The Phoenix Principle on the cluelessness of newspapers
Just as I predicted in this blog months ago, when Sam Zell leveraged up Tribune in his buyout, the odds of any particular newspaper surviving is not very good. It was 3 years ago when I was talking to the CFO at the LATimes about the future of newspapers. He felt sure that cost cutting would get the company through “a tough stretch” and then things would get better. When I asked him if he was planning to increase spending in LATimes.com or other on-line media to make sure his projection was true – he asked me what the .com had to do with the paper.
The CFO was confused about what L.A. Times business is, thinking it was printing a newspaper rather than what is really is, supplying news. Big mistake. One repeated by many, many newspapers.
I don’t subscribe to newspapers any more. Do you? All the news is on the Net as it happens 24/7. Why wait for a paper to land on the doorstep.