Content Bridges

Bloomberg's Next Push: Consumer, Advertising and Global

If you've seen a bit of Bloomberg TV or heard Bloomberg Radio or been in front of one of its terminals, you may have recently wondered: Why isn't it doing more with what it has?

Its reporters are some of the fastest moving on the web, and know data better than most covering the news industry.

So what might today's announcement that news industry veteran Norm Pearlstine is becoming "chief content officer" of Bloomberg mean?

My quick take:

* Right now, Bloomberg derives almost all its revenues from Corporate markets. With Pearlstine at the hub, it plainly will look at leveraging its assets beyond Corporate, most directly to B2C markets. I hear that has made recent forays into Legal markets as well, competing with Reed Elsevier's LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters' West Publishing.
* Key question is one familiar to all legacy news companies. Can it keep its grip on stable (in this case, installed terminal) revenue, while competing in markets new to it. It faces risk of commoditizing its core business, unless it executes a Free Web B2C strategy smartly.
* Business advertising draws among the highest CPM rates, more than $100 CPM for business news video and above $50 CPM for graphical ads, for high-branded content. But the overall pie of online business news ad revenue is still small -- that's why News Corp decided against eliminating wsj.com subscription wall. There's simply not enough money in web business news advertising to make up its online sub revenue loss.
* Pearlstine's experience tells us that this is all about leveraging the content assets across all modern media platforms. So expect Bloomberg to go where the growth is -- advertising. Web advertising is still growing around a 20 per cent rate, and Bloomberg should cash in there.
* The new Bloomberg view should be more global. According to Outsell research numbers, it drives 47% of its revenues from the US, 38% from EMEA and only 10% from Asia. Asia should be bigger. So look for Bloomberg to become a more global player, both through acquisition and greater use of partner distribution channels.

In sum, I think there are three words that define the Pearlstine announcement:
---Consumer
---Advertising
---Global

Bloomberg sees a similar opportunity as Rupert Murdoch saw in buying Dow Jones -- the global business news opportunity leveraged over all platforms. Today's announcement means more competition for Dow Jones -- and Time Warner's business magazines, McGraw Hill's Business Week, Forbes, the New York Times and the Financial Times.

Let the new business games begin.

Cablevision Moves Forward with First Home Run Game Plan

I've long compared the cable and phone companies on the one hand to the newspaper companies on the other.

Newspaper companies saw there business being upended by the Internet, made small bets and have lost out on the big ad growth the web has generated.

Telephone companies -- the successors of monopoly Ma Bell -- first consolidated and then saw that old vanilla phone service was disappearing, well, almost as fast as newsprint-based news. They moved into internet service provision and then into more lucrative broadband, acing out the many small companies that had at first parted the waters (some of which, including Infinet, were owned by newspaper companies). They invested heavily (and often clumsily) in mobile and have figured out how to wring many new dollars from all of us.

Cable companies saw that they were reaching a saturation point in their own penetration, and then felt the hot breath of the formerly telephone companies moving to offer .... cable TV. So they've gone after both internet service providing and local voice, understanding that boomers still want the comfort of the old landlines.

Triple Play, once a novelty, has become the standard. Cable + Internet + Telephone.

Now Cablevision's stuck out its neck, $650 million worth, to swing for fences.

Cable + Internet + Telephone + Newspaper. A combo that could give Cablevision an edge against Verizon, its biggest competitor.

A home run?

My betting is that it's one of the best labs for everyone in the news industry to watch.

What stands in the way of a big Cablevision win? In a couple of words: strategy and exectuion.

In strategy, Cablevision must move beyond the hazy notion of Long Island Convergence (some say the Dolans may have had a bit too much Long Island Tea in offering $70 million more than their competition for Newsday) to a true strategy. That strategy, in a nutshell:

---Create a new ad vision of how Cablevision/Newsday can serve local advertisers, from its Long Island home base to metro New York to southern Connecticut to northern Jersey. Providing advertisers reach to mass and targeted niche audiences, through cable, newspaper and internet is what must be done.
---Create a new content vision for how Cablevision/Newsday can serve local news readers, sports lovers, business observers and entertainment seekers. The company will have a newsgathering/production force of more than 500. The goal has got to be to get out of text/TV/audio silos, creating text and multimedia content, distributing that content to become dominant in its key geographic areas
---Connecting the ad and content engines to the wider web distribution world. The new independent-of-Tribune Newsday may well move out of its Tribune partnerships (nothing in release one way or another on CareerBuilder, Classified Ventures, QuadrantONE, etc.) and look at joining the Yahoo News consortium, among others. The Daily News is in it, but has no market exclusivity.

