According to the financial website MarketWatch, shares of Gannett Company, the country’s largest newspaper publisher, declined as much as 11 percent yesterday following reports that the signs of the big 2010 economy recovery that many observers had been anticipating were greatly exaggerated. Among the “many observers” that had been anticipating that turnaround were writers at — drum roll — Gannett newspapers.
Another major newspaper company that is also feeling the heat is the New York Times Company, which suffered a 3.3 percent drop in share price yesterday. Like Gannett, the Times predicted that the economy would turn around on cue if Barack Obama were elected. And, like Gannett, the Times participated in the see-nothing, hear-nothing, say-nothing coverage of Obama during his candidacy, giving no space to the Reverend Wright controversy or any of the embarrassments the administration has endured during its first year.
The tough times at the Times is nothing new. Last October, the paper cut jobs in its newsroom by 8 percent. This represented the second cut of that magnitude in two years. During the same two-year period, even deeper cuts were made in other, non-newsroom departments, where layoffs occurred several times.
One might argue that these are bad times for the news industry and that everyone is feeling the pinch. But that argument would not be valid. One media corporation had an increase in the price per share of its stock yesterday. In fact its stock value has risen by 36 percent since last March. The operation in question is News Corporation, owner of FOX News.
Is it a mere coincidence that NewsCorp is feeling its oats while its MSM competition is hurting? Or is it related to a difference in M.O.? To answer this question, it is instructive to examine the Times’ and FOX’s coverage of a single story. For a test case, let’s focus on the recent legal difficulties of reporter James O’Keefe.
Some background is essential. Last summer, O’Keefe made headlines — or at least should have — by visiting branch offices of the national “voter aid” organization ACORN, posing as a party interested in starting up a brothel that would sell the services of underage women. The exchanges, which were captured on videotape, were quite damning in some instances. FOX News did due diligence on the story. Some might argue that they went overboard in their coverage.
How did the Times treat the story? They didn’t. ACORN’s remarkable ethical and moral misconduct, as captured on the tapes, received not one word of commentary or reportage — nothing, nada, zilch.
At least such was the case until O’Keefe was charged last week with plotting to tamper with the telephone system in the New Orleans office of Senator Mary Landrieu. The Times ran a 1,000-word article on the story. By way of context not previously provided, the Times described O’Keefe as a “political activist” who “gained renown in conservative circles by poking fun at the left through pranks and undercover video.” Poking fun at the left? Prank? Imagine for a moment that O’Keefe had been a liberal and the organization he targeted in his sting videos was the NRA. Not only would the Times have covered every juicy morsel of the story, but its writers would have commended O’Keefe for his tireless and hard-hitting journalistic efforts. The paper would have followed up with no fewer than half dozen editorials demanding that the government investigate this organization. It is highly doubtful that the Times would have described O’Keefe’s videos as “poking fun at the right” or as “pranks.”
That is why the Times is hurting and will continue to do so. It also why FOX News is flourishing and will continue to do so.
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Comments 19
FOX may have cornered the market for popular dissatisfaction with the MSM. Let’s see if that turns out to be a zero-sum game. Will lots of little FOXes show profits and expand the overall sector?
I can think of at least one high quality conservative magazine that has been in a figurative bear market for decades.
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:47 am
@ Seth Halpern:
So name names, shipmate. I think virtually all high quality conservative magazines operate perpetually in the red. Did you have a particular one in mind?
HP’s basic point is a very good one. There seems to be a correlation between the willingness to cover things like the O’Keefe story honestly, and financial success as a media corporation.
I’m in the sad position of wishing that the old forms could be perpetuated with fresh perspective. I love me a good Sunday paper, but these days it’s a form of enjoyment that’s more marvelous in theory than in reality. The LA Times is just so over the top in its left-ness. It’s no fun! Why would I spend good money on something I won’t enjoy? The local rag, meanwhile, is pretty thin, if more moderate and less annoying.
But it’s a sorry thing to have no reason to take a Sunday paper. I’d spend the money if there were anything to buy.
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:32 pm
@JED: You of all ZC contributors should be able to guess to whom I was referring. I remember when their circulation was, surely, at least double its present one. And in those days of course they had no blog, with or without comments.
Nobody wishes more than I do that there were credible, honest working alternatives to Shep, Sean, Bill, Greta and Glenn, peace be upon each and every one of them. I could use the occasional break, even if I risked seeing naked liberals and missing my favorite eskimo pie.
What is this “Sunday paper” of which you speak so wistfully?
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:39 pm
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:44 pm
In fairness, I’m pretty sure they used to give COMMENTARY away with American Jewish Committee memberships. On the other hand, that’s the main reason I renewed.
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:46 am
Aw, c’mon! These are just a bunch of kids! This is just a harmless prank! You know what they say, don’cha? Boys will be boys!
No doubt about it. It’ll be amusing to watch the right wing media trying to spin this latest debacle. Yesterday O’Keefe was the newest Fascist poster boy. Today he is a man looking at a nice stint in federal prison. The Republicans are once again experiencing the kind of OOPS moment for which they have become famous for in recent years. It really is quite touching when you think about it.
What I love more than anything is the “harmless school boy prank” angle that the right wing is trying to spin! I did a little bit of research, folks. Little Jimmy O’Keefe is almost two years older than Lee Harvey Oswald was when he assassinated President Kennedy. So much for that argument – you would think.
