Slashdot Mirror
New York Times Sells Boston Globe At 93% Loss
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times announced this morning that it has sold the Boston Globe newspaper and related assets, including the Boston.com website and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette daily paper, to John Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox. The price was $70 million in cash, a small fraction of the $1.1 billion the Times paid to acquire the Globe in 1993, and does not include assumption of the Globe's pension liabilities, estimated at $110 million, which will remain with the Times. Since then the paper's weekday circulation has fallen from 507,000 to 246,000 (including digital), mirroring the declining fortunes of many other daily newspapers across the country. Henry, who also owns the Liverpool FC and various other sports- and media- related properties, made his fortune in the investment industry; however, his hedge fund company recently closed after several years of poor performance."
Actual losses may be significantly different, since obviously the paper has been operating for the past decade, and the purchase price wasn't some static figure.
Seriously. What information do they have that is at all useful? In the old days we had muckrakers telling us all the awful things our politicians were doing. These days since they're all owned by big corps they don't want to step on any toes. After all, you won't last long if you say bad things about the boss. It feels like all they have left is sports news I can get from the source, some 30 year old comics and classifieds full of H1-B bait :(.
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It's pretty easy to understand why a company would retain the retirement/pension plans. The holder will simply declare bankruptcy and fight to owe nothing on them. It's the "American Way" these days. There needs to be an immediate lawsuit to take all money from the primary sale and put it to the debt, and the primary debt is the workers/pensions.
I'm definitely a right-to-work person in high tech, but, if you let somebody work for 30+ years and tell them that they are promised $$ at the end, you better back it up. Letting somebody buy you and take all the assets and then just raising your hands like "There's nothing left", that's theft.
When your entire news slant is to the extreme left you tend to alienate anyone who is on the right, anyone who is centrist or moderate, and anyone who is center-left. You end up with an audience that is composed of one single viewpoint politically. An extreme viewpoint at that. The NYTimes, another extreme left paper, had control over the Globe and ran it into the ground. Everyone saw this coming.
Of course you're looking at a 93% loss of value. You're only talking to less than 10% of the population. What was once a newspaper that examined all of society with a fair eye it now only caters to a small minority of zealots. There was no investigative journalism at all. No honesty or insight to anyone with a (D) next to their name. Just nonstop bias and pandering to a single narrow viewpoint. Of course you're dooming your paper to obscurity.
I know that bashing Fox News is a popular opinion. But of the mainstream papers, websites, and news TV stations, it's actually rather moderate. The panels and editorials are filled with a strong selection of liberals, conservatives, and moderates. And the ratings reflect that because Fox News national brings in the viewers. You're just as likely to find a liberal view on a panel segment as you are a conservative one. And the conservative commentators don't hide their bias. Whereas the Boston Globe would pretend that it was 'progressive' and refuse to at all accept the reality that it was practically a propaganda newspaper for liberal Democratic operatives. Fox News gets its ratings because there are enough liberals and moderates to attract a broad audience.
They can blame it on the internet. On the economy. On low advertising revenue. But a newspaper is supposed to objectively report the news. And stand as the Fourth Estate against political corruption. They are not supposed to maintain the political status quo and effectively serve as a PR firm for politicians. The Globe was failure all over.
Ultimately this is a win for John Henry. He'll spend $75 million on a busted arm for a pitcher that gives him no return for the Red Sox. But $70 million is almost worth it alone for some of the Boston Globe's web domains that it owns. Now John Henry (who is a major Democratic Party donator, in the millions) has a liberal PR institution to output his views. He has the ability to shut down all negative conversation about the Red Sox from current Globe employees. And he can use the Globe and Boston.com to heavily market Red Sox tickets and jerseys. This will pay for itself within a few years with the boost to Red Sox branding.
Look at who is buying newspapers now. Extreme right and left wing political donators. As if newspapers aren't PR machines for the politicians enough. Now they are literally being run by GOP and DNC donors.
I don't know who that man is, but he can't possibly be John Henry! Everybody knows that John Henry was a steel-driving man!
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because quality journalism isn't free.....
and no, blogs don't count as journalism.
I am not going to argue the word journalism(or the word quality), but blogs not only are news they are more informative news. I stopped buying magazines, because their content unlike blogs...are old, second hand, opinion pieces.
their site is home to the Big Picture, a blog with photographs from around the world regarding various events, celebrations etc..it gets updated with a new entry every couple of days, totally worth the time if you have an interest in photography
I have not RTFA because with slashdot summary as written, I'm wondering why this is "news for nerds". Is there something about the Boston Globe that is of inherent interest to science, technology, or other things that have been the usual fare here? I don't mind reading about stuff that belongs in the business/economy section of a news portal. But I didn't expect that Slashdot would be morphing into one.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
If your business model is anything other than "align with a particular political group and only sell to them", then keep your business (and your investor's money) FAR away from politics.
