Saturday, August 03, 2013

Oh please do write another editorial about economic stewardship

Reuters: "New York Times sells Boston Globe to Red Sox owner."  "The price is less than a tenth of what the New York Times paid for the Boston Globe when it bought the paper for $1.1 billion in 1993."

3 comments:

The Old Gray Cat Food-Eating Lady said...

To be fair, if you can name a media business that properly grasped the future market impact of the internet in the year 1993, you'd be the first to do so.

However, the Times turned down a $300 million offer for the Globe just two years ago, which would have included the assumption of pension liabilities. Today they've collected just $70 million for the newspaper only, and they're still stuck holding the pension costs.

The numbers aren't quite that cut and dried: the $70 million is an all-cash deal and the $300 million wasn't. But there's no way the Times didn't blow substantial money on that delay.

Fun Fact: Red Sox owner John Henry just bought the Boston Globe for $12 million less than he's paying John Lackey the pitcher.

Anonymous said...

The Times' circulation is up 18% in 2013, and the Wall Street Journal is up 12%. That's mostly due to digital subscriptions. They're the only major newspapers in the country to go up during the past year, other than... (drum roll) ...the Boston Globe.

Those little dotted photo drawings cost $475,000 apiece said...

The Wall Street Journal has an even greater focus on the economy and business than the New York Times, and the Journal is losing money by the bucket. News Corp. publishing losses almost tripled in the first quarter of the current fiscal year.

Failures on the left, failures on the right. It seems the only people who are qualified to offer economic stewardship editorials are the porn sites.