The Execution? Tougher than the strategy. It should be streamlining as many of the cost centers of both companies as possible, but doing that in a way that builds the company for success, rather than crippling it.

Yes, ad staffs and selling propositions can converge and yes, scribes and TV producers are really members of the same species. But the human dimension here is what's tough. Habit, tradition and skill set are all obstacles. As I wrote last week, someone is going to surmount them; Cablevision's just one of the newest and potentially most interesting to try.

For Rupert-watchers, the sale is something of an enigma. Why did it go this way less than a week after his public boast that he'd win the prize? Questions to be answered:
---Did Tribune's latest double-digit declines convince him that it really wasn't a prize at all, that the the Post's $50 million loss really wouldn't turn to profit, given both a bigger Newsday pricetag and the detiorating newspaper ad market?
---Is News Corp thinking that further investment in newspapers just won't pencil out?
---Back to the overpay question. Did Rupert overpay for Dow Jones and did the Dolans overpay for Newsday?
Both are long-term investments, and you can't make judgments based on today's pressures and short-term trends. This is all about real convergence and its value.

King of the City Journalism is All the Rage

Consider the new Big City American journalism and the emerging cast of characters owning it. It's a page right out of the history books when a few well-heeled titans controlled the press, and its new incarnation could have all kinds of implications for the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, for AP and for the journalism start-ups near and far.

If Rupert Murdoch indeed knows more about who the next owner of Newsday will be than the rest of us, and I'd have a sense he does, that would make him Prince, if not King, of New York. Pending what may be obligatory regulatory review, given the anti-trust and FCC thinking of the moment, he'd own Newsday, the Post, WWOR-TV, WNYW-TV and the solidly NYC-centric Wall Street Journal.

Chicago is Sam Zell-land, as Sam bought the title King of Chicago along with the Tribune, WGN TV and Radio, Chicago Magazine, Redeye and CLTV.

The Bay Area is Dean Singleton's, by far the largest newspaper owner out here, owning about everything daily other than the Chronicle, which is owned by Hearst, his key business partner in many other markets.

Dean is also chair of the AP board, and Sam and Rupert have just joined.

I bet we'll see more. As the new Tribune peels off Newsday, and stares down the next debt payments, eyes are bound to turn to L.A. And there, too, might not a new Big Man in Town buyers emerge? Recall that David Geffen, Eli Broad and Ron Burkle were all in the hunt earlier for the Times.

In Boston, it's just a matter of time before the Times says good-bye to the Globe (paging Jack Welch); it's got to deal with the emerging threat to its core NY Times flagship by.....Murdoch, whose company is talking of synergizing his London Times and the Journal. (By the way, in a recent interview, former Times editor Howell Raines spoke of how the Jayson Blair scandal shelved plans to re-brand the International Herald Tribune with the Times nameplate. Great idea -- the Times now wins or loses as a global news franchise -- and why haven't the plans proceeded? There's little time to waste especially as the Murdochian armies mass.)

It's funny, isn't it, that pundits hypothesized that the Internet and associated technologies would democratize media and here we are back to the landscape of the early 1900s. Hearsts and Pulitzers and the rest changed journalism, started wars and elected presidents. Now undoubtedly, our media is much more diverse, but arguably getting more concentrated at the top end, where most of the ad revenue is and where the greatest bullhorns are heard.

Yes, daily newspapers' businesses are in a world of hurt, but those able to buy low, leverage the assets synergistically with emerging media or subsidize them to meet other business and political goals are in a great position. The brand value associated with the the L.A. Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Chicago Tribune and Newsday, just to name a few, is still great, and can be harnessed in any ways new owners see fit.

