More evidence of woe from newspaper land in the USA. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is for sale after losing $14 million last year. Hearst Corporation has said it will stop printing the newspaper and make it a low cost online outfit if no buyer is found within 60 days. The Bloomberg’s story is here.
In Australia, plenty of journos are wondering how far behind the USA we are. Newspaper circulations have held up comparatively well in this country so far, but the business model is nevertheless broken. For diversified media companies like Fairfax or News Limited, the newspapers are responsible for a big percentage of the costs, and a much smaller percentage of revenue. That’s okay if you have an engaged and committed proprietor who cares about newspapers and journalism. It is not sustainable if , like Fairfax, you are owned by banks and institutional investors.
How long before the crunch comes here?
There are people in Melbourne who would be interested in buying The Age, largely because they care about the journalism, and Melbourne is that kind of town. Does the Sydney Morning Herald have the same kind of loyalty? What do people think?
3 Comments
Goodness. Margaret knows people who want to buy a broken business model. In Melbourne. But not in Sydney. Or is this merely a fantasy? Margaret wants to run a newspaper, but no one will let her. So she dreams of broken business models. And Medici figures who love Melbourne journalism. (Watch out for those Borgias, Marg!) Gee whiz. An alert Marg: your spell check is broke. Best fix that before you embark on this grand quest. By the way, I have a few other broken businesses I’d like to flog. Do they have to be in Melbourne?
Dewey, I don’t want to run a newspaper. But believe me, there are people in Melbourne who are talking about what they might do with The Age should it come on the market. Only talking, so far, but they do exist. Thanks for the tip on spell check. If WordPress has a spell check, I haven’t found it yet. I will take more care.
I have fantasied about this for years, with the Guardian in the UK as my model. I think it is run by a Board of Trustees, committed to serious journalism.
Could we look into that model and determine whether it could be imitated??
I would imagine that it would be more likely to happen if the Age and SMH were partners in the venture, sharing costs and risks.
How does one set about measuring the level of support in the two cities?
2 Trackbacks