Sam Zell plan to make newspapers profitable
Bob Morris @ Jun 8th 2008 22:30 - Category: Unfiled
Turn them into spam. Have a 50-50 split between news and advertising. That’s what Zell envisions as the way to make money - getting rid of all that pesky news and those bothersome reporters and instead have more “maps, graphics, lists, ranking and stats”.
But why would advertisers want to advertise in newspapers with dumbed-down content filled with other advertisements? Sounds like he’s reinventing the throw-away neighborhood shopping “newspaper,” with content cut-and-pasted from press releses, and filled with ads.
But those are free. His newspapers aren’t.
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DJ on 09 Jun 2008 at 6:21 am #
“getting rid of all that pesky news and those bothersome reporters and instead have more “maps, graphics, lists, ranking and statsâ€.”
That’s exactly what they said about USA Tiday when it debuted. Harvard Lampoon even satired it. USA Today is still going strong (and most Americans can’t find Iraq on a map).
Bob Morris on 09 Jun 2008 at 11:32 am #
Most of USA Today circulation is the copies distributed in hotels and thus “free.”
Besides, why read LA Times that looks like USA Today when you can read USA Today instead?
DJ on 10 Jun 2008 at 7:54 am #
Well, if they took out all the Big Words (like Ghaddafi, Afghanistan, and Azerbaijan)…
Bob Morris on 10 Jun 2008 at 8:22 am #
We look forward to the “new” LA Times with “Britney Watch” on the front page and nothing about those odd countries with confusing names.