Somewhat OT: Times Co. threatens to shutter Boston Globe.

[Dan Pierce]

BINGO!!!!  The core issue to consider here is the undeniable fact that the 
business model for newspapers no longer works in the new media environment. 
Newspapers as we know them today really began in the early 19th Century with 
the advent of the so-called "Penny Press", whereby newspapers were sold to 
the average Joe for a penny (which is all that he could afford), but the 
newspaper owner made money by selling advertising, thus allowing merchants 
to get their products in front of many more eyeballs than was previously 
possible.  That model worked for more than 150 years but, alas, works no 
longer.

Kevin is quite right about the loss of revenue from classifieds (why anyone 
would wish to spend the money required to run a classified rather than go 
online is a mystery to me...I am astonished the newspapers still sell any at 
all) and employment ads, and Donna is quite right about the significant 
decline in the revenue that was once gained from the retailers and auto 
dealers (now in even greater decline due to the recession).

Newspaper owners simply cannot make enough money to cover their costs, 
especially if they own large, metropolitan newspapers with the resultant 
high overhead due to large, unionized staffs (this is not a knock against 
the unions, simply pointing out that it is easier to pare labor costs when 
dealing with non-union employees, as I have seen personally more than once 
in my radio career).  Some savings are being made through the consolidation 
of the costs associated with the production of the physical product (paper, 
ink, printing, etc.), but you cannot avoid the costs associated with your 
staff, which is why companies like The New York Times Co. are trying to 
extract concessions from their union (and non-union) employees.  They will 
probably succeed in the short run, but those concessions will not be enough, 
IMHO, to avoid the long-term consequences of an obsolete business model.

As a man who reads several newspapers every day online, and who has made a 
career reading newspapers and relying on their content to do talk shows on 
the radio, I wonder whether or not that content will be delivered in another 
form, or will disappear altogether, and what the consequences will be for 
the health of our civic society.

Dan Pierce
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donna Halper" <dlh@donnahalper.com>
To: "Kevin Vahey" <kvahey@comcast.net>; <ssmyth@psualum.com>
Cc: <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>; "Dan.Strassberg" 
<dan.strassberg@att.net>
Sent: Sunday, April 05, 2009 2:02 PM
Subject: Re: Somewhat OT: Times Co. threatens to shutter Boston Globe.


> At 01:31 PM 4/5/2009, Kevin Vahey wrote:
>>Newspapers simply have not recovered from Craigs List which just
>>destroyed small classifieds. Monster has taken the bulk of major
>>employment ads and that is where papers made their profit.
>
> There's also consolidation-- Boston newspapers used to have huge circulars 
> from Jordan Marsh (gone), Filene's (gone), Filene's Basement (in big 
> trouble financially), Zayre's (gone), Lechmere (gone)... you get the 
> idea...And with car companies in trouble, the newspapers are really 
> struggling to find those big advertisers who used to keep them going in 
> the past.
>