What kind of impacts might such rapidly changing ownership portend:

Can Cablevision Turn a Triple Play into a Newsday Home Run?

It's easy to get lost in the current era of Big Man in Town Journalism. Zell. Singleton, Murdoch. Tierney. Harte. So much of the recent drama in newspaper ownership change has been driven by personality, as keep-it-in-road, rationale profit-seeking companies turn up their noses at the prospects of buying newspaper companies. It takes an outsized ego, an outsized wallet (your own maybe, but preferably someone else's) and a perhaps outlandish optimism to grab onto the horns of the bull and take off for a wild ride.

One current installment of that drama is playing out in Long Island, home of once-proud Newsday, a paper that innovated ahead of its day and then saw its fortunes cascade through the Times Mirror and Tribune funhouses. As Sam Zell stares down his first balloon debt payment, Newsday's hit the block, and an unusually crowded one it is. Isn't it great to see a bidding war for a newspaper company? It is highly enjoyable, if unique to market circumstance. With Murdoch's Post and Mort Zuckerman's New York Daily News in lethal competition, both have a hard time imagining the other getting Newsday and using it as cudgel in the war.

The weapon for each in that case is, of course, cost reduction -- a relentless streaming of cost in all departments -- ad, circ, production and printing and finance, not to speak of how newsroom synergies might be achieved. It's the other bidder in this case -- currently the high one -- that I think paints a more interesting picture of what the local "press" may become.

Cablevision has offered $70 million more than either Mort or Rupert, currently at $650 million, $150 million above its original offer. With Rupert and Sam increasingly better buddies (formally on AP board and informally, we can only guess), I would have put my money on that deal (and agree with Alan Mutter's notion of a potential Murdoch/Zell endgame, here). But $70 million is quite a differential, and for now, Rupert is saying he isn't going up. Further the potential of FCC review of his increasingly entangling NYC-area cross-ownership (the Post, WWOR-TV and WNYW-TV, Dow Jones and Newsday) would at least slow down and bring uncertainty to the deal. Sam Zell's bankers don't like uncertainty.

So that may leave us with a new attempt at....synergy. In fact, it could turn the emergent idea of Triple Play -- TV cable service, Internet service, local phone service -- into a Home Run, adding "newspaper" to the diamond.

In this new synergistic interpretation, we'd observe what new owners would see as complementary in combining Cable News -- including News12 Interactive.com (its cringe-worthy tagline -- "only in cable  not on phone company tv or anywhere else"; you need a password to get in unless you are a local cable subscriber) -- with Newsday. It's been done before you say, and you're right. In fact, Cablevision and Newsday themselves jointly produced a one-hour cable news program years ago. But it was too early and didn't pencil out. It's been done elsewhere as well, with mixed results.

What's changing now, I think, is that the time is coming back around to do it right and to make it pay. Is it a "TV-centric" time, as someone close to the Dolan family, who control Cablevision, said? TV-centric misses the point. It's more video-forward than TV-centric. News video is now here to stay. More than half of the US population has watched video within the last month; already in Britain, that number is now more than 90%. We're getting used to seeing video first, on our time, time-shifted, Apple TV-enabled, and through the Internet. The much-maligned pre-rolls and their children, "in-video" ads, are still highly sought after and fetching $25-35 CPMs, on average. We do like to watch. 

Look at most newspaper sites, and you see dabbling. The AP Online Video Network is so far populated on about 1800 sites, newspaper and broadcast. On too many, though, it's relegated downpage, and seems like an after-thought.

So what happens, in this new, coming age of convergence -- in which easily watchable video marries quick-read text and always-on opinion -- if you combine the resources of a Newsday and a Cablevision, which, too, counts hundreds of journalists in its newsrooms that span from northern New Jersey to southern Connecticut.

Circ Numbers: Talking Quantity...and "Quality"

How fast can you paddle?

That's the unabated message of today's ABC FAS FAX circulation numbers being reported. They cover the six-month period, through March 31. Overall, the water keeps rising: 3.5% down daily, and 4.5% down Sunday. Those are in line with what we've now seen for more than three years. The waves aren't subsiding, but rising a bit more. Worse, there's not much relief in sight.

