SWEEEEET!
LOL!
Posted on 05/04/2008 4:17:03 AM PDT by abb
The Minneapolis Star Tribune, reeling under a heavy debt load and plummeting advertising sales, is on the brink of bankruptcy, The Post has learned.
One of the nation's top dailies, "The Strib," as it is known to readers in the Twin Cities, recently hired the Wall Street powerhouse Blackstone Group to restructure its balance sheet after failing to meet its debt obligations, according to people familiar with the company.
The broadsheet is unlikely to shutter its doors, but its creditors, including the banking giant Credit Suisse Group, figure to eventually end up controlling the paper. Down the road, the creditor group could then sell it after dramatically cutting costs.
The private-equity firm Avista Capital Partners, run by former Credit Suisse deal maker Tom Dean, purchased the Star Tribune from the McClatchy Co. in 2006 for $530 million. The New York firm, which put up $100 million of its own money and borrowed the rest, stands to lose its entire investment, sources said.
After Avista bought the company, the firm's partner, OhSang Kwon, was quoted in the paper as saying that Minneapolis-St. Paul was a "good market" and that "this is a good time to be buying newspapers."
That sentiment turned out to be too optimistic, as newspapers nationwide continue to lose readers and advertising dollars continue to migrate online.
Last week, the paper reported that its weekday circulation dropped 6.74 percent, to 321,984, in the six-month period that ended March 31.
Billionaire real-estate mogul Sam Zell, who bought the Tribune Co. last year, was recently forced to put Long Island's Newsday, one of its more valuable assets, up for sale in order to meet debt obligations.
And the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, that city's two largest dailies, could meet the same fate as the Star Tribune...
snip
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
It's SHADENFREUDE!
Here's an interview with the new CEO of Reuters explaining how they need to position the company in an environment where news is a commodity.
“I will repeat my prediction: Within two years, Dimocrats will propose federal funding of the dinosaur media.”
The idea has already been floated.
http://www.cjr.org/feature/the_uncle_sam_solution.php?page=all
The Uncle Sam Solution
Can the government help the press? Should it?
By Bree Nordenson
snip
Before anyone invests one penny, they should research what Reuters is doing. It's nothing more than a more sophisticated version of FR. With news as a commodity, the value proposition is context & analysis: exactly what one gets reading FR with insider views and external links to further information.
Of course, just because Reuters sees what's happening doesn't mean that they can avoid the same fate. Read some of the reader comments which suggest that information streaming + analytical tools are also subject to low cost, open source technologies.
You may have just there condensed the entire story into a few words: News is now 'Open Source.'
And if either Hillary or Obama is elected, they'll probably GET it.
So what are Zell, et al thinking? I mean, they're smart guys, right? They can perform the same research, listen to the same consultants, and reach the same conclusions as to the future viability of anachronistic & proprietary MSM: none.
Yet they pony up large stacks of money in the hope of achieving exactly what? Losing their entire stake? Because that is what is happening (and will happen) to each and every one of these properties. They are hopelessly obsolete.
I’m picturing Katie Koran at the convalescent home
reading old Star and Sickle articles to Dan Blather.
I'm hoping that when enough of the large and influential papers go under, the remaining ones will realize that if they want to remain in business, they'll need to cut out the liberal bias and go back to reporting the facts.
There's always going to be a market for small-town papers, no matter how biased they are. Ours is jokingly called the Free-SLANT Star instead of the Freelance Star. Guess which direction it slants. But they will remain in business as long as there are high school football games and weddings, and Craigslist will never replace our classifieds.
SWEEEEET!
LOL!
Yes indeed. And that isn't the only one. Communists in the media have been floating it since the 60's, as a way of breaking their reliance on the loathsome working people. Its problematic for them when the target of the propaganda must agree to pay for it (which they are increasingly unwilling to do).
The last big push was when the networks were slashing the lavish spending in their news departments in the 80's (Remember when they all had the London Office cover the international news and the London talking head was the prince regent to the anchor desk?).
The resurgence of Reagan patriotism in the USA cut straight into the market for their pro-Kremlin agenda.
Like PBS/NPR, public funding gives free reign to ignore and/or insult 70-80% of the potential audience.
The difference now is that many Dims are starting to feel that the demise of the dinosaur media is reaching critical mass and starting to seriously endanger their election prospects.
online reporting such as yahoo news, msn and whatever Drudge is talking about.
The print media is antiAmerica and needs to die. Death of an enemy is a very good event
“I celebrate their demise vociferously.”
Yea! That too!
Not just the MSM. Their principal mission will be to rescue all their failing constituencies. The UAW by bailing out the US auto industry, teachers' unions by trying to kill charter schools and home-schooling, the MSM and others. There are any number of ratholes they intend to pour our money into.
The problem is that almost all of them are run by socialists and other leftist leaning anti-Americans.
That being said, none of the basis for my belief in the American Free Enterprise system came from the words written on that paper. Any one want to buy a bag?
We must realize that the communications media function much like the unelected federal bureaucracy. They are so powerful that they act as if they were the fourth branch of government in the United States. Charles Peters, editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly, in his book How Washington Really Works, writes that the media, instead of exposing the "make believe" of the federal government, are "part of the show."
Television (and the communications media in general) thus are not only reporting news, but making it. Their ability to change our perception of any event raises serious questions concerning the democratic processes.
News Without Reporters
Unnecessary? Reporters are a dying breed, says Steve Boriss, and that's a good thing. America got along fine without them once before.
by Steve Boriss
One of journalists' recurring put-downs of bloggers is that they are simply recycling someone else's news - that there will always be a need for reporters to produce it. Yet, America had a reporterless past and will likely have a reporterless future. And, news will be better for it.
...
Now, the Internet is eliminating the reporter as middleman by connecting audiences directly with the real sources of news - politicians' offices, PR firms, whistleblowers, think tanks, courts, police departments, and everyone else with a news ax to grind. These entities have always been capable of writing their own stories in a usable form, but have previously needed reporters to get their stories distributed. Nor will we miss investigative reporters, who had always been dangerously untrained in the skills needed to do their job properly (e.g. forensics, law) and often unfairly destroyed the reputations of innocents. Society has many alternative, more responsible ways to right wrongs, and the blogosphere can easily fill this void.
...
(excerpt)
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