Turns Out Warren Buffett Won’t Be The Billionaire Who Saves Newspapers Either

By JOSHUA BENTON AND KEN DOCTOR  Circa 2012, one of the most popular lines among American newspaper journalists went something like this: “Newspapers can’t be that terrible of a business if Warren Buffett, the smartest investor in the world, wants in.” That was the year that Buffett’s Berkshire ...

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The Newsonomics of 50/50 and The Unchaining of the U.S. Press

Follow Newsonomics on Twitter @kdoctor   First published at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab   Asked last week whether he was buying the Star Tribune for business or altruistic reasons, Glen Taylor said a lot in a two-word answer: “50/50.” News observers have parsed and poked at ...

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The newsonomics of 2013’s second half, from ad depression to day dropping to real estate as destiny

The newest News Corp sets sail. Cast adrift — but with a handy $2.6 billion in cash and no debt, making its peers oh-so-envi0us — the world’s largest newspaper company is in the midst of furious change. At the flagship Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, it’s tough to find anyone in management ...

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The Newsonomics of the Tribune Detour

It’s a Koch-around. The unexpected, and real, interest of Charles and David Koch in buying all the Tribune papers has set off a public and labor furor ("The Newsonomics of the Kochs Rising and Uprising"). While the AFL-CIO itself has mounted a quite public protest, two of Tribune’s owners — ...

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Gannett Now a Broadcast Company, More or Less

No longer is Gannett a newspaper company with broadcast and digital assets. It can now be thought of as a broadcast company with major newspaper and digital assets.

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The Newsonomics of The Tribune’s Metro Agony

The Tribune Company owns eight newspapers, six of them metros. Two — the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune — are in top 10 of U.S. dailies; five — adding in the Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Baltimore Sun — are in the top 40, while the Hartford Courant ranks 60th. Their ...

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The Newsonomics of 2013 Wizardry: Tribune, Buffett, Murdoch, Paton, Bloomberg, and more

Today, though, most of the reporting power, much of the brand power, and thepolitical power still resides in big companies and their leadership. We may well get our strongest display of that early in 2013: In Washington, the FCC cross-ownership debate may move to center stage in January. And ...

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The Newsonomics of Near-Term Numerology

Quite literally, significant newspaper nameplates (and, more significantly, the real estate those nameplates rest uneasily on) are going for the prices of mansions in many communities. So why buy? Sometimes, it’s simple: You get a great deal. That’s what Warren Buffett got in his purchase of ...

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The Newsonomics of Trust, News Trusts and Murdoch Trustworthiness

One reason News Corp. may move forward with the trust idea rather than a sale of the properties is that it may meet a market without buyers. With the Times’ losses, it’s tough to come up with logical buyers for the papers. Why mess with the market, though, if you can both perform an act of ...

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The Newsonomics of 2012’s Magic Formula

We can point to three major phenomena that profoundly changed the news landscape this year. Each offers up its own half-formed metrics for that magic formula in process, and each has dramatically changed the possibilities of news, each largely positive: 1) The transcendant transformative age ...

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