For the newspaper business, it suddenly feels like September, when huge chunks of the financial services industry collapsed after many months of teetering on the brink.
Since this morning, bankruptcy for Tribune Co. has moved from theory to reality. The New York Times Co. is borrowing against the ill-timed monument the Sulzbergers built to themselves several years ago.
And a post I wrote this morning already seems out of date.
You have the sense right now that anything is possible. Anything bad, that is.
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Old Weekly Retired Publisher
Thankfully, there is still true journalism in Massachusetts and Boston and lets hope someone can make this work into the future – maybe the Purcell, Murdoch and Kennedy team.Just at a time when there are so many financial constraints we see pigs like the House Speaker who uses campaign funds to propel himself to Boston in an expensive SUV, and a mayor who wants to be a parasite to the sick and those attempting to obtain a college education by taxing the non-profits. Instead of using a brain to be innovative he’d rather take the lazy route and just suck more from the crisis of health care costs and cost of higher education. He already has all the education he will ever need, apparently. Every day we can be thankful for The Herald for exposing this continual absurdity of greed and lack of innovation.
mike_b1
A lot of nonprofits are shams and should be taxed into extinction. The bar for being a nonprofit should be much higher than it is, and the restrictions on what they can and cannot do much tighter.
Peter Porcupine
DK – it’s the Apocalypse! I agree with Mike!The Gordian Knot that needs cutting is the on-line payment conundrum. Classifed, meet Craig’s List. Help Wanted, meet Monster. Had Gvo. Patrick’s Municipal Relief Act passed, it contained a provision that bid postings and legal notices for municipalities could claim publication if they are on a town’s web site! THAT would be a mortal blow!I will miss the smell of newsprint on my fingers when the last newspaper is gone…the old Record, with greasy ink…
Christian Avard:
While greed and laziness is coming back to nip newspaper owners in the but, you gotta wonder where newspapers themselves are to blame. Readership has been plummeting with newspapers across the board and you gotta wonder if lack of innovation had anything to do with it. IMO, people want to see more investigative reporting and not so much human interest stories, upcoming events, and other similar stories. The Internet may also have something to do with it as well. I may be wrong. But I definitely think newspapers play a role in not meeting readers needs. Why else would readership go down?
Ron Newman
I don’t think readership is actually going down. But it’s moving to the Internet, where it doesn’t produce any revenue for the publisher.
Christian Avard:
By readership going down, I meant for print publications, especially daily newspapers and most weeklies.
Ron Newman
But people are reading the same publications as before — the NYTimes, the Globe, the Tribune, the LATimes, and so on. They’re just no longer reading them in a way that pays the bills.