As paper-specific reports filter in, we can expect to see more explanations that "we didn't want the circulation anyway."

That's the heavily discounted circulation, next-to-freebie stuff that many dailies have used to prop up numbers for years. Of course, there's some truth to the statement, but it raises a couple of problems:

---As an explanation, it's getting a bit long in the tooth. When circ began to go substantially south more than three years ago, publishers offered the "cutback to quality circ" argument and said they'd cycle through that within a year or so. In Year Four, it seems like less compelling a reason. Just how much how low-quality circ is out there, anyway, or is the definition of it a rolling phenomenon?

---Selling audience to advertisers is in major change, and in that change, newspapers take on new risk. For instance, in Editor and Publisher this a.m., Jim Moroney, publisher of the Dallas Morning News is quoted as saying "We are trying to get out of the churn business." The Morning News is pulling back on its discounted copies. The paper cut one discounted category -- more than 25% but less than 50% paid -- by 75% daily and 80% on Sunday. What did the cut mean? Massive loss with daily circulation down 10.5% to 368,313 and Sunday down 7.6% to 520,215. Metro dailies' market position has long been offering the mass market better than anyone else. Now as household penetration dives toward 40% of households in many metro areas, that mass argument is harder to make. True, newspapers are making more of a niche argument, but niche is a game that internet marketers are having an easier time winning than those who peddle poor non-interactive browsable paper. In the transition from mass to niche, more ad dollars are put at risk to competitors from Google to Spotrunner.

They aren't many winners out of the numbers released today, but you can almost feel the grin of Rupert Murdoch.

His nemesis, the Times, saw a bottom drop out and his Wall Street Journal showed a .35% gain. The Times Sunday number -- down 9.26% or 150,000 copies -- to 1,476,400 is particularly scary. (It was down 3.85% daily.) The Times attributed two-thirds of the Sunday decline to "the elimination of bonus days" and the familiar "third-party bulk." Last year, it took a gutsy price increase to its readers -- and has been showing positive circulation revenue growth, an oddity in the industry. These circ numbers are the first since last year's increase. If they continue to trend significantly down, the make-the-high-demo-niche-audience-pay-more-for-quality strategy -- one watched by the industry -- will be seen as a loser.

I can't help but wonder about the contribution of Times Select's termination here. As it ended, the Times counted about 470,000 paying customers who received Times Select for "free," as long as they were print subscribers. That called to attention the print/web connection. Take it away, and you give readers pause -- do I really need to take that non-green pile of paper when it's all unambiguously free?

Looking at today's numbers, we see a couple of other intriguing trends:
---Optimistic Buyers of Big-City Metros Beware: Both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Minneapolis Star Tribune -- both bought within the last couple of years -- were down significantly. The Strib: 5% daily, 7% Sunday and The Inqy: 5% daily and 6% Sunday. New owners had counseled optimism that new approaches -- marketing forward -- could turn around those papers.
---Flat is the New Growth: The Strib's competition, the Pioneer Press (my alma mater), was essentially flat. Its fellow MediaNews property -- the Mercury News -- somehow managed to gain 1.7% despite its turmoil, newsprint and staff cutbacks. (Other gainers, here.)
---Seattle's About the Only Place Circ Was Up: Starbucks down; news reading up? Particularly dreary, bone-tingling winter?

Today's news, combined with the spiraling downward trends in print ad revenues, only means more misery. With new layoffs announced in Raleigh, we may see the buyouts/layoffs of 2007 simply as prologue. I think what we're seeing, unannounced, is the radical restructuring of the newspaper industry. The drip, drip, drip of change is now becoming a torrent.

Top 25 list of numbers at Editor and Publisher, Sunday and daily.

Rupert, Sam and A Future of American Journalism

Last week, I talked to a veteran reporter wondering -- of course -- who might buy his struggling metro paper. We went through the possible names and then arrived at Murdoch. "At least, he's a newspaperman," the reporter hopefully offered.

That's what we're down to -- guessing games and choosing the least worst of evils. None of the above applies neither in newspaper ownership nor politics in the US.

