dagblog - Comments for "A Tale of Two Newspapers"

This is a great comment,

artappraiser — Sun, 11 Aug 2013 01:11:02 +0000

In reply to We mourn the loss of these

This is a great comment, Peter, along the lines of "let's get real here."

I checked up on the history when this news came out, and the Graham family period @ WaPo starts with The newspaper was purchased in a bankruptcy auction in 1933 by a member of the Federal Reserve's board of governors, Eugene Meyer, who restored the newspaper's health and reputation. In 1946, Meyer was succeeded as publisher by his son-in-law Philip Graham....

By the way, the Sulzberger family has announced it is holding tight for now on the NYT.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is

trkingmomoe — Thu, 08 Aug 2013 02:23:08 +0000

In reply to A Tale of Two Newspapers

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is read here on a regular basis in this Florida household on line. I just wonder how many others still read this paper that don't live in the Cleveland area. It is a shame to let it die a slow death. Why can't newspapers become non profit trusts?

We mourn the loss of these

Peter Schwartz — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 22:19:42 +0000

In reply to A Tale of Two Newspapers

We mourn the loss of these "family owned" newspapers and perhaps the death of the journalism they've supported.

But it's worth pointing out that the industrial titan heads of those families weren't journalists and didn't know squat about journalism (such as it was) when they bought or founded these papers back in the day. They were very rich men, much as Bezos is, who wanted to own papers, probably for less noble reasons than Bezos has.

(Murdoch is probably closer to these newspaper titans of yore in his outlook and intentions than Bezos is.)

The Graham Family will no longer own WaPo...the Bezos Family will. It will still be family owned. And if Bezos discovers a way to make a news organization financially viable, he will be doing everyone a big service.

Historiann makes an important

acanuck — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 20:12:12 +0000

In reply to "A gutted newspaper is more

Historiann makes an important point re newspaper profitability. I don't have current figures handy, though it's clear the industry is in deep trouble. But 15 or 20 years ago EBITDA for newspapers (at least, Canadian ones) was staggering. I recall profits in the range of 30-35 per cent of revenue.

Way too tempting for long-time chain-owning families not to sell, and for leveraged acquisitions not to occur. New owners (often with no journalistic background) needed to increase profits simply to pay interest and satisfy other investors -- just as circulation began to slip and advertising began to tank.

Solution: cut costs by closing bureaus, centralizing operations of different media outlets, and -- most drastically -- getting rid of employees who actually put out the papers. Paper, ink, presses and real estate were all fixed costs, so payroll was the only place to make up the shortfall. Software advances allowed composing rooms to be phased out, helping the bottom line for a time, but couldn't compensate for steadily falling revenues.

More staff cuts, reduced paper size, and poorer editorial quality accelerated loss of circulation and advertising. I took a buyout in 2008. Canwest, Canada's biggest media company, went bankrupt the following year. I like to think cause-and-effect.

Newsprint as a medium for delivering up-to-date information is obviously on its deathbed. Television news has failed to pick up the torch, and social media lack all journalistic standards. Some blogs manage to fill niches, but they lack the resources for global news-gathering. Governments, corporations, lobbyists and activists exploit the vacuum for their own advantage.

Still, the need for quality journalism has never been higher. It's a paradox I have no answer for, but I am confident journalism itself will survive and eventually thrive again. Because it has to.

Reminds me of the strategy in

Donal — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 19:29:02 +0000

In reply to I don't know why I find all

Reminds me of the strategy in Hearts of "shooting the moon." You have to take all the bad cards, any Hearts and the Queen of Spades to give those points to your opponents.

Bezos can't compete on price unless he drives everyone else out of business first.

I don't know why I find all

artappraiser — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 19:15:38 +0000

In reply to The New Yorker article claims

I don't know why I find all this intriguing, but I do. Did you also see the thing about the pension plan that I posted on the news thread?

I am reminded of that old TV commercial for an investment advisor with the slogan they make money the old-fashioned way, they EARN it. Bezos: not old-fashioned.

Almost seems like too high expectations now, as if he has all these secret tricks and ideas up his sleeve, is going to be the savior of the journalistic media in the digital age....

The New Yorker article claims

Donal — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 17:54:00 +0000

In reply to And as Matt Buchanan at the

The New Yorker article claims they were profitable in some quarters, but Democracy Now! had several guests discussing Bezos today, and publisher Dennis Johnson said:

The other thing to remember about Amazon is it’s a company that feels no pain. They’ve, as far as I can tell, never made money. Their quarterly statements are consistently sales are up—they’re astronomical numbers; they made $15.7 million last quarter alone—but their losses are up every quarter, as well. It’s a phenomenal track record, where—and, you know, in the retail market, how do you compete with that? How—in the book business, how does Barnes & Noble, how do the little indie booksellers compete with a company that can consistently lose money like that? Well, they can’t. They just can’t. So, when you see him taking over The Washington Post and you wonder is he going to be able to monetize it, is he going to make it profitable, he probably doesn’t care. That’s obviously not what it’s about. His business is to not operate as if they intend to make a profit.

AMY GOODMAN: But he did make $28 billion—I mean, he’s got $28 billion.

DENNIS JOHNSON: Personally. Sure, he’s a wealthy man, one of the most wealthy men in the country, if not the world. But the company, quarter after quarter after quarter, does not post a profit.

Actually they have posted profits in the past, but according to the Guardian, lately Bezos is rolling everything back into the company:

The thing is, companies don't pay tax on sales, but on profits. And Amazon is a company with a very strange attitude to profit: it doesn't seem to like it. In the year 2012, it made a worldwide loss of $39m, even as it had sales totalling $61bn. That year was an aberration, with a costly acquisition weighing the company down, but previous years have been similar. 2011 saw just $631m net income on worldwide sales of $48bn, and in 2010 – the company's most profitable year to date – it scraped $1.15bn of profit on revenue of $34bn.

Tenured Radical: "There is

Historiann — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 02:30:27 +0000

In reply to Yes, historiann. Profit isn't

Tenured Radical:

"There is no reason why meaningful adaptation to an electronic environment could not have occurred earlier from within the industry, except that it didn’t because corporate owners were too busy firing people and lining their own pockets. These are the same selfish reasons that no one will come to grips with the price of education: many things that are worthwhile, by their very nature, are not profitable. When you try to squeeze profits from them, you destroy them.

There are some things — like universities and newspapers — that are worth more than money. They should be cultivated for their own sake and for the sake of a healthy, well-informed public, not for the sake of profits. Preserving newspapers in the United States would have required investing money at a moment when most newspaper heirs, investment bankers, international media conglomerates and the other profiteers wanted to cash out and live the good life. That advertising dollars diminished at the same time may be true, but it is also true that lots of wealthy people emptied the tanks first and made newspapers vulnerable to the advertising market."

Sorry for not including the excerpt in my original link to the post.

Tenured Radical weighs in and

Historiann — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 02:24:51 +0000

In reply to Yes, historiann. Profit isn't

Tenured Radical weighs in and addresses some of these issues re: profit, obscene profit, and the purpose of journamalism.

Yes, historiann. Profit isn't

Doctor Cleveland — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 20:46:00 +0000

In reply to "A gutted newspaper is more

Yes, historiann. Profit isn't enough; there has to be profit growth. But at what point do you say that this profit is too steady for anyone to bother making? That makes no sense.

It's interesting that Bezos did NOT buy the Washington Post's real estate. (Henry did buy the Globe's real estate, and what he paid was basically the market value of the real estate.) And most financialized business models, which focus on assets and despise paying salaries, would focus heavily on the real estate. It's moderately encouraging that Bezos did not.