California Conservative

That’s just one of the multitude of laments in Nick Coleman’s latest collection of whinings, otherwise known as his column. Here’s the segment that I’m referring to:

Here is some of what is going away: the Star Tribune Foundation, which has funded nonprofit groups in the Twin Cities for decades; and the Washington bureau and foreign correspondents, including those in Iraq. They’ll still be working, but not for the Star Tribune. Also disappearing: the pooled financial resources a chain can use to gather news and resist the fickle winds of market forces.

Poor Nicky Coleman. If he chooses to stay, he’ll be forced to work at a newspaper that actually has to produce a quality product. He’ll be forced to work at a newspaper that actually checks its facts. He’ll be forced to work at a newspaper that tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The poor dear. He might even have to work for an editor who will actually hold him accountable for the things he writes. The injustice of it all. What is this world coming to?

If you think that’s the extent of Little Nicky’s whining, then you obviously don’t know him. Here’s another whiny rant:

McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt did not bother to come to Minneapolis on Tuesday to say he surreptitiously had sold the paper and to kiss us goodbye. But McClatchy brass gave us some nice parting gifts from afar, complaining that the Star Tribune had lost value (and proving it in a secret auction at fire-sale prices), calling the flagship a drag on profits and saying McClatchy would have shown a one-percent increase in ad sales if the Star Tribune weren’t included. One percent! Huzzah! Sound the trumpets!

The truth is that McClatchy dumped a newspaper at a big loss. Here’s what one article said about the sale:

The newspaper industry has long been fighting circulation declines. More recently, classified advertising, a pillar of the newspaper business model, has come under attack by cheap or free Internet ads for jobs, cars, and homes. The Star Tribune has been no exception.

“Certainly in straight financial terms, based on what’s been happening to circulation, ad revenue and earnings, it’s a much tougher business than it was eight years ago,” said Rick Edmonds, Media Business Analyst at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.

TRANSLATION: Newspapers are DYING, partially because blogs and the alternative media are drying up newspapers’ advertising revenue streams, partially because they’re producing a lousy product. They’re dinosaurs that likely will be dead within a generation.

McClatchy got out while the assets were still worth something. McClatchy operated from a ‘Better late than never’ perspective. Whether they knew it or not, the reality is that they just dumped a newspaper that isn’t in touch with mainstream readers and that doesn’t care about anyone to the right of center politically. That isn’t a way to make money. That’s a guaranteed way of losing ground annually.

But McClatchy brass gave us some nice parting gifts from afar, complaining that the Star Tribune had lost value (and proving it in a secret auction at fire-sale prices), calling the flagship a drag on profits and saying McClatchy would have shown a one-percent increase in ad sales if the Star Tribune weren’t included. One percent! Huzzah! Sound the trumpets!

There’s the market for you: The Star Tribune held down ad sales one percent. So One-Percent Pruitt axed his best newspaper. Brilliant.

Pruitt sold it before more people noticed how biased Coleman’s employer was. Pruitt sold it before people noticed the poor underlying condition the paper was in. Profit margins notwithstanding, the truth is that the profits weren’t the result of growing circulation; they were the result of ever-shrinking expenditures. It wasn’t that ad sales were growing. In short, though the profit margins looked good, the underlying trend was that of deterioration.

If that’s what Coleman wants to think that the Strib is still a great newspaper, that’s his right but he’s kidding himself. Coleman should read some of Powerline’s articles that simply excoriated the Strib’s product. Coleman would get the real picture by reading some of Mitch Berg’s commentaries on the Strib, too.

The telltale signs aren’t difficult to find. The truth is that they’re abundant if you don’t have your head buried in sand like an ostrich. Sadly, that isn’t the Strib’s strength.

Technorati Tags: Nick Coleman, Strib, Powerline Blog, Mitch Berg, McClatchy

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Capitalism, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.