Warren Buffett says papers “are toast”

[Slacker]

What the heck is a "Defalcation?"

It's what you write when "Embezzlement" doesn't fit your hed spec.

 

[britwrit]

Perceptive post. I will say one of the reasons the business is toast is a lot of newspapers, the family-owned newspapers, yes the ones owned by family that acted as if they had a passion for journalism and newspapering let everybody down. How? By selling at the first hint of industry trouble. They gladly got rid of their newspapers and presses and buildings pretty much as soon as possible. They didn't assess to whom they were selling and how their newspapers would be devastated. The fatcat family owned newspaper publishers did indeed let down an entire industry. What they did was make sure they sold while they could still assure their grandkids of never having to work for a living. Good for them. Smart move. However, these fatcat families who in many cases pretended to be bastions of Journalism and their communities should be shamed forever. For in their greed, they wrecked the entire industry and should be called out for it.

My old paper was the flagship in a family-owned regional chain. They owned about a dozen papers and magazines in a couple of states.
You'll notice I used owned as in past tense.
These people were the classic American tale: grandma got the business up and running; daddy made it into giant for its size; the kids drove it in the ground and eventually had to sell.
The kids (I say kids, but these people are in their 60s-70s) couldn't run a successful lemonade stand in the desert.

I worked for a family-owned newspaper out in the Midwest in the early 90s, since sold. I don't know if this is the pattern elsewhere but said family also owned a ton of real estate in and around this smallish city.

The paper was originally an investment in the town, creating a sense of community, which in turn up bumped the value of their holdings. The current generation then took a hands-off approach to editorial but I was told that great-grandpa also used it as a political cudgel in his day. So, along with the fact that the kids wanted to cash out, you had two more reasons for owning a paper that were no longer valid.

 

[LanceyHoward]

I worked for a family-owned newspaper out in the Midwest in the early 90s, since sold. I don't know if this is the pattern elsewhere but said family also owned a ton of real estate in and around this smallish city.

The paper was originally an investment in the town, creating a sense of community, which in turn up bumped the value of their holdings. The current generation then took a hands-off approach to editorial but I was told that great-grandpa also used it as a political cudgel in his day. So, along with the fact that the kids wanted to cash out, you had two more reasons for owning a paper that were no longer valid.

The attempt to produce a balanced editorial stance was a product of monopoly journalism. As the industry moved to a model where there was only one publisher (perhaps printing both a morning and afternoon paper) there was a tendency to try to produce a balanced product. In the late 1800's papers would try to reach either the Republican or Democratic niche. Papers that tried to produce a balanced content often found out they appealed to wither market.

The business genius of Fox News is that Murdoch that in a 100 channel world there is a heck of a lot of money to be made by hitting a niche, in this case elderly conservative males.

 

[britwrit]

Oh, I was talking about more on a local level. Favorable stores about Councilman Smith - who wasn't averse to helping out the publisher's other local interests, Crickets about candidate Jones, who was. Etc. etc.