{"id":1877,"date":"2009-01-08T11:42:48","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T19:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=1877"},"modified":"2009-01-08T11:42:48","modified_gmt":"2009-01-08T19:42:48","slug":"thoughts-on-the-newspaper-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/08\/thoughts-on-the-newspaper-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on the newspaper industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Atlantic’s Michael Hirschorn, January\/February 2009<\/a>: <\/p>\n

But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business\u2014like, this May?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400 million in debt. With more than $1 billion in debt already on the books, only $46 million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company\u2019s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper\u2019s future doesn\u2019t look good.<\/i> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, January 7 2009<\/a>: <\/p>\n

The good news is we could purchase [a newspaper]. We have the cash. But I don’t think our purchasing a newspaper would solve the business problems. It would help solidify the ownership structure, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem in the business. Until we can answer that question we’re in this uncomfortable conversation.<\/p>\n

I think the solution is tighter integration. In other words, we can do this without making an acquisition. The term I’ve been using is ‘merge without merging.’ The Web allows you to do that, where you can get the Web systems of both organizations fairly well integrated, and you don’t have to do it on exclusive basis.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Atlantic’s Michael Hirschorn, January\/February 2009: But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business\u2014like, this May? It\u2019s certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400 million in debt. With…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-media","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-uh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}