters compete with them for eyeballs using their own blog content.

It is a shame that Reuters has handled bloggers this way. Many other media outlets like WSJ.com and TheStreet.com comment on blogs but send traffic to the bloggers. Reuters has decided not to give the little guy a leg up.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St. which was approached about the Reuters program and turned the company down.

What does Reuters have against financial blogs? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The reported tiff between CNBC's Money Honey Maria Bartiromo and upstart Erin Burnett, whom the New York Post dubbed the "Street Sweetie,'' is mana from heaven for News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch.

His Post gets a juicy chick fight to write about -- although the General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) cable channel denies there is a fight -- and it makes a rival to his yet-to-be launched Fox Business Channel look foolish as a bonus. Plus, it gives Fox a good excuse to try and lure either one of them away from CNBC. Interesting how corporate synergies work in today's media world.

Mind you, I have no idea whether Bartiromo and Burnett hate each other or not. Usually, Page Six is pretty truthy in the Stephen Colbert sense of the word. You have to think that someone close to Bartiromo or Burnett -- perhaps the person who looks back at them in the mirror -- is spilling their guts to the Post. Yes, the media world is just like high school.

Bartiromo has long been a subject of the gossip pages. I urged CNBC to fire Bartiromo earlier this year after her relationship with ousted Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) executive Todd Thompson brought derision on the network. Since then, she's indicated that she's more interested in being a TV star than a journalist. Burnett, whose path I crossed when I was at Bloomberg News, is gaining the good kind of publicity. In fact, Broadcasting and Cable called her CNBC's "secret weapon."

But there's an extra dimension to this tabloid battle that's worth considering.

There are many media conspiracy theorists who argue that Rupert Murdoch will tabloid up the Wall Street Journal once he gets a hold of Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE: DJ). I think that these fears are overblown. Murdoch won't use the Journal to settle scores with his enemies and heap praise on his friends. Why should he when the Post does that so well?

Media World: Rupert Murdoch will win the Bartiromo-Burnett battle originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Whenever big news like yesterday's crossing of the 14,000 mark of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and today's subsequent 100 point decline hits, journalists and pundits always try to prove that they aren't surprised by what's going on.

In fact, Eric Teal, chief investment officer of First Citizens BancShares Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina, told Bloomberg News: "A market pullback would not be surprising at all to us.'' Teal isn't alone. Spencer Clarke's Chief Market Strategist Michael Sheldon told Reuters that he also wasn't surprised, arguing, "It's certainly to be expected to have some profit taking given some of the earnings reports we had this morning and given the fact Dow closed at an all-time high on yesterday."

No one on Wall Street is ever surprised by anything, except for individual investors who buy and sell stocks. They are surprised all of the time.

To be fair, Teal and Sheldon are trying to feed the media's insatiable lust for pithy quotes on topics ilke the stock market, where there often are no clear cut reasons for why something happened.

Pundits, many of whom relish the spotlight, want to be helpful to the press but at the same time don't want to say anything that might get them in trouble with their bosses. Reporters, too, are under presure to make sense of the sometimes perplexing moves of the market.

The end result is that no one winds up saying much of anything.

Continue reading Media World: Why no one is ever surprised by anything on Wall Street

Media World: Why no one is ever surprised by anything on Wall Street originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In a sign of the increasing importance of high-end financial blogs, Reuters Group Plc (NASDAQ: RTRSY) is starting a new network of the sites. Or, it could be that the Reuters business development people have down time because of its upcoming purchase by Thomson Corp. (NYSE: TOC).

The offer that Reuters is making to a number of high-end blogs is that it will link to the participating sites from Reuters.com, offer free access to selected Reuters Headlines (RSS or Headline Wizard) and Reuters Video Player to publish Reuters News, and get 30% of an advertising program that the big financial services company will manage.

In return, each blog agrees to execute contracts with comScore and NetRatings to assign its traffic to Reuters.com. NetRatings ranks Reuters.com as the No.7 financial website with unique visitors of 6.1 million in May.

Reuters may be trying to match blog initiatives at media outlets including FT.com, WSJ.com, and AOL.com.

Either Reuters has a very high regard for financial blogs or it needs to pump up its audience ratings.

Disclosure: 24/7 Wall St. was approached by Reuters about this opportunity.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a principal at 24/7 Wall St.

Reuters starts financial blog network originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Fox business network: will they keep the Fox style? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 09 Feb 2007 17:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

News Corp's fledgling (NYSE:NWS) Fox Business News cable channel reached a distribution agreement with Time Warner Inc.'s (NYSE:TWX) cable business, a key step in Rupert Murdoch's plan to go head-to-head against General Electric Co.'s (NYSE:GE) CNBC.

As the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) mentions, the deal will make Fox Business News, which Murdoch says will launch this year, available to Time Warner's 13 million subscribers. Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq:CMCSA), the no. 1 cable company. has already agreed to carry the channel.

Ever since Murdoch announced his plans for Fox Business News, I've had my doubts about whether there is enough of an audience to sustain two business channels along with Bloomberg TV (I worked for Bloomberg for seven years) as advertisers shift their spending online. Fox probably is going to offer very attractive rates to advertisers to get them to buy commercial time on the network. Companies will respond enthusiastically at first because they always like to be part of something new. Whether those advertisers will still be around six months later when Fox Business News becomes part of the media landscape remains an open question.

Still, Murdoch faced those same questions when he launched Fox News several years ago to compete against CNN and look what happened.

News Corp., Time Warner reach distribution deal for Fox Business Channel originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 03 Jan 2007 08:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Each Friday, I'll be bringing you my list of the top four stories from CNNMoney for the past week. Did I miss a story that you thought was really good? Leave a comment and let us know.

All right, here are my picks:

1. Be a millionaire: 5 ways to get there. Who doesn't want to be a millionaire?
   
2. 35 most outrageous fees (and how to avoid them). This originally ran in Money Magazine, and is a really great article. The one fee I can't stand is phone surcharges. Opening my cellphone bill each month reminds me of the game show Deal or No Deal. You just never know how much it is going to be.
   
3. Investors worry about Steve Jobs' future at Apple. Analysts doubt Jobs will step down, but it's a story all Apple Computers Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) investors should be following.
   
4. Trump mortgage chief inflated resume. From the "I'm going to call Rosie O'Donnell fat to keep this mess out of the news" department.

The best of CNNMoney, December 22-28 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 29 Dec 2006 10:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Top ten business stories for the week ending Oct. 20, 2006

Top ten business stories for the week ending Oct. 20, 2006 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.