July 17th, 2008 at 10:26 am

“Knowing that carnage is inevitable, I’d figure out how to position myself to swoop into these markets.” Then, build a shared, geography-independent platform that can provide distribution and funding for a network of distributed news bureaus — many founded or staffed by refugees from the old newspapers.

The problem, of course, is that as the individual papers go down to bankruptcy or exhaustion, the journalists will be freed up in geographically concentrated batches. If there is no existing network for whom those journalists can build or expand a local bureau, the temptation will be for them to build their own local web site and brand… (to build their own platform) The risk then, is that the pattern of newspaper failings may end up propagating the existing out-moded geo-based and fragmented industry structure into the post-paper era…

Distribute the journalists but share the platform…

bob wyman

July 17th, 2008 at 11:04 am

Not wholly convinced about not buying at newspaper at any cost. As a financial manouvre buying an asset you know will fail in 20-30 years can be entirely rational….as long as you can sweat out your purchase price and profit before that happens.

It depends upon that definition of “any cost” for example. McCaltchy at $50 million could almost certainly be asset stripped (or sweated if you prefer) profitably. I’ve no idea whether it could at current prices…..which takes us back to trying to define “any cost”.

Rick Waghorn Says:

July 17th, 2008 at 2:18 pm

Bob,

If there is no existing network for whom those journalists can build or expand a local bureau, the temptation will be for them to build their own local web site and brand… (to build their own platform) The risk then, is that the pattern of newspaper failings may end up propagating the existing out-moded geo-based and fragmented industry structure

So they pick a sustainable patch and off they go…

http://www.mylocalwriter.com/queens - or smaller, perhaps. Till we try we don’t know where the ‘tip’ point is size-wise; smaller than Loudon County, one suspects…

But within that patch-work quilt of take-ups will be an inherent elegance that comes with MLW…

And, Jeff, that’s what we’re doing; sitting on a perch with a geo-lite network ready to wave every bought-out journalist towards a DIY local news CMS - that they can be the cherry on top of an EveryBlock cake.

They can even be their own ad dept via http://www.addiply.com

Well, that’s the theory… in the meantime find me enough redundant sports hacks and they can network themselves into http://www.mybaseballwriter.com ….

July 17th, 2008 at 2:43 pm

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July 17th, 2008 at 5:05 pm

So I wonder whether even at bargain prices it’s any bargain to buy a newspaper.

No.

Just ask Sam Zell if he had it do over again, would he. You know the answer.

July 18th, 2008 at 3:36 am

“Isn’t the big question then the trajectory of that decline?”

Indeed it is. They don’t call such operations financial speculation for nothing…..you remember Niels Bohr’s line? “Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future”?

I wrote up something a few years back looking at the finances of US newspapers. Classifieds revenues are going to disappear, certainly as soon as Craig’s List arrives in a particular town. And classifieds amount to some 30% or so of total revenue (at least, at the NYT they did at that time).

By comparison I looked at the UK nationals market: where classifieds are a tiny part of revenue. Also, we don’t have that geographical separation that the distances of the US have previously imposed (and the net is clearing out, as the railways did in the much smaller UK).

My conclusion was that there’ll be many fewer US newspapers (which I think everyone will agree with) but that they’ll be much more ideologically diverse….as the UK newspapers are.

In short, competition will be by worldview of the paper, not geographic area.

Whether this will actually happen….well, back to Niels Bohr I think at this point.

July 18th, 2008 at 4:25 am

Tim,

National papers (or products) then?

July 18th, 2008 at 9:00 am

National (as far as online makes that important: but it does, in language, shared experience and interests etc and I am indeed assuming that we’re talking about the death of the dead tree version at some point) and competing in ideology, yes. You write for The Guardian and it’s clearly a very different paper in its worldview than the Telegraph is. Which is why some people buy one and others another.

Worth noting that the academic research isn’t that people have their worldview influenced by the news sources they have (at least, not in a competitive market) but that they gravitate to one that appeases their already extant views.