Posted on 04/26/2009 7:43:10 AM PDT by pissant
The nation’s largest left-wing newspaper and the bible for network news producers and bookers may be going under. This past week, The New York Times [NYT] announced more staggering losses: nearly $75 million in the first quarter alone. The New York Post is reporting that the Times Company owes more than $1 billion and has just $34 million in the bank. A few months ago, the company borrowed $250 million from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim at a reported 14 percent interest rate. With things going south fast (pardon the pun), Slim might want to put in a call to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
The spin from Sulzberger is that the Internet is strangling the newspaper industry, and there is some truth to that. Why read an ideologically crazed paper when you can acquire a variety of information on your computer? But other papers are not suffering nearly as much as the Times, so there must be more to it.
There is no question that the Times has journalistic talent. This week the paper won five Pulitzers. It’s true that the Pulitzer people favor left-wing operations (the past eight Pulitzer Prizes for commentary have gone to liberal writers), but New York Times journalists often do good reporting.
The problem is that under Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller, the Times has gone crazy left, attacking those with whom the paper disagrees and demonstrating a hatred for conservatives (particularly President Bush) that is almost pathological. The Times features liberal columnists in every section of the paper, and they hit low, often using personal invective to smear perceived opponents.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
You need to separate out print from electronic media.
All newspapers are suffering. The primary reason is the decline of number of readers and, more critically, advertisers. My wife used to buy a paper every week for locations of garage sales, and we’d buy one every couple of weeks for movie locations. Now we just go online.
Most papers used to make approximately half their income from the Classifieds. They didn’t charge a whole lot for those tiny ads, but the cost per inch added up. Today there are a LOT fewer such ads due to Craigslist, Ebay, etc.
I bought a paper the other day because I needed some wrapping materials in a hurry and realized I hadn’t bought one in several years. Spread this out over a few million people and the loss of business adds up.
Most newspapers have a website, but from what I hear the revenue they get from it is only 10% to 20% of the print viewership it replaces.
For electronic media the problem, or opportunity, is diversity. Everybody watched Uncle Walt in the 60s because there were only two other options. Today there are hundreds to thousands of options for getting news.
The “old media” of the networks, etc. which pretended to be unbiased while actually being liberal were stuck in a bind. “Unbiased,” at least as done by American outlets, equals boring. Networks and outlets with a more or less avowed point of view are just more interesting to watch.
The succes of Fox News can best be explained by the fact that somewhere close to half the country is more or less conservative. There are close to a dozen avowedly liberal or neutral (liberal in reality) outlets. They split up the segment of the market that can tolerate their pap.
Fox News has so far pretty much a monopoly on the other side. So it gets close to 50% all to itself, while the other side slices up the other 50% among them. Of course FN beats the competition!
If no one reads their stuff, how does it feed the Democrat voting base?
If what you said were true, then the NYT would not be in the mess it is in now. Subscriber base is what drives circulation of any paper, and it is abundantly factual that their subscriber base has not been subscribing for some time now, and in fact drops even more with each passing day.
Advertisers, are not going to throw money into something that doesn't work for them, because they want people who have money to see their advertisement. Things are so bad, that they can't even give the paper away for free, to increase circulation; because no one wants it.
There is a reason for this, and it is not simply because of the internet. It is not simply because of a poor business model either, because what's happening to the times is happening to the other liberal media outlets as well.
The majority of people in this country are not a dumb as the editors and publishers think they are, and the people are not going to have them insult their intelligence any longer.
We have a choice, and it should be abundantly clear, that the liberal spin of news and views are being rejected by main stream America. It appears the purveyors of liberal propaganda are in denial, and the majority of folks in NY just don't want to consume their crapola anymore.
the past eight Pulitzer Prizes for commentary have gone to liberal writersProof positive that initiatives to increase newsroom diversity focus solely on superficial differences in skin pigmentation and sex while demonizing dissent. AKA politically correct group think.
Very well put. Thanks for voicing concerns many probably just ignore.
Hope the current power brokers don't figure out a way to make the papers tax free or federally subsidized.
As elsewhere, fewer people in the NYC area are buying newspapers, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with idelogy.
