Posts Tagged Under ‘Internet’

Why Media Companies Shouldn’t Go Public

What up, web.

Last night the Bancroft family, controlling owners of Dow Jones and its flagship paper The Wall Street Journal, seems to have thrown in the towel and potentially opened up to the takeover bid from News Corp., owned by NY Post-Loc Rupert Murdoch. They haven’t sold yet, and a sale isn’t guaranteed, but DJ did issue several statements saying their current structure is untenable and the company would better accomplish its mission “in combination or collaboration with another organization that may include News Corporation.”

That sounds like B to the S to me. The Bancrofts hadn’t been shopping the company around pre-bid; they then very publicly turned down Murdoch’s unsolicited offer earlier in May, hardly the move of a company that needs to sell. The real reason the family is willing to consider a sale is because the shareholders are hardcore leaning on them to do so. The share price of Dow Jones jumped from $36 clear up to $58.47 on May 2, when Murdoch’s bid became public. Shareholders in Dow Jones, like T. Rowe Price, stand to make a lot of windfall if the sale goes through.

This is the worst aspect of publicly traded media companies. The current ownership doesn’t even want to sell to News Corp., chiefly because they legitimately fear that Murdoch will turn their distinguished paper into another vehicle for his own politics-of-the-moment. (That can mean either appeasing the communist government in China or stoking war fever here in the U.S.) Yet the dictates of the public market are forcing their hand. DJ’s investors, seeing the cash to be made from the sale, are more than willing to throw the product itself under the bus, and one of America’s best newspapers—arguably the best—might start to undergo a subtle and disheartening shift. You can read better arguments against News Corp. buying the Journal here and here.

I think the market usually does decide what’s best, and while solvency is a necessity in any economy, an unregulated market will occasionally run roughshod over the very things that society most wants to protect. (Re-read The Jungle sometime.) I’m going to climb back up the j-school ivory tower and state that an independent—note that I didn’t say “objective”, even though that’s important to strive for—press is one of those things. A media that’s solely under private ownership will be more inclined to take risks with reporting, political angles, styles of coverage, technology and business models than a large, public company that’s beholden to shareholders. It’s not the drive for solvency that creates problems with media companies, it’s the drive for constantly increasing returns in a field that has always been more about viewpoints and information than it has about profitability. In theory the extra capital that comes with public ownership could be used to create a better news well, but anyone who follows the press will notice that newsrooms are laying off employees as fast as they can these days and relying more and more on centralized news sources.

Crazy rich guys have always gotten into the media business for the vanity that comes with loudly voicing one’s perspective, not because they see it as a highly profitable investment. They make their money elsewhere, then get into the media. That emphasis on viewpoints is a good thing, because unlike a capital market, the media is nothing if not the marketplace of ideas. I would hate to see the Wall Street Journal be forced into a partnership they don’t even want.

Haters

Hey readaz.

Geeta and I were talking this weekend, and we noted that we’re in two of the least-respected professions in America. It seems 38% of respondents to a Gallup poll rated lawyers as a low or very-low respected profession, while the same survey in 2004 found only 16% of people rated newspaper reporters as “high or very high” in respect. (TV reporters had 23% approval - WTF?)

What’s up with this? My theory is that lawyers and reporters are most visible at the same time that they’re at their worst. People tune in to the news when something bad happens, so there’s already the subconscious association of reporter = bad happening. Then you add in the endless TV shots of victims crying while being asked, “How do you feel?” and things look even more invasive. (Nevermind that there’s a huge demand for such stuff.) Why are newspaper reporters ranked lower than TV? I think the negative side of TV washes off onto the newspaper, as a newspaper frequently breaks the negative story in the first place (when was the last time TV news broke a scandal of any kind that required number-crunching analysis?) and print reporters generally aren’t the polished, beautiful people we see on TV. It’s a lot easier to forgive and forget with a blow-dried smiling dude than it is with a gruff, cheap-suited newspaper bulldog.

As for lawyers, when I hear “attorney”, the first person who comes to mind after Geeta is Edgar Snyder (”391-2101!”), accident and injury lawyer from the Burgh. Edgar apparently has one of the bigger ad budgets among Pittsburgh law firms, with Berger and Green seemingly in a close second. These guys are in every city, and their advertising is ubiquitous, so ambulance-chasing isn’t hurting for brand recognition. The other time lawyers make a major media appearance is with high-profile criminal trials. When it’s a case where the public has made its mind up in favor of a guilty verdict, they’re going to have a hard time liking the defense lawyers who are arguing the opposite.

Anyway, all you readaz should remember that for every Geraldo, there’s a Helen Thomas; and for every Berger and Green, there’s a well-respected judge. Peace.

The Poisonous Comment Snake

I just read this phat piece by Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian and found myself nodding a “Hell yeah” in agreement. Freedland really nailed the problem with comment sections on blogs, news articles and nearly everywhere else online, and I’m in full agreement that a set of orderly online debate rules would be nice.

I can’t remember the last time I read a full comments thread on a large-scale news blog or media website, as the instant I see “144 comments” at the end of a piece, I know I’m going to wander headlong into a vitriolic swamp that I’d rather avoid. The people who “win” these kind of debates are usually those most willing to spend hours at work hitting F5 and typing out “Go crawl back in your liberal/Zionist/fascist/terrorist/Fox News hole and die a slow death.” Every publication at which I’ve worked gets loads of this in e-mail format each day as well, often fired off with no name. Yet nearly 100% of the time that I’ve responded to these irate people in a polite fashion, I get an apologetic e-mail back. So yes, commenter: you did know it was wrong to address somebody in the illest way, and when you were called on it, you knew better.

While you can’t force people to use a real name when commenting, I’m of the belief that those who spew awful venom without using their real name should be shunned by other commenters. It shouldn’t be an official policy of websites to block people from using anonymous handles, because as Freedland points out, sometimes this really does allow for real-life freedom that wouldn’t occur otherwise. (And I mean the good, democratic kind, the type they don’t have in Egypt or China.) But if you’re a Westerner living in a free society, you need to accept the fact that actions have consequences, and that freedom of speech isn’t freedom from irate reaction. Our democracy runs on both freedom AND order.

If you want to throw bombs at other people that don’t address the subject of their arguments, man up and use your real name.

Say word.

Up and At Them

Hey readaz,

Here it is, the new site. Time to get this thing rolling.

Your ace,
Pat