Zell selling Newsday, after saying he wanted to keep the Tribune empire alive. No surprise.

Murdoch buying Newsday. No surprise there either. Zell and Murdoch are now tied at the hip, fellow newspaper titans and lately on the AP board. Rupert Murdoch can do a lot more for Sam Zell than Mort Zuckerman, owner of the Daily News, could.

Well, Murdoch is a newspaperman. The question is what kind?

We'll ask Marcus Brauchli, soon as he's free, which with today's news looks like it will be soon. The WSJ managing editor replaced by a hand-picked Murdoch editor. Of course. You'd like to laugh when you recall all the hand-wringing and speculation last year within and without the Bancroft family about what Murdoch ownership would mean. Would he "interfere"? Recall the board that's set up to maintain the paper's integrity, and how mushy that seemed to some of us. Well, now it's deciding if it has any say in who the new m.e. is.

Please, Murdoch owns the paper. He'll do with it what he pleases. Produce some great journalism, sure. Use it as weapon to bludgeon the Times, sure. Make resource decisions that determine the journalism and the fates of his friends, sure.

That's the way it is. The question will be how much of 21st century robber baron journalism comes to pervade the industry. Sam Zell's bought himself some time, for now, but those balloon payments and the effects of a  recession won't leave him much time to catch his breath. For the rest of us, it is lots of sighs and heavy breathing.

NYT Earnings: The Emerging Double Whammy

I'm little surprised by the results, though I wish I were. The Times is barely profitable. (See comments at end of post from NYT spokesperson Catherine Mathis to this point.)

With ad spending overall down just under double digits at 9% for the first quarter, the New York Times' results -- most likely foreshadowing those of Gannett (April 21) and McClatchy (April 23) -- are the result of the double whammy afflicting newspaper companies. The two-headed assault on revenues -- a recession-like pullback in spending compounding the already-in-progress movement of dollars from print to interactive marketing.

We know advertisers are pulling back. Gross estimates are trending downward, with the latest projecting 3.7% ad dollar growth in the US, that from Zenith Optimedia on March 31. That projection knocked .4 off an estimate made just a few months earlier. Expect, in this gyrating economic landscape, for it to go lower still. That 3.7% -- in an otherwise stable time -- might about match inflation, but it's not a stable time for newspaper companies.

The biggest factor of course is where those $21 billion dollars in US interactive revenues (2007) is coming from, and we know many of them are coming out of print hides. Will it get worse? I'm inclined to agree with Eric Schmidt, with his admittedly self-serving statements that recession-caused ad dollar movement will aid Google. Newspaper advertising is still disproportionately expensive. Companies are more prudent with their spending in perceived downtimes, just as consumers are.

The Times reported an 11% increase in Internet revenues. Barely double-digit, below the growth of web advertising overall -- and of course insufficient in volume to make up print declines.

Beyond the immediate impact of the year, newspaper publishers have to ask themselves whether dollars that are going to the new medium, and being spent in other experimental ways, will come back to print, as the economy turns more positive. Or is this a one-way street: out?

The bigger point of this morning's announcement pops out of two continuing dramas at the Times Company:

----It is in public anguish about its newsroom cutbacks. The 7.5% cutback (100 of 1300) is the biggest deal out of all the newsroom cutbacks we've seen. It's the New York Times cutting back. Now, we've seen enough reports to know that too few will accept buyouts, and layoffs are appearing inevitable. The Times is not a stable ship.
----Second, of course, is the coincident boardroom drama. Two outside directors are joining the Times' board. The impact has got to be a more urgent review of asset sales -- the Globe and the regional newspaper group. With significant layoffs in the Times' newsroom and this further turndown in earnings, the urgency (noted here in February) for action is even clearer than it was when Harbinger/Firebrand began its push on the Times.

From Catherine Mathis, NYT spokesperson:

Comment:
While The New York Times Company had a challenging quarter, I don't think that saying we are barely profitable really tells the story. There were a number of items that made this quarter unusual -- a writedown of assets, a shift in the timing of equity grants, a negative foreign currency translation and expenses for the consolidation of two printing plants. In 2007 the Times Company earned more than $200 million and Wall Street analysts estimate that 2008 will be another profitable year. Is this a tough time in the media business? Absolutely. But I think it's important to also remember that these are businesses that are making money.

