Toluu

The Inksniffer

Give us some credit. How the newspaper industry is about to be disembowelled by the banking crisis.September 30

SUMMARY: The debt crisis is going to create a domino-like collapse of our industry in the next six months. Who will be the first to go? And who might emerge controlling the American newspaper business?
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I have a horrible feeling that this is the moment when the newspaper industry explodes.

It's not an implausible scenario. I'm not saying it's a certainty but it is no longer a silly abstract thing to talk about. It now seems sillier to imagine that it couldn't.

What does a collapse of the credit market mean for American companies? It means that a highly leveraged company with high debts secured against an asset that is small and/or diminishing in value and which is paying  steep interest rates on loans, has no prospect of getting out of them because they can't refinance.  It means that any business hoping to save itself by selling an asset for which the purchaser will have to pay with some form of financing is either going to fail to find a buyer or get a far lower price than they would have a year ago. It means that anyone who is holding a big cash pile right now will soon be able to buy any heavily indebted company they want for next to nothing.

So what do these facts have to do with newspapers?

"A highly leveraged company with high debts secured against an asset that is small and/or diminishing in value."
One word. McClatchy. The company restructured its debt last week a

If newspapers are dying why do they cost so much to buy?April 15

Being a big believer in the power of markets to expose the truths behind people's words, I thought I'd dig a little and work out how much it would cost me to buy a newspaper title from a group that really ought to sell it to me. That would be groups who believe that the future is digital in some way, who have no other synergistic newspapers in the same area and who could use the money. The New York Times and McClatchy have titles that fit into all those categories.

I also thought I'd pick two newspapers close to home, so I'd know whether there was a specific premium related to them being good newspapers. I chose the Bradenton Herald and the Sarasota Herald Tribune. Neither is particularly good, or outrageously troubled. The SH-T is dull and lifeless but that is hardly extraordinary. It is a lazy monopolist with few ideas and no feel for its community. Again, not outstanding in any way. If there was a prize for being mediocre and average, the SH-T would win so often that it would get to keep the trophy.

First a declaration of interests: I have done and am doing work for a rival newspaper in this area, the excellent Sarasota Observer, a weekly hyperlocal with a slightly lower weekly circulation to the SH-T's daily one and which recently attempted to launch in Bradenton (before my time working with them) and pulled out when real estate advertising went south.

A bit of desk research. I can't help loving the aggression of Gatehouse Media, who have

I hate to say I told you so. Why newspaper web advertising revenue is just as small as it ever wasMarch 31

Last week's numbers on online advertising revenue made grim reading, though some spinning might have left you thinking that things are going entirely to plan.

Web Newspaper Advertising Up 19 Percent as AP put it sounds like quite good news. The fact that online has increased its share of total revenues at newspapers by 31.5% (up from 5.7% to 7.5% of total revenue) isn't much to brag about. The scale of that rise reflects the decline in other revenues. The number is inconveniently close to what I predicted  the optimistic increase in ad revenue for newspapers would be back in July 2007. Back then though I was using it to show that online revenue in its entirety wouldn't even cover the cost of 50% of current staff by 2015. It's starting from such a low base that it just can't make up for the decline of print intime for any kind of orderly transformation. And here we are.

If you don't believe in newspapers then you just shrug and say that there isn't any choice. And if you could harness the shrugging going on in newspaper boardrooms right now for peaceful purposes you could power a nice new Goss Universal for a year.  If you don't believe it's possible to halt the decline of print sales, then you don't believe in any future for newspapers as we know them. You won't able to fund the original

On the other hand.... Maybe the 1c newspaper is a good thingMarch 24

In order to work in newspapers and believe in them you have to be an optimist. I am definitely an optimist. I can tell you how England will win the World Cup in 2010. And I am just waiting for an early-season excuse to believe that the Tampa Bay Rays might win the World Series this year.

But in examining the ABC's recent proposed changes I was instantly sure it was a bad thing.  The optimist in me has regained  control now though and I think that maybe it could have something to be said for it.

The first thing to be said for it is that at least it will be disruptive. Anything that disrupts newspapers from their current charge over the online cliff and makes them think about print circulation strategies is a good thing. In fact it strikes me that a smart newspaper could well use the change to reinvent the American newspaper and innovate in the sort of way that could bring us closer to what consumers actually want from print.

The biggest asset American newspapers have is their distribution networks. Journalists will try to point to quality content, but the value of that has diminished massively in the face of the online information revolution. There are plenty of other sources of local content now. But I can't think of any other local product capable of being manufactured and distributed to someone's door within an hour every single day. The salvation of newspapers will be found in that network.

Maybe the 1c paper finally opens the

Maybe less is more in the future of newspapers?March 21

I love a good list. Especially one from Ryan Sholin, my favorite online evangelist. His latest output explored the reasons why he reads newspapers now and how that should impact on what newspapers put online and what they should concede is now done better online by others.

A point he made but didn't explore was the ease of searching a newspaper if it happens to be in front of you. If I wanted to know a local movie time I would look in the newspaper first if it was right next to me, but I'd search the Muvico site if it wasn't. So Ryan's right, a newspaper is wasting its time putting movie times on their site for me. But actually so is the printed newspaper. I'm not going to subscribe to the newspaper on the off chance that maybe one day I'll need to know a movie time either. The newspaper used to be competing with the telephone (I could always ring up the cinema). Now it's competing with the web. It's not a fair fight.

Ryan doesn't explore what now does and doesn't work in print. Fair enough - I suspect his primary job is stopping newspapers just loading their newspaper online. But it raises an interesting question. What do I want in a newspaper? How do I read it now? And when?

That was a theme picked up by Gainesville's finest: Mindy McAdams (if Ryan is my favorite evangelist, Mindy is the digital Monsignor)