Content Bridges

What's a Tribune (NOW) Worth?

Forget Christmas; wait 'til Easter.

That essentially was Dennis Fitzsimons' message  as he  announced that the Tribune break-up or sale won't happen this year, but rather toward the end of the first quarter. He attributed the delay to the complexities involved in the potential transaction(s). Sure, it's complex. Assets that range from a newly challenged CareerBuilder to problematic TV stations to the Chandlers' former flagship L.A. Times to the Tribune's own tower and now to the grossly overcommitted sum of $136 million, pledged to Alfonso Soriano ( career on-base Percentage of .325). Soriano's contract now looks like it may outlive quite a few daily newspapers in this country of ours.

I'm inclined to believe Fitzsimons that the delay in sale -- remember the painful twisting of Knight Ridder in the wind, not very long ago? -- is in part due to that complexity and the related tax implications of what gets sold to whom when.

But the big question is simply this, again: What's a Newspaper Worth? What's a collection of newspapers, plus or minus the Cubbies, worth?

Two private equity owners came in with bids that underwhelmed, offering no premium on the current share price. That's no surprise. Again, it's entirely reminiscent of KR. Lots of noise, lots of positioning and in the end, McClatchy was the only company to pony up for the whole company (though it started parceling it out within hours of the purchase).  Think about it from a potential owner's viewpoint. You've got a business that is plainly flat-lining. Revenues for Tribune newspapers, as for industry, are no longer staying above water. They're not only below inflation; they're starting to trail last year's.  And online growth -- impressive as it is in the 30% category -- doesn't begin to make up for the print shortfall.

Good for Gannett: 7 Steps to Modern Sobriety

You can greet Gannett's recent "Seven Desks" announcement with skepticism. After all, major pronouncements from the corporate suites of news companies often have an off-key sound to them. And Gannett's name over the years has been more associated with high-margin newspapers than prize-winning ones.

Still, the announcement tells us that someone at Gannett has a clue. Fundamental to the Gannett announcement is at least a tentative embrace of citizen-generated content, of engaging the group Jay Rosen well describes as "the group formerly known as the audience." Gannett talks about "crowdsourcing" in its 7-step plan, of engaging citizens both in newsgathering and story idea generation. The details are hazy, emerging from experiments at several of its papers. The early iterations are bound to be ungainly, but hopefully will be learning experiences.

The plank is formally known as "COMMUNITY CONVERSATION." 

It joins the six other planks, all intended to be rolled out across the 90+ Gannett U.S. operations by May:

---LOCAL, LOCAL, LOCAL: Gannett's gotten the message we all live in national/global news bubble, in which the news finds us. Local is the last and best bastion of community newspapers.
---PUBLIC SERVICE: Gannett talks about extending First Amendment coverage with more community involvement.
---CUSTOM CONTENT: Here, the company will try to get vertical, and presumably locally vertical.
---MULTIMEDIA: It will try to cross-train reporters and photographers alike, with the understanding that journalists should be able to tell stories in text -- and sound and moving pictures.
---DATA: Gannett says it wants to get serious about harnessing databases for local calendar information. Newspaper companies have squandered this opportunity for a decade; this looks like a new attempt. 
---DIGITAL: Easier said than done, the company will try to become medium-agnostic, delivering to print, desktop and mobile media. And it says, learning the presentation ins and outs of each medium.

Implicit in all this is the idea that these newsrooms are 24/7 operations. Flexibility is the key word here,