24 octubre 2006

¿El final de las páginas de cotizaciones? (VII)

Jack Naudi, jefe de la sección de la finanzas del St. Louis Post-Dispatch, comentaba en su columna del pasado sábado la decisión que habían adoptado a principios de mes de recortar parte de las páginas de cotizaciones:

"Hace un par de semanas tomamos la decisión de reducir los listados diarios de cotizaciones y publicar sólamente los valores que componen el Standard & Pool 500, así como eliminar completamente la información sobre fondos. Como periodista, estoy a favor de ofrecer más información. Pero desde el punto de vista del inversor, aplaudo esta decisión. Nadie necesita comprobar hoy la evolución de sus valores.

Hay que terminar con determinados hábitos, amigos. No puedes decir nada sobre el futuro partiendo del pasado. Una caída de precios hoy no sugiere nada respecto al futuro".

Toda la información, aquí.

Claro que no todos los editores piensan lo mismo. Un diario de Florida, The Charlotte Sun-Herald, ha decidido aumentar el tamaño de la letra de los listados, con el fin de facilitar su lectura por la población más adulta, lo que supondrá dedicar otra media página más a dichos listados:

David Dunn-Rankin wrote, “We had a nice phone call from a reader who reminded us that the primary user of newspaper stock listings is also the most likely to need reading glasses. Why can’t we make the stock listings bigger? We can and we will.

“Executive Editor Jim Gouvellis and our business section copy chief Seth Plavner are working with the Associated Press to make that happen next week. You will know it is done when we use another half page of space of the business section for the larger stock listings.”

Toda la información, aquí

Y otros, como los lectores del diario The Oregonian (Portland) están divididos respecto a las bondades de la medida, tal y como lo cuenta el propio editor de la sección, Ben Santarris, después de encuestar a 700 de sus lectores:

Some readers are clear about wanting to preserve the maximum number of individual securities listings, known in newspapering as stock agate. For them, the devil — as well as profit — lies in the details. They count on checking their shares over coffee in the same pages where they read the news and do the crossword.

Yet another, fast-growing and likely bigger group of readers no longer think to check their stocks in the paper. For them, such listings, already 16 hours old by the time they show up in paper tubes, bear little meaning. If they want to check quotes, they look them up online in real time or check end-of-session e-mail summaries.

Many of them would prefer a cogent, forward-looking market overview featuring new ideas and insights about investing trends.”

“Fifty years ago, The Oregonian ran less than a single half-column on weekdays. It was not until 1982 that the paper ran as much as it does today, two pages. By 1996, the Internet was going mainstream. In that light, peak readership of the paper’s listings arguably lasted less than 15 years — and ended a decade ago.”

Toda la información, aquí.

Precisamente este diario ha sido uno de los primeros en contratar e incluir la nueva sección "Money & Markets" elaborada por Associated Press. Chris Roush, ha publicado en su blog Talking Biz News una entrevista con Kevin Noblet, editor de la sección de finanzas de la agencia y uno de los encargados de elaborar un nuevo producto que pudiera reemplazar el hueco dejado por la supresión de las páginas de cotizaciones:

What were some of the factors in pushing for a new way to provide market information?

AP has been the principle supplier of data for markets tables in U.S. newspapers large and small, so we’re sensitive to the big cuts newspapers have been making in those pages. We saw a real danger that the investment-minded reader would abandon business sections entirely unless an innovative approach was developed, one that encompassed both the changing needs of print, including quality, convenience and a compact format, and the new requirements of online, where people also want depth and interactivity.

What options or modules does it provide for business sections?
Ease and flexibility of use are keys to how Money & Markets works. The standardized set of daily modules fall into three categories: 1. explanatory and analytical; 2. local and 3. those that offer a new twist on traditional agate. In the first category are items like the Centerpiece, which examines market news and trends, and Today, which lets readers know what to watch for in the day ahead and why. In the second category are a newspaper’s customized selection of local stocks, industry lists and related information. In the third, we offer compact selections in categories like currencies, commodities and interest rates. It all fits well with their A-to-Z tables, which of course newspapers still can offer to the extent they choose to. The modules can, however, be used in markets pages or elsewhere in the section – including on the business cover or even in other sections. There’s a lot of flexibility.

Toda la entrevista, aquí.

Más información:
::
Si los diarios cambian, las agencias también
:: ¿El final de las páginas de cotizaciones?(VI), (V), (IV), (III), (II) y (I)
:: El NY Times también elimina las páginas de cotizaciones.





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