Content Bridges' NYT posts, here

Time for New Blood in Newspaper Boardrooms: A Slate

The New Barbarians are about to enter the boardroom, as the New York Times expands its governing body by two, "welcoming" Firebrand's Scott Galloway and Kohlberg & Co.'s James Kohlberg. It's a big deal -- the first time in the 41-year-old public company history of the Times that outside shareholders have joined.

They’ve huffed and puffed their way past the boardroom portals, settling for two seats, after pushing for four. Their election is a formality, due on April 22, just five days after this Thursday's Times' announcement of its 2Q earnings. Those earnings won't likely be pretty, and calls for re-evaluation and new thinking will increase in pitch outside and now inside the boardroom.

Which got me to thinking. With all the old faces leaving the newsrooms and executive suites of the newspapers, isn’t it time to really shake up other boardrooms as well. Why wait for private equity people to buy their way in? It’s time for new blood to percolate happily around the out-sized tables of endangered wood. And, unless there's a law out there I don't know about, would be criminal to have board members under the age of 50?

Figuring that the board recruitment committees need some names, I’ve started a list. Feel free to nominate your own.

• Caroline Little: Newly out, likely in a Washington Post restructuring, she's led the industry's most innovative city site. She understands that the web is a different creature than print and that winning requires reaching out and partnering with lots of Web 2.0 companies.
• Steve Jobs: Isn’t he a bit taken aback when he picks up the hometown Mercury News these days? Doesn’t he know he could offer an idea or two about the confluence of customer-pleasing content, intuitive design and business models that no one else thought were possible.
• Arianna Huffington: She’s arrived again, a Hearst of the digital age. What is she seeing in the emergence of a new journalism that legacy publishers are missing?
• Jeff Skoll: A graduate of  Knight Ridder (Business Information), he was eBay employee #1 and first president, driving its marketplace-changing potential from a mere idea and cashed out early to devote himself to a new lifetime of good works. His Skoll Foundation promotes entrepreneurial philanthropy. I know an industry that could some of that money and thinking.
• Matt Mullenweg: Founder of Automattic, the company behind Wordpress, and someone who understands Pro/Am journalism from the Am side.
• Stephen Colbert: His brilliant send-up is based on a keen understanding of the foibles of modern news media. A board seat would be highly entertaining for all -- and challenge him to help journalists get it right as the web re-invents what’s possible.
• Craig Newmark: One word: penance.
• Gordon Crovitz: He built one of the most successful and unique online business models – WSJ.com paid subscriptions! – and now Rupert’s given him time and money to take on new things.
• Diablo Cody: If the Oscar-winning Juno screenwriter could provide an insider’s view of the newspaper industry as piercing as the one she wrote for the strip club business (“Candy Girl”), the world would get quite an education.
• Chris Matthews: Let’s make him head of a compensation committee, and let his slash-and-burn, attack-dog questioning style really put old newspaper leadership thinking to the test.
• Oprah Winfrey: She’s newly mastered publishing and intuitively understands one thing that’s eluded news publishers online: a massive, engaged, loyal audience.
• Eliot Spitzer: He’s got time on his hands and a fine ability to be comfortable with ambiguity, a talent sorely needed.
• Ken Stern: Recently ousted as head of NPR, in part for transforming the public radio network too quickly into a major online player, he’s got a talent for seeing how one medium can morph into another.
• Mary Junck: The Lee CEO understands a simple truth: Newspaper companies can be remarkable sales and marketing engines – and the Internet expands their potential.
• Ira Glass: No one does finer feature journalism, and his investigative chops are growing ("The Audacity of Government"). What can he impart about what he’s learned?
• Rob Curley: Always room for a boy genius and self-described "Internet punk"! The current vp/products for WashingtonPost.com  is the kind of tweener every board needs.
• Alberto Ibarguen: Knight Foundation chief and a wise head overall, he’d bring experienced and connected savvy to any board.
• Stephen Smyth: On his way out after five tumultuous years at Reuters, Smyth's seen about every business model come, go and come again. And he's learned a lot along the way
• Will Sutton: A longtime Knight Ridder editor, Will's deeply in touch with young journalists through the Hampton University program. It's the young journalists who will form the new journalism, and they need smart representation.
• Kjell Aamot: CEO of Schibsted, the little-written about Scandinavian news company that's mastered the era of web-first publishing and expanded from Norse country to Iberia to Latin America. How about the colonies?
• Phil Balboni: He took a new medium –local cable (New England Cable News) – and built it into a powerhouse. Now heading up profit-seeking Global News, his experience and drive could be some other company’s gain.
• Clear Channel Communications Exec: Better grab one quick before Sam Zell gets ‘em all!

