Media Destruction Watch
| Tue Jan. 6, 2009 3:31 PM PST
MEDIA DESTRUCTION WATCH....Felix Salmon reports that the latest auction of defaulted Tribune Company bonds produced dismal results:
Much more startling is the price on the senior secured loans: just 23.75 cents on the dollar. I checked in with Nishul Saperia at Markit, and he said that it was the lowest recovery rate he'd ever seen for a secured loan....
I should imagine that today's news has been greeted with a shudder at the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and other Tribune properties: clearly no one on Wall Street thinks they're worth much even without the huge pile of debt that Sam Zell loaded onto their fragile shoulders. Is David Geffen still interested in buying an uneconomic trophy property? He could turn out to be many employees' final hope.
I wonder how much longer I'll be getting a newspaper delivered to my driveway each morning?
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Comments
Dear Kevin:
You will note that Monday's LAT was amazingly light; in physical heft, the newspaper was almost a piece of fluff.
And to think I used to complain about how much the damn thing weighed.
And now it's nothing. Though I will add that Tuesday's paper was a little better. I love the internet, but I will miss my daily LAT.
Best Wishes, Traveller
Zell purchased these businesses with debt. These businesses do not make enough revenue to both service the debt and pay the owner his annual tribute. The owner probably has enough wealth to pay the debt, but the owner is not personally liable for the debt. Like real estate speculators, Zell has calculated it is better to default than meet his business obligations with his own personal wealth.
"I wonder how much longer I'll be getting a newspaper delivered to my driveway each morning?"
Not long. It's already not happening in Detroit. I canceled my Indy Star years ago and they still deliver it on Sundays for free. I figure it's because they are desperate for business.
And if you think of the newspaper's business model there is no way it would have the slightest chance of even getting started today.
Think about it. We are going to charge you to deliver day old news in a dirty landfill destined papers that we had to chop trees down in order to produce. Never mind you can get the same news for free and a day earlier.
Good riddance to all of them.
Think about it. We are going to charge you to deliver day old news in a dirty landfill destined papers that we had to chop trees down in order to produce. Never mind you can get the same news for free and a day earlier.
Good riddance to all of them.
Perhaps.
But if the newspapers fold, what are bloggers going to do for source material? Quote each other? Which they do already, ad nauseum.
The truth is that without newspapers, dead tree edition or not, we'll be much poorer in any number of ways.
How many bloggers, for instance, have the resources to put actual reporters in the field? A vanishingly small number.
Submitted by Rick B (not verified) on Tue Jan. 6, 2009 5:26 PM PST.
I threw newspapers back in the late 50's for the two papers in a town of 110,000 (one morning and one evening.) Each were normally 40 pages on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and slightly smaller on Saturday.
Today I picked up my paper for the monopoly paper that covers Tarrant County, west of Dallas. Tarrant has population of 1,717,435 and delivers to areas north, south and West in addition. The paper yesterday and today was less each than 40 pages.
The editor had an editorial saying that they are not going out of business. I wonder if they would deliver just the comics? Browsing a bunch of comics on line just isn't the same.
Submitted by Joe Nick (not verified) on Tue Jan. 6, 2009 6:21 PM PST.
Thinnest Austin American-Statesman in years this am. And Cox has it up for sale.
Sunday morning, the carrier didn't deliver to our exurban location until 10 am, denying wife and me our Sunday morning repast in bed. When the Detroit Free Press announced no home delivery on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, I told her our days were numbered. So when they didn't chunk the Sunday Statesman or NY Times, she plugged in her new MacBook, and I fetched the old Dell, and we read in bed. The dissatisfaction goes beyond the kneejerk old fart complaint of needing the tactile connection with a hard copy newspaper. I read online differently than I read hard copy, especially the NY Times and the Washington Post (only when I read the hard copy edition do I remember it has some of the best feature writing anywhere, Hank Stuever especially.) The Statesman is hard to navigate online especially to access Letters to the Editor and Metro News, my two Go To destinations.
All that said, better get used to it, 'cause online is where it's all headed.
But if the newspapers fold, what are bloggers going to do for source material? Quote each other? Which they do already, ad nauseum.
The truth is that without newspapers, dead tree edition or not, we'll be much poorer in any number of ways.
How many bloggers, for instance, have the resources to put actual reporters in the field? A vanishingly small number.
______________________________
That is exactly the right question.
I, for one, would happily watch an ad or two to view the content of an online publication. I do it at Salon.com every day.
Times are achanging and there are leaders and followers. And the leaders usually win.
Morning? You still get delivery in the morning? Here in the city of Milwaukee I think they still intend to deliver in the morning, but in reality I'm at work by the time the Journal-Sentinel gets delivered, so I gave up on the subscription.
Oh yeah, the times are changing alright, and not always for the better. Why I remember when there were gas-stations on every corner at an intersection and polite guys in white uniforms would come out and pump your gas, check the oil, and clean the wind-shield. As the world's wealth has transferred more and more to a few people the rest of us have a reduced standard of living. This trend will continue. Our kids will grow up thinking this is the way it is and they will accept more and more losses. Until 2021 or so.
Today college grads in the US are flocking to the jobs that can't be outsourced, like some health care, government, culinary and education. Same with forensics. Some medical is a dead end, like radiology, and surgery is dieing as well. When surgeons start using robotic surgery that change will be one step closer.
Why pay a US surgeon big bucks to control a robot when a similarly qualified surgeon in India will do it remotely for 1/4th the price? The AMA will fight this, of course, but tele-medicine is the wave of the future, and all the US docs thinking this will let *them* treat people in Africa are being silly. Nobody treats the people in Africa. They have no money. Everybody wants to treat the rich (relatively rich on a global scale) in the US, because you go after the bucks. When we've fallen far enough we'll be scrambling to treat the people with money in other countries. And we'll be at a disadvantage. Globalization means the world's poor rise a tiny bit, the US population falls a large amount, and the ultra-rich become ultra-richer. This has very clearly been happening and almost everyone says it is a bad thing and yet no one has the power to change it.
I tell my kids to see this trend and find a way to personally benefit as best they can. That's the American way.
The LA Times situation is sad. Yesterday's paper was quite light. The classified section was so thin it took quite a while to actually find it. Basically, the Sunday edition is the only one with any heft anymore, and that's because of all the insert ad sections.
I agree with some of the comments upthread about the future, but I also suspect the end result is that we will pay more for news. I was at a bookstore (yes, I realize they are in trouble as well) newsstand yesterday and could not help but notice the numerous narrow interest glossy magazines. None of them were priced like a newspaper.
Submitted by JeffB (not verified) on Wed Jan. 7, 2009 3:59 PM PST.
What is this "newspaper" you speak of?
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