Content Bridges

9 Questions: Business News Wars, Gary Pruitt, the Yahoo Bump and the New COOL

As I train down to D.C. for the Online News Association conference (moderating a panel hopefully titled, Optimize and Monetize, tomorrow; if you're there, say hello), the dizzying news industry news of the last week raises more questions than answers. Here's my top nine of the moment. Feel free to add to them:

• As we keep one eye out for the WSJ.com re-launch Sept. 16, I'm wondering why there's no WSJ -- or Marketwatch or Barrons -- app in the iPhone App Store. It's the place to be and be seen, show the flag and at least seem au courant. So far AP is there, with deep local, NYT has a strong, if straightforward presence, Internet Broadcasting has put together a decent aggregation product and Express is porting over its useful Palm/Blackberry product. But news company participation beyond that is weak, and not well-niched.  Will a mobile iPhone app be part of the 9/16 re-do?
• How much more prominent will video be on the WSJ site? It's halfway down now on the home page now, though still a bit higher than NYT's video display. Both text-based companies are starting to master video, but their sites seem to say: text and photos. And, though, we know the Washington Post is doing massive video training, led by Chet Rhodes, here, too, we see little front-and-center placement. News customers are getting beyond a world of  "content types" -- text, story, photo, audio, video, bar chart, etc. -- and just expect to get all the relevant info delivered on a single page, with best coverage (regardless of type) highlighted.
• New York's tabloids had a field day with the lipstick-on-a-pig nonsense (Post: "Boar War"; Daily News: "Lipstick Bungle". Will the Post be right with its data box head,  "Slim pickins"? Indeed, did one of globe's top three rich guys buy at a suitably low-price, considering? Considering among other things that the New York Times is still the top newspaper brand in the world, and that it has barely tapped markets around the world. there are about 900 million English speakers here and there, and yet the Times today derives only about 4% of its revenues from outside the US (mainly International Herald Tribune-related.) That's a big potential upside. Slim's confidence in the Times also underscores the difference in value in national/global brands (like the Times and Dow Jones, as compared to local and regional papers. The big question here is how much the buy is a strategic, long-term one, with hands largely off, and how much a Harbinger-like one, pushing for greater short-term change and divestment of non-Times brand properties?
• As newspaper market caps plummet, how great a percentage of those valuations are now built on real estate? Sam Zell's people probably know more about the land under his holdings in L.A., Chicago, Baltimore and Florida, than they do about what's going on top of the land. NYT has taken criticism for its airy new HQ, which has been valued for as much as $1B. For the industry as a whole, with goodwill being discounted daily and future revenues highly uncertain, these real estate holdings are getting to be a prominent piece of newspaper valuations.
• If Gary Pruitt's not setting the table today, then how soon will tomorrow come? The McClatchy CEO issued a statement to tamp down journalists' and analysts' saying his stepping apart from four family trusts may signify financial restructuring and/or going private. Maybe that's so -- and the move is long-planned and coincidental to the company's current stress. Pruitt had to know that the trustee change would be found by journalists, and that would start speculation. So why not get out ahead of it, with a statement? Yes, the means of restructuring are tough, but something is going to give somewhere at McClatchy, and it's hard not to see this move as one part of setting the table for it.
• Isn't Dow Jones' touting of the "Heard on the Street" expansion just another volley in the budding all-out war between WSJ and NYT over business news? WSJ made some news, gleefully talking staff expansion and iconic Heard on the Street expansion as the Times has had to mainly talk about cutbacks. Heard's expansion, and the folding in of the WSJ's "The Skeptic" blog, makes sense. It's a strategic journalism, taking a well-known column, turning it into a brand, turning loose staffers to follow the business sun around the globe and expanding its presence in print and digitally. Online, Heard still seems more newspaper-like than blog-like (how will it be handled in the redesign?). We don't get the sense of constant updating by its newly assigned staff of 12. NYT's Andrew Ross Sorkin's Dealbook is the growing competing brand -- and it may get a boost as the Times moves forward with a business and tech news upgrade of its own the end of this month.
• As the long-awaited, much-planned-for and much-trained-for Yahoo ad platform rolls out later this month with the San Francisco Chronicle and the Mercury News, how much will the platform separate the growers from the shrinkers? Many consortium companies -- more than 40% of US circulation -- have invested in sales training and re-training. Some have hired anew, all for the purpose of making the most out of the behavior-tracking Yahoo platform. They believe its power will up their local rates and gain them substantial revenue streams from selling Yahoo inventory. The rub, though, is, as is often the case, execution. Case in point: in phase one of the Yahoo/newspaper ad deals, in which buys have been enabled more manually, a few newspaper titles have gone to town, well into deep six figures, while others have practically no new revenue to show. As consortium members look at consortium benchmarks over time -- the rollout of news sites on the platform won't be completed until the end of 2009, they'll see how well, or poorly, they're performing compared to peers. As we see quarterly earnings from 2Q, 2009 on, we'll all see who's making most of the Yahoo Bump. 
• How soon before Yahoo-owned video service Maven is integrated into the consortium ad play, at least as an option? Just as readers are getting more content-type agnostic, ad buyers increasingly want more centralized ways to buy audience, whether behavioral-targeted display or pre-roll?
• How COOL is that? Could that be the budget regimen for 2009. COOL, as in expense reduction through: Clustering (having close-by properties share services), Outsourcing (you name it!), Offshoring (ad production plus) and plain old Letting Go, as in people, buildings, distribution trucks, etc. More on COOL soon.

