An article in the Herald today rambles on about the potential sale of NYT assets here in Massachusetts. It goes at the subject from the angle of "who will save" the Globe, something that doesn't seem likely to me. It doesn't seem likely because I can hardly imagine Arthur Sulzberger Jr. buying high and selling low...
The Globe and the T&G were purchased by NYT in 1996. They got the Globe for $1.1 billion, and they got the T&G for $296 million. In 2003, the New England Media Group was formed, which includes the Globe, T&G, and Boston.com. (It may have other assets, but I'm too lazy to keep searching.) Since January 2007, the value of the NEMG has dropped by $980 million. That decrease would, proportionately, put the T&G's value down to around $88 million at that point. But I suspect that it's much worse than that now.
The really painful thing about this is that the prospect of NYT selling assets would be based on how much it could raise to pay off debt. The debt could not be discharged by selling the T&G, that's for sure! The entire NEMG probably isn't enough, either. So, ultimately, the article settles on NYT's 17% piece of the Red Sox as the carrot on the stick that might do the trick... and the NEMG would be tossed in, just to get rid of the constant red ink.
It's a somewhat ugly situation, isn't it?
The question really isn't "who will save" either the Globe or the T&G, though. The question should be, "What are all those talented reporters and columnists doing to prepare for the inevitable?"
I really don't think they get it. I'd be willing to bet that most of them are still spending more than they make every month. Yet, over the past few years of staff cuts and chronic attrition, I suspect that even the ones no longer there could've pooled their resources and started their own local daily, well before the axe fell on them.
Sadly, all those talented people have simply been demonstrating, one after another, how the frog gets boiled. Really. It ain't the damn banner that needs "saving", it's the writing talent and the reportage.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
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5 comments:
The question should be, "What are all those talented reporters and columnists doing to prepare for the inevitable?"
This is absolutely correct. There's no reason--zero--to think that the T&G will exist in its current form 10 years from now. If it's around all, it will be much-diminished or totally different. And there's little reason to think that they will gamble any time soon with the sort of big change that could allow them to provide similar journalistic services in a different form.
So not only should the reporters be preparing (and I assume they are), but the City should be preparing. I keep waiting for some town elder to begin the high-profile public discussion: "We will soon have no newspaper--how should we prepare?"
(Obviously folks like Murdoch will figure out useful, profitable things to do with newspapers--the question is, does that scenario leave cities like Worcester underserved by what we expect from papers?)
Double-whammy comment posting...
FYI for everyone else: Mike's second post was a duplicate of the first.
And I have no control over the comments at all, unless I turn comment moderation back on and review every single comment before it gets posted... meh!
But even then, commenters can't go back and edit what they posted, they only remove their comment, ...but it doesn't get removed without the leftover "removed by author" thing... As the blog owner, I can't do it, either.
Frustrating.
But, I rant...
Anyway, in response to what Mike commented: yeah. what you said.
Re-reading my comment, I see that "provide similar journalistic services in a different form" should have been "afford to provide similar journalistic services in a different form."
Because they have a website already, but apparently not one that pays all the bills.
If Rose can publish a print issue twice a month by herself, I suppose that 15 people (similarly motivated) could probably put out a daily print issue.
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