That’s a start. Who’s on your slate?

"In Six Months, They'll All Be Idiots, Too"

An old pro recently asked, "Is there anything newspapers can do to turn it around at this point?, that's what my friends are asking me." My reply, well, today, no, if you mean turning the business back up, on a dime. There's a bright future out there, earned by doing a number of new (and old) things right, but nothing's going to turn the line on the chart brightly upward in the short term.

That's sobering. It is though the reality when the 50-year flood of lowered revenues sweeps over the industry. You can't call it a tsunami -- we've had years of warnings. Just no one could say when the waters would seem overwhelming.

We can see all the recent news of the industry through that vapory shimmer.

Sam Zell selling Newsday? No surprise.

Brian Tierney and Chris Harte talking ( in an excellent David Carr NYT piece ) about how it's far worse than they ever believed it would be, raising concerns of meeting debt obligations. Some saw it coming.

The New York Times adding two chairs to its august table for some hedgies. Well, in these times.

What is interesting is an unprecedented entering of the newspaper trade, by, horror, outsiders.

Harte certainly has strong newspapering family roots, but entered from the venture side. Zell's a self-described bottom-feeder, and Tierney's a symbol of old-fashioned, civic-oriented newspaper mogul, a throwback, who may be out of sync with his times.

Then, there's Dean Singleton, seemingly shaking up his exec suite weekly. Now, the old Knight Ridder guys are seeing their fortunes wane, while the new guys come in from Comcast and Time Inc. Yes, new blood, which in the words of MediaNews #2 (I think) Jody Lodovic, “... will enable us to make decisions quicker and to be more focused.”

Well, maybe. Comcast, seeing threat to its core cable business has gone all Triple Play. Internet, phone service + cable, while our old newspaper industry still has been trying to hit singles, getting the stance adjusted, but not rapidly re-thinking the business model and looking for vast new cash flow and profits (other than Don Graham with Kaplan) outside of the traditional comfort areas.

Yes, outside viewpoints are welcome -- what elephants in the room will the Harbinger/Firebrand guys point to when they sit on the first board meeting? -- but the real question is making a trip to ride out what will be -- at minimum -- three to five hellacious years and still keep the journalism intact.

As another friend, another battle-scarred pro, recently summed it up. "They all think they know THE answer, but there is no single answer. In six months, they'll all be idiots, too."

10 New Marketing Ideas for NAA!

The Newspaper Association of America -- NAA -- is about to hold its annual conference in DC next month. Some of us (Content Bridges, Newsosaur) have carped about the NAA's rose-colored view of newspapers' future, their reach seeming to extend into the horizon as their revenues sink into the basement.

So I think it's only fair to offer ideas for marketing the newspaper of today. That's the print newspaper, not the bundled reachy offers newspaper companies are putting together. Here are my 10. What are yours?

1. The Newspaper: Thinner Than a Mac Air!

2. We're Greener! Fewer Forests Felled!!

3. Now! More Time on Sunday to Do Other Things!

4. Newspapers: We're "Younger" Than Network News!

5. Just in Time for the Recession! Fewer Stock Listings to Scare You!!

6. We Reach 156% of U.S. Households*

7. The Sunday Paper: Now Easier on Your Aching Back!

8. You Deserve a Break....From Computer Reading!

9. We'll Still Got All Your Inserts -- For Now!

10. New and Improved -- With More Yahoo!

*Base reporting period: 1950-1985