It simply makes no business sense to intentionally piss-off half of your potential customer base by shouting in their face "I HATE YOU, YOU HATERS!" and "YOU BIGOTS ALL LOOK THE SAME TO ME! DIE ALL YOU MIDDLE CLASS WHITE PEOPLE!". It's not just that having a vile attitude toward your potential customers makes them shop elsewhere, it's also that they begin to see, via your own words, that you lack any ability for self-examination, self-criticism, and self-correction.... in short they begin to see you as not just an obnoxious jerk but also as supremely stupid. The biggest and most-successful companies know this which is why they generally avoid public dives into partisan politics. It's a good line for all businesses to toe
Most of America's big media companies, however, are run by left-wing people who live in the bubbles of big left-leaning cities and therefore have a very warped view of the country to such an extreme that they do not even know how biased they are (i.e. there is no media conspiracy... there's just group-think) so they seem incapable of understanding why they are failing. When Murdoch started Fox News and put Roger Ailes in charge, they had a simple business model: Be the only media company in the US that would embrace the half of the country to which the rest of the media companies were growing actively hostile (leaving all the other companies fighting each other for the half they liked). Fox News is NOT "Right Wing" so much as it is simply the only outlet that is not "Left Wing"... Fox provides benefits to gay partners of employees, healthcare benefits that cover various "family planning" options favored by the left, etc. Many Fox contributors are Democrats or "Establishment Republicans" and indeed a number of their media personalities and regular journalists have been hired from other, liberal, outlets. Fox's most-high-profile opinion guy, Bill O'Reilly is NOT a conservative... he often disagrees with conservatives on issues and is more like a 1970 Democrat. Hannity is certainly on the Right, but this one character is hardly sufficient to offset all the Left-Wingers on all the other media outlets. The real key to the success of Fox is simply that the other media companies became hostile to half of their customers.... and many of those customers were hungry for a vendor (in this case of news) who respects them and does not heap scorn and hatred onto them.
There's a good "Business 101" lesson in there...
That means if the newspaper had been sold at that price including its liabilities, the buyer should have received $40 million. Woah.
While I don't read the NYT (wrong side of the world) I have to point out that anyone calling a mainstream media outlook "extreme" is better off looking at where their own views lie instead of putting labels on something else.
I've heard a newspaper described as commie and fascist in the space of two minutes depending on who was doing the name calling. Your post reminds me of the utter losers doing the name calling and detracts from whatever worth you may have yourself so I just cannot take you seriously.
the Globe and other urban papers would actually practice the canons of journalism and be un-biased and objective, readers might return? (i know, there has never been such practice in the entire history of journalism in the U.S. - *all* papers have an editorial slant, despite what journ students are taught in college)
on the other hand, i always felt there was a niche for a metro daily that contained nothing but King Features Syndicate comic strips; i'd call the paper "The Toon Daily"
One thing I would like to see on paper web sites which would make me more likely to subscribe to their physical counterparts is a "suppress syndicated content" checkbox that would let me see how much actual journalism they themselves are engaged in, before I invite their paper in to clutter up my living room. I'll warn you right now, though, if that gets rid of 95% of your content, you aren't going to darken my door.
I also already get enough coupons and advertising from the direct marketing association, so it'd be nice if they didn't put ads everywhere in the paper copy of the newspaper, since the postman already brings me all the coupons and local advertising I could ever want to recycle. One of the most annoying things the San Mateo Times does periodically is "give you" a "free" copy of their Wednesday or Sunday "supertacular advertising issue" so they can claim high circulation numbers, right before the end of the circulation reporting cycle. 600 pages of crap and 20 pages of content, and 80% of those are Reuters, UPI, or AP stories.
Finally, I think color is vastly overrated; save it for "fashion week" or other special purpose spreads that get delivered in special sections, and the Sunday comics. I don't get where everyone believes the way to sell physical papers is to look as much like "USA Today" as it's possible to look, without actually putting "USA Today" on the banner. Maybe they get a higher per unit marginal profit or something, like when you go to a restaurant, and they serve you 3X the food you should be eating so they can jack up the price, and the marginal profit per hour, to maximize their profit relative to their flooring costs...
the Huffington Post of the Geek set
You are, basically, saying that the New York Times is poorly managed.
