It’s kinda ironic these papers laying off newsroom staff. With the advent of the internet, about the best equity they should have is their news content / capacity since the papers will be going away. If these guys were really moving to the internet like most papers say they are, then they would be keeping the news staff.
True. I can see layoffs in production, but a newspaper's value over bloggers et.al. is their news-gathering personnel and abilities. If they're laying those folks off, then it suggests that people aren't buying their bulls**t content.
Dinofishwrap actually started migrating to the Inet over a decade ago. Unfortunately for fishwrap the Inet truly levels the playing field by totally eliminating the need for an expensive printing press infrastructure that heretofore served as an enormous barrier to entry into the news business. A barrier large enough to effectively ensure its owners a virtual monopoly in a given market.
the news business "is broken, and no one knows how to fix it." ("And if any other paper says they do, they're lying.")
Newspaper, Magazine Publishers: Very Few Making More Than 3 Percent Of Sales Online
The overwhelming consensus among 350 global magazine and newspaper executives at a global media conference last week, Magazine 2.0, at the Hannover Congress Centrum in Germany: there is no profit in going digital.
Reinsurance Abuses At End, Buffett Says
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Buffett said declines in circulation result from readers turning to alternative sources , such as free Web sites and television. And he said owning the dominant news Web site in a region is not enough to guarantee sustained profitability for newspaper firms.
As an example, he cited Buffalo, where Berkshire owns the Buffalo News and Buffalo.com, which he described as the most popular news Web site in the city. "We've got the best position, but it isn't remotely like owning the paper 30 years ago."
Buffett said buying newspapers was once an excellent investment because the dominant paper in any city could count on steady advertising revenue and could raise ad rates, often as much as it wanted, every year. With circulation dropping, that is no longer the case, Buffett said.