Is this merely the tip of a nasty iceberg? Will O’Keefe “cooperate” with federal investigators in order to reduce his sentence? Are there bigger fish that are due some serious frying?
To be continued….
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:47 am
@ Tom Degan:
“two years older than Lee Harvey Oswald was when he assassinated President Kennedy”
Perhaps in addition to age we should check to see whether O’Keefe is a communist like Oswald, or a Muslim like Sirhan Sirhan or a confessed terrorist like Bill Ayers, if we’re looking for points of similarity and non-contentious examplars with whom to make comparisons.
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:55 am
Thrown in John Hinckley who supposedly had Iranian ties, and Bremer, the Wallace shooter, that’s a nice “Godwin’s law violation’ so early in the day, Tom
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:06 am
When fascist fish are frying
Sure tis like Lee Harvey Oswald
When fascist fish are frying
Sure tis like Sirhan Sirhan
It’s the tip of a nasty iceberg
It’s another famous oops moment
Sure when fascist fish are frying
We’ll all go to federal prison!
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:26 am
@ Seth Halpern:
Well, that’s what I figured. But I don’t know of any conservative opinion mag that turns a profit. Magazines in general tend to be ornery that way, what with writers and utility companies demanding to be paid constantly. There are very few individual magazines that pay for themselves handsomely — People, Sports Illustrated; the list isn’t much longer than that.
None of that is to be mealy-mouthed about the circulation of Commentary (or other conservative mags). But Left-wing mags are awash in red ink too, always have been, and any magazine whose circulation is declining is in the company of Time and Newsweek, the New Yorker, the Economist, and a laundry list of flagship publications.
Something I’d be curious to know is how many people under 40 today have home subscriptions to opinion magazines. I grew up in a household with such subscriptions, which my parents had in their early 30s if not sooner; and it has always seemed normal and necessary to me to have them. But I wonder if that’s particularly unusual nowadays, and if the great majority of home subscriptions aren’t for the older demographic.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:35 am
@ CK MacLeod:
Hey, stick to your Pictish dialect, Highland Brute. Leave the Hibernian flourishes to them as has the heritage for it.
(Just kidding. Perhaps ZC needs a new feature category: Doggerel for the Ages. Believe you have just perpetrated same. Fascist fish frying makes one heck of a visual.)
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:39 am
@ CK MacLeod:
She shouldn’t have been kidding. That smelled badly enough that you should be made to publicly sing it.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:53 am
@ CK MacLeod:
When “fascist” fish are frying,
Liberals see Oswald’s ten ring,
In the lilt of “fascist” laughter,
Liberals hear that Sirhan sing.
When “fascist” hearts are happy,
Liberals act all bright and fey,
As they’re sense all goes away,
They forget the facts of Sirhan,
And the bed where Oswald lay.
For when Liberal eyes are smiling,
Sure their brains gang aft aglay.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:05 am
@ J.E. Dyer:
The fact that the mags continue to operate indicates that they’re not really operating in the red – only that their income is not restricted to “ads, subscriptions, sales.” A donor base or endowments are just part of the real as opposed to the ideal business model for such enterprises. When they pay taxes the dollars they take in as gifts count, too.
When you consider how much free or virtually free content is available these days on the internet and for that matter on talk radio and TV, as compared even to 20 years ago, it would be strange if the model didn’t have to undergo fundamental changes.
Someday, someone will come up with a better way than firewalling the premium content to monetize such ventures, but it might take some collusion. Some of the music vendors may be pointing the way – some services, like LaLa above (and another that happened to have a knockout arrangement of “Sunday Papers” on offer, but no sharing opportunity), has things set up so you can listen to most of the song for free, but on additional tries you get only 30 seconds, at which point the $.99 download fee starts looking a lot more attractive. If the Corner, The Weekly Standard, Contentions, and a few others all implemented some similar technology – i.e., free for the first read, some micro-fee-per-click-per-day or some such beyond that, or some “honor system” donation method – I wonder how much it would affect their traffic.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:05 am
@ Sully:
You better apologize to Robert Burns right now – tho the virtual Scotch-Irish conjunction at the end is sublimely dreadful.
@ fuster:
Thank you.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:10 am
@ CK MacLeod:
NR is quite open, and always has been, with its subscribers about the need for contributions as part of the revenue stream. I’ve never subscribed to Commentary; but I assume they do something like the same.
The newspapers are probably being undone by their inability to control their unionized cost structure as much as by their loss of readership. Also, they got very spoiled by their local market monopolies on local advertising. I used mostly newspaper employment advertising for the last thirty years before the net disrupted the market. The pricing of employment ads by The Philadelphia Inquirer was the very model of monopolistic revenue maximization even as their editorial page decried monopolies and oligopolies with far less pricing power than they themselves enjoyed. The rise of internet job boards cut my advertising cost per hire by about 90%.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:23 am
@ CK MacLeod:
I threw a little Burns in at the end in recognition of the inspiration you provided.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:26 am
throw Burns into everything and throw everything into burns.
that’s all ye know.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:31 am
@ Sully:
And here I thought it was a gentle poke at my Arsh Complaint.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:36 am