It seems to me that newspapers are losing money because of poor management, not only because of loss of advertising to the internet.
To me, the New York Times seems like it is managed by people who don't have much understanding of the technical or sociological issues.
After saying how much they respected and admired the Globe, the New York Times made it clear that they regarded Boston as the sticks and just wanted to milk the cash cow.
I was a subscriber for decades and might still be if they had basically not driven me away.
They gradually cut out all my favorite columnists and started to use wire services for national stories they would once have covered themselves.
Royal Ford, their auto writer, always talked about things like how the tested car did during a snowy ski trip to New Hampshire. So one day I open the paper to find that he's been replaced by a syndicated column written by someone in California.
The last straw was billing. They screwed up the billing. We were on quarterly billing, and when the New York Times took over, we continued to receive quarterly bills--but EVERY bill we got was accompanied with a 90-day late notice and threats to send it to collection.
We got that straightened out--went to automatic monthly payments by credit card--and THEN someone at the Globe decided it would be cool to wrap all of their newspaper bundles in computer printouts of customer credit card information.
My wife says to me, "Well, I hate the work of mailing a check every month, but should we do that?" And I say "Honey, didn't you read the rest of the story? They wrapped the Globe in credit card printouts, but they were wrapping the Worcester Telegram in customer checking account information printouts!
What can you say to a company that does a thing like that? Except "goodbye."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Doesn't matter. The NEW method for running taken over papers is; pile in more local stories, purchase the most lurid news service stories, make half or more of the print ads, ride till the profits disappear, then sell off the assets and bury it 6 ft. under.
Silly rabbit, everyone gets their news off the internet now anyway.
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The statement that they sold it at a 93% loss is misleading. What they did do is sell it for 100% of what is was marketable at the time, and for 7% more (absolute w.r.t. original purchase price) than nothing. The "loss" is only relevant for learning for the next purchase decision as it's sunken cost.
I really don't get the summary bias. The real story here is how little it cost someone to bury a story. And they don't even have to pay pension costs.
They can't make a profit delivering the paper to you without advertising, so what you're really saying is "I don't want a physical paper". Which is cool, neither do I. But it doesn't take three paragraphs to say it.
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I know that bashing Fox News is a popular opinion. But of the mainstream papers, websites, and news TV stations, it's actually rather moderate.
"Moderate"? Compared to what? There is almost endless evidence that Fox News intentionally presents a staunchly conservative viewpoint and they have an audience to match. It's not even a meaningful debate at this point.
You're just as likely to find a liberal view on a panel segment as you are a conservative one.
Just because they invite some token liberals on to some of the shows doesn't mean their coverage is remotely balanced. Fox News is basically a mouthpiece for the republican party. Name one talking head (ala Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow) on Fox News who is a clear liberal. Go ahead, I'll wait...
Fox News gets its ratings because there are enough liberals and moderates to attract a broad audience.
The audience of Fox News contains a minority of moderates and VERY few liberals. 94% of Fox News viewers self identify as republican or republican leaning. In what universe is that a "broad audience"?
Look at who is buying newspapers now. Extreme right and left wing political donators.
Really? Warren Buffet is an "extreme" political donator?
FOX, CNN, and MSNBC all cover the exact same topics.
True but not actually the important point. The viewpoint about those topics matters.
You really dont seem to get that this is theater that we are looking at. The exact same topics covered by all three.
What you don't seem to get is that you can cover the same topics with different biases and that the biases matter. Fox News demonstrably has a conservative bias and they "interpret" facts (when they aren't just making shit up) accordingly. Just because they cover the same topic doesn't mean they are presenting the same position or that they have any intention of presenting an unbiased viewpoint. Of course it is theater but unfortunately some people don't realize that and actually are dumb enough to think Fox is not presenting a biased viewpoint. Something north of 90% of Fox News' audience self identifies as republican or republican leaning. Do you seriously think that would be possible if they were presenting an unbiased viewpoint and were just reporting the facts?
large well known media outlets are useful to corporations as propaganda outlets. This revenue is not reported, I believe
If I'm a NYTs stockholder and I learned they turned down $300 million only to take $100 million and a shitty deal, I'd be thinking lawsuit.
They knew the value was declining both through the falling subscriptions and the fact that a billion dollar investment could only garner a $300 million offer back then. From there it could only get worse.
They should have sold to the highest bidder, politics be damned.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Fox News demonstrably has a conservative bias and they "interpret" facts (when they aren't just making shit up) accordingly.
You dont actually seem to be saying anything. If you had a valid argument you would be showing that CNN and MSNBC werent biased.
