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Thursday, January 04, 2007 |
The Sound You Hear Is Helicopters On The Roof
The ongoing saga of the Tribune Corp. and its slow-motion attempt to either find another buyer willing to take on their problems or sell themselves off piecemeal has yet another wrinkle:
The Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation, a charity founded by the longtime editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, disclosed today it created a committee to decide the future of its 11.7 percent stake in Tribune. Tribune announced last fall it was reviewing options thought to include a sale or split of the company.The Foundation could make an offer for parts or all of the Tribune empire, but given their nonprofit status and the complicated legal problems the Times' owner would have with proposed FCC rules relaxing multiple broadcast outlets being put on hold, it seems unlikely they would want to pursue acquiring the whole company. On the other hand, the Foundation has a built-in conflict of interest: several executives of the Tribune Corp. are also on the foundation's board of directors, though these members will supposedly be excluded from the process.
Without being too helpful, the AP story carried by the Times mentions this Columbia Journalism Review editorial likening Tribco's newspaper operations to that of Don Rumsfeld's tenure as Secretary of Defense, and the Hell's Angels:
Good editors will cut costs when it is part of a sensible business plan. But in time Tribune appeared to be simply harvesting the assets of its properties. Newsday and others were picked nearly clean and Tribune began turning to L.A. again this fall. To Jeffrey Johnson and Dean Baquet, the former publisher and former editor of the Los Angeles Times, Tribune must have sounded like the motorcycle thugs in Hunter Thompson’s first book, Hell’s Angels. In Thompson’s telling, the Angels come up to you in a bar and say, Give me a cigarette. Then: Give me another cigarette. Then: Give me the pack. Give me your shirt. At some point you realize you might as well fight."Something to do with the Internet" ultimately means that the newspapers will have to either (a) get one hell of a lot smaller, or (b) realize that they can't give away the full paper every day. At one extreme, you have Matt Drudge, love him or hate his single page for which he provides almost no content; at the other, there is the Wall Street Journal, which has never given away their product save for brief introductory periods. I can't forecast which direction is most likely for big urban dailies, but I would guess they like to get paid. Getting back to the Rumsfeld analogy, though pushing it back a few decades, it may yet be time to blow up Tribco, and thus sell off the Cubbies, the Tribune and the Times; the helicopters are on the roof, waiting for refugees. Time to go.Public ownership of newspapers no longer makes the kind of sense it made when the industry was rapidly shedding labor costs thanks to new technology, and when the money that stockholders poured in was invested partly in editorial. Today newspapers need owners with the patience and the guts to ride through this valley of transition, with its attendant economic uncertainty, and find the next high ground, which will probably have something to do with the Internet.
Comments:
Wow, real brave of the Columbia Journalism Review to be on record as opposing the layoffs of journalists.
That was an impressive amount of snarling about Rumsfeld and Hell's Angels, but it can't mask the bottom line: The LA Times is a lazy bloated monopoly newspaper. (See this blog post, which points out that the Times' 940 employees are above industry average staffing levels.)
Rumsfeld was against bullshit corporate welfare like the Crusader artillery project, and that sounds to me like a better metaphor than anything the CJR came up with.
That was an impressive amount of snarling about Rumsfeld and Hell's Angels, but it can't mask the bottom line: The LA Times is a lazy bloated monopoly newspaper. (See this blog post, which points out that the Times' 940 employees are above industry average staffing levels.)
Rumsfeld was against bullshit corporate welfare like the Crusader artillery project, and that sounds to me like a better metaphor than anything the CJR came up with.
Sure, if the Times wants to be a Copley paper, that's fine... I'm sure the New York Times is above average, too. I guess the real question about staffing comes down to whether the Times should be a regional paper or not, at least, that's how it seems to me.
Rumsfeld, "against bullshit corporate welfare"? What of the billions "lost" in Iraq by the likes of Halliburton? If he's against such stuff, it seems he's very selective in his dislike for it.
Rumsfeld, "against bullshit corporate welfare"? What of the billions "lost" in Iraq by the likes of Halliburton? If he's against such stuff, it seems he's very selective in his dislike for it.
They can "give away" the paper, but only if the increase in advertising revenue online and cost saving by not producing a physical paper work. But you are right, now they don't, but maybe some day they will.....
The times is hurt by the fact it is the only paper in town. its not healthy, and that has little to do with staffing and more to do with lack of competition. The sports page gets worse every year, and I think they just figure, where else are people going to go?
The times is hurt by the fact it is the only paper in town. its not healthy, and that has little to do with staffing and more to do with lack of competition. The sports page gets worse every year, and I think they just figure, where else are people going to go?
# posted by 
: 1/06/2007 10:04:00 AM
: 1/06/2007 10:04:00 AM
The real problem as I see it with the Times from a financial standpoint is that they have declining circulation, are probably overly dependent on classified and inserts, and are probably getting pushbacks from advertisers who these days demand more accountability. They ultimately will have to go online and charge for their services, I think.
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