So what do I do now? Both the Boston Globe and the Washington Post have a lotta name recognition, but they have been loosing money for years. The owners let them go for really cheap, compared to what they sold for 10 years ago. So what do the new owners do? Surely they don't want to have their newly purchased toys die on them.
Let's assume the proud new owners bought to gain social status and access to important people. The owner of the Washington Post or even the Boston Globe gets invited to all the top notch Washington parties, and get even POTUS to accept their phone calls. That's gotta be worth something, especially if you own Amazon which could get cut up real bad by federal regulators.
So what could be done now that we have owners with bags of money? The Internet has torpedoed the legacy business mode, the sale of advertising. Advertisers are going to the Web and doesn't look like they are coming back. So what to do? The newsrooms are still generating some decent content, but people don't pay to visit web sites. So putting the paper on the Web doesn't make money. The draw from the content isn't strong enough to pull in enough ad revenue to pay the salaries. Besides, going on the Internet doesn't take much money, and the papers have famous names to draw customers.
Me, I think the papers will just continue to slide down the drain. The new owners have enough money to cover the losses for quite a few years. It will take a few years to see.
No comments:
Post a Comment