We both know that you cannot do that.
So what are you doing here? You are showing us your own bias. You don't seem to mind at all that CNN and MSNBC are biased because apparently its the right kind of bias in your book.
Thanks for being exactly what you accuse your "enemies" of.
"His name was James Damore."
Just over 100 years ago, the Taylor family owned both the Globe and the Red Sox.
There is some concern that as a public company, the NYT Co. didn't sell to the highest bidder but one can speculate that is due to the conservative views held by the owners of the San Diego Union-Tribune. John Henry is not only a donor to liberal causes, but also has had a business relationship with the NYT Co. via their former minority ownership of the Red Sox.
because people love sports and will gladly pay. As soon as you try to get them to pay for gov't and corporate oversight the corps move in with billions and scare the hell out of everyone.
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The interesting thing is that to get the news off the internet, someone has to do the actual reporting. 90 percent of the 'news' on the internet is reporting someone else's story. I guess ultimately we'll be down to one service that provides actual reporting and everyone else with subscribe to it to do their 'reporting'.
My local newspaper are nothing more than right wing, copyright trolls , who's stories SUCK and wouldn't know true journalism if bit them in the ass. In fact they failed to accommodate their business model for the internet so horribly that their only hope of long-term survival is to sue anyone out of existence who violates their precious "copyright" . No one pays four journalism anyone. In fact, no one has a vested interest in honest reporting or uncovering the truth, as truth can ruin careers and make important corrupt people look bad.
Your days and fantasies of dick tracey, and the common good journalist of the likes of clark kent are longgg gone. However there is hope.
I suggest following alternative media - those who can talk about things that either 1. don't care about losing their careers. or 2. they can come out because their function/duty is over in a particular part of civic society. These are the new journalists of the 21st century. These people ask the tough questions etc. Luke Rodowski from we got change is a start if you would like to know what true journalism is, and was meant to be.
I like I like my news like this anyways
Liberal viewpoints these days are all about how the "rich people" should pay for you to live your life.
Those days are over, leech. Get over it.
Boston continues to struggle with smart vs. stupid. The fact that the standard newspaper is being sold to the Red Sox only means more propaganda for overpriced seats in the most traffic choked area in the state. Boston is disgusting, poorly designed, incompetent, and hateful mess. I've lived here for 11 years. Nobody has a good grasp on being practical, but there are certainly strokes of genius, most of which involve compensating for archaic and myopic institutions. Just think of this as another nail in the coffin. Anytime something changes in Boston it's never for the better. Give me an example if you can think of one!
and for the most part they are ignorant and boring
I see a lot of people talking about local investigative journalism--or at least reporting.
To be fair many of you may not know the local Boston market, there are two papers: Boston Globe, and Boston Herald. Globe is the corporate-faced paper (up 'til now) owned by national media conglomerates. Herald is considered more local these days. Generally the Herald is the paper you read when you want to hear about all the dirty BS the local government is dishing, although they can be too conservative and preachy at times for my taste.
They can't make a profit delivering the paper to you without advertising, so what you're really saying is "I don't want a physical paper". Which is cool, neither do I. But it doesn't take three paragraphs to say it.
I would maintain that this is the USPS argument, where they claim bulk mail subsidizes things, but were they to raise the unit price for bulk mail one cent, their operating profit would be about as big as their current operating loss. You may recognize the Internet 1.0 "operate at a loss, and make up for it in volume!" business plan here.
But fine, let's accept your claim for the sake of argument ... crack open the books on a couple of failed newspapers.
Let's see the balance sheets ourselves with regard to color printing costs, amount subsidized by advertising, and so on. Let some academic researchers do some forensic accounting on say 5 failed newspapers. It'd be a great learning experience for people in accounting and business programs in a couple of universities about "how not to run a cash flow business", and at the same time, we'd get some honest numbers about what level of content is actually sustainable. At the very least, it'd be interesting to see how much blood the wire services suck out of these papers, and whether that has anything to do with their tipping into non-profitability.
HA
When Clinton delivered his speech to the UN, and got a standing ovation, did CNN show this?
Fuck no.
They completely ignored it, instead showing more Ken Starr hearings.
CNN was only biased towards ratings, and could give a fuck about Clinton or what he actually did right.
Newspapers are what you use with a charcoal starter canister. The charcoal starter is what you use when you don't want to use starter fluid. You can use bleached paper but it leaves a nasty flavor on your food. Newsprint is the best.
I've been weighing the thought of an open source news service. It may not be the most technically abled, but, I think the accuracy increases and the agendas decrease.
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