newspaper economics

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Wed May 11, 2005 12:39 pm

Here's a bitter view of Philadelphia's situation, where the afternoon tab is clinging to life in a hostile arrangement with the Inquirer.
This includes a look at Knight Ridder's history, a prologue to union contract talks, and the trend in annual profits.

I can't vouch for its accuracy.

http://philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=9452

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Wed May 11, 2005 1:11 pm

This is long and only for the most curious about the industry's finances. There won't be a test.

Baffled by the term "joint operating agreement," or JOA?
Baffled by what's going on between the papers in Seattle? By what went on in San Francisco in recent years?
Baffled by "media consolidation"?
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/119679_joaelsewhere29.html

A little background on one instance cited:

Joint operating agreements exist (in theory) to keep two papers alive when at least one is struggling financially. Savings are made by sharing expenses.

The a.m. Miami Herald and the p.m. Miami News entered into a joint operating agreement in the mid-1980s. The News was in trouble; The Herald was making a lot of money, but also spending heavily in an unsuccessful effort to gain circulation in Palm Beach County and to hold off the Fort Lauderdale (now South Florida) Sun-Sentinel.

The News eliminated its advertising department. The Herald staff was to sell ads for both papers.

However, that staff just didn't have much success at all selling ads for The News. Executives with Knight Ridder (owner of The Herald) and Cox (owner of The News) soon worked out a tidy deal: Knight Ridder would pay Cox to NOT publish The News. Payments began in 1988 and are to continue until 2021.

Could The News (and the jobs of people I knew) been saved? Likely not, given that region's highly competitive market and late-20th-century media economics.
Are JOAs always what they're claimed to be--for the long-term good of both papers? Likely not.

SuchASlot · **Joined:** Thu Oct 21, 2004 12:01 am **Posts:** 1189

On a related note, Iâ€™m reading Davis Merrittâ€™s book right now, and it really provides a lot of straightforward insight into all of this. (The book, â€œKnightfall,â€ is the one that Phillip excerpted in a post the other day and the one that Steve Volk briefly discusses in Wayneâ€™s initial link.)

It's also providing reinforcement to the idea that we can either choose to steadily increase our short-term profit margins (and eventually turn into some other, journalistically bankrupt form of publication â€” Merritt is more blunt: commit â€œsuicideâ€) or we can recommit to our ideals of honesty, accuracy and fairness in the name of public service (which, as I read Merritt, seems that it would involve not just the conversion of souls but a massive restructuring of basic corporate lines of communication). At the crux of this decision would be the question of whether we believe there is inherent, perhaps immeasurable value to society in the ongoing practice of journalism.

So, among other things, our uncertainty about the future of newspapers themselves, as threatened by other publishing formats like the Internet, could be only a distraction. The thing for which we should be most terrified is the future of honest journalism.

PunkOnce · **Posted:** Thu May 12, 2005 10:05 am

Just a thanks to both of you for posting. This stuff is like pure cotton candy to me, and I can't be the only one who thinks so.

I remember very little discussion of this stuff when I was a journalist. I believe it was regarded (at my little alt weekly) as "the publisher's business."

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Thu May 12, 2005 1:02 pm

An interesting speech suggests how newspapers can survive if the industry is willing to make drastic changes, including an acceptance of lower profits:

http://journalism.wlu.edu/Reynolds/mcguire.html

This speech by Tim McGuire can be found at Jim Romenesko's portion of the Poynter's web site.

Poynter.org contains much more than Al's daily story suggestions.

Bood · **Posted:** Thu May 12, 2005 7:01 pm

Here's a link to an article from today about JOAs and the rise of new tabloids:

http://www.reason.com/0505/co.mw.free.shtml

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