I used to buy perhaps 6 newspapers a month. I never read the newsarticles, so my purchase had nothing to do with them or their ideology. I haven’t bought a paper for at least five years now because I get the information I need off the net.
Multiply me by a few 10s of millions, a lot of whom live around NYC, and the decline of newspapers can be fully explained.
For your theory to be correct, most of the NYC area would have to be offended by the leftward-moving slant of the NYT. Unfortunately, something around 75% of the population of the NYC area is rabidly liberal. They wouldn’t be offended by the NYT bias, they wouldn’t even see it as bias. They aren’t buying papers for other reasons. Mostly.
The NYT is not going down because it alienated its audience by being overly liberal.IMHO you can indeed make an argument that liberal bias plays a role in the decline of the NYT. Too media companies currently try to woo the same block of liberal/progressive/socialist masses by pitching elitism. Each slice of the left leaning audience pie gets sliced far too thin for sustainability when so many mass media companies compete for the same sets of eyeballs.
I’ll buy that. I never said it didn’t play a role, just that it wasn’t the primary or only reason.
Newspaper are a 19th century technology trying to survive in the 21st. How often does that work out?
I am quite aware of what you are saying about "print" verses "electronic" circulation of media, and can tell you that from my experience with my local paper as an advertiser, they are doing quite well in both, and that as a businessman advertising in both forms of their media, I have never been happier!
I also clearly understand that due to the internet, the amount of media available to the public is staggering, enabling people to get their news from all over the world. But that being said, does not excuse the reason for why certain media is struggling to maintain circulation in a local market.
In other words, I don't go to Fox News web site, to find out how my home town's little league is doing, or who recently died, or what the city council has on the agenda this week. I go to my home town media, because there is no one else covering it. I also advertise in that media, because this is where I live, and this is where my business is located. The Same can be said of any other local media in any other county, State, or even Country.
And so what if the hard copy is discontinued, which it may eventually come to that? Even still the paper will still be there; only in electronic form, because the community will continue to turn to it for local news. In fact circulation is better for it since they have gone with an online form of the paper.
Because of my local paper's internet site, their circulation is much broader than ever, which is getting me traffic from outside my area, and all for roughly the same cost. Even if they increased my cost of advertising with them, I'd gladly pay, because it's worth it to me; and now more than ever.
So, from an advertiser's standpoint ( and that is where the bulk of their income is derived from) I personally couldn't be happier.
But if I weren't getting results for my advertising dollar due to poor circulation; I wouldn't be happy at all, and they would not be selling me any advertising either.
Personally speaking: If my local paper espoused views that were contrary to my own, I wouldn't advertise with them no matter how well circulated their paper. I'd either find another way of advertising,or I do without.
And yes, I really mean that, and I think you'd be astounded by how many other business people share that same value.
It gets regurgitated via the talking heads in the MSM. Always has, and will continue to be so, as long as their around.
Geez......I thought everyone knew that!
It's funny you should mention that. They are in fact currently looking at a way to bail out these left wing screeds, even as we speak.
There's no better evidence of liberal control in the media than the perpetual government funding of PBS.
Plug on that crap should have been pulled years ago!
I can't help but to sit here, scratch my head and wonder.....Why?
I'm sure you have a reason for doing so, but I have to wonder if they were all from the same publisher, and if so still: why?
But if your telling me that the majority of the people who buy "newspapers" don't read the news articles in them, I'd have to say that you either don't know enough people outside your own circle of friends,or if you do, they're illiterate.
Most people I have ever known at least read the story connected to the headline, or whatever else may be on the first page!
Good grief. You'd think Pinch could get a better deal from his personal credit cards. Strictly as a business decision, what did they expect to change enough to offset the 14% interest on a quarter-billion loan?
A sugar daddy, that's what. If not the federal government (and although I suggested that some months ago it was half in jest) then maybe Soros or some other feller with more ideology than brains. The Times's name alone ought to be worth a few million a month to somebody who has it to spend. At least just now. But like anything else that sort of thing tends to have a decreasing value over time, whether it's machinery or street walkers.
FWIW, I would generally buy newspapers for either the classifieds or the movie ads. I guess I’d sometimes read the front page news articles, but I doubt that was ever the reason behind the purchase.
Hijacked along with the Nobel, utterly worthless.
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