Person Robert Thomson

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Nine Questions on Newspapers' 2Q Reports

So what do we make of the first half of 2008 in DailyLand? Bad and getting worse. I've listened to the CEO webcasts -- so you don't have to! -- and must say that there were a couple of eerie echoes of my own suggested remarks, offered a couple of weeks ago ("Candidly, Frankly, Truthfully, Newspaper CEOs Talk About 2Q). CEOs would be the first to acknowledge that the times offer more questions than answers. Here's my first Nine, off recent reports: 

1. Where are the unprofitable properties? In June, Dean Singleton told the World Association of Newspapers that 19 of the top 50 US dailies were unprofitable. We didn't hear a whisper of unprofitability in the comments. Of course, only the public companies reported, which leaves a number of the top 50 unpublicized. Think MediaNews, Advance, Copley, Hearst. We knew that the San Francisco Chronicle was first to make the list, losing a million or so a week for about five years now. Who are the other 18?
2. Does McClatchy's announcement that it has almost reached the point that 50% of online revenues are online-only provide a new foundation of hope? Newspaper companies' reliance on the print/online upsell has been like heroin. Euphoric (25-35% on the way up) and paralyzing lethargy on the way down. Now online growth struggles to reach double digits at most companies, even as online ad spending continues to boom ahead at 18%+ growth rate. The smartest companies have profoundly shifted sales resources and sales training toward online-only, seeing their growth futures in the online ad economy. If McClatchy is a good way's along on licking its upsell habit, that may provide a good foundation for growth, especially as its participation in the Yahoo AMP network rolls out later this year.  Two more online revenue growth questions: a) Wouldn't it be great if each quarterly earnings report broke out online-only sales, by revenue in dollars and by percentage of overall online revenue? That would provide the market a new benchmark to gauge how much companies are building a future, not just cutting a past. b) What's going on with Lee's online growth number? Coming in at a negative 9.1%, it's a head-scratcher. We know that newspaper companies each bring their own unique accounting to print/online revenue allocations, and that could be an issue here. Or could be the upsell addiction, though Lee has put a lot of energy into transforming its sales as well. The next quarter's number will be fascinating to hear.
3. So you think current cuts are tough? Lee told us they cut 2.3% in expenses, this quarter 2008 compared this quarter 2007. But CEO Mary Junck added she plans additional expense cuts of 5-7% in the coming year. That could be lots of newsprint and jobs. McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt pegged further non-newsprint expense cutting at more than 10%. Other CEOs tell a similar story.
4. Does the June Swoon portend a worse second half? Check out the New York Times Co. June numbers compared to its 2Q numbers. For the quarter, the company was down 10.6% in ad revenue. For June, it was down 17.8%. The Times said entertainment advertising was the prime culprit for June's further turndown, but then said it could be 'til the end of the third quarter before things "loosen up." Gannett's numbers, 2Q (13.5%) vs June (down 16.3%) show the same trend.
5. When do we acknowledge that the classified economy model is broken? What we saw in the 2Q numbers was a 20%+ downturn from 2007. Recall the 2007/2006 2Q comparisons. Those were down 16.4% (that's a print-only number) for McClatchy, for instance. It's not just the fact that the economy/subprime mess has wreaked havoc in real estate, recruitment and auto. It's also the fact that reliance on the internet and its interactivity -- at many sites other than newspaper-owned ones -- increases by the month. Consider Media General's big dive -- 29.5% in a quarter. 
6. Are dividends the next to go? Pruitt made a point of saying the company would be reviewing its dividend payout at its next meeting; last year, the company didn't increase its dividend for the first time in years. That's only prudent, as Wachovia analyst Jon Janedis has pointed out. Companies in survival mode -- and that's where they're at -- are better off reducing debt and otherwise trying to hold their operations together -- if they can family members and other investors to take lesser or no payouts. Other companies have followed Gatehouse's rich dividend approach, with Gannett upping its payout by 30% less October.
7. How much of the new circ pricing strategy will stick? The New York Times has been raising prices since mid-last year and plans more increases in August, reporting success -- 2.5% increase in circ revenue. The Journal recently announced a whopping 33% increase from $1.50 to 2 for single copy, and papers as diverse as Toledo Blade, Chicago Tribune and Washington Post have joined in increasing print prices. Pricing comes against the numbers of continued circ revenue reduction for most companies: Gannett at -2.1% and McClatchy at -5.2%.  My guess: the big national papers find more success here than the metros, who are cutting their products back and asking for a more payment.
8. How long will Americans luxuriate themselves? Luxury goods have been a key growth line for both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, as both target luxury buyers with niche publications and sections. Janet Robinson noted that watches and fashion have continued big for the Times. The Journal itself just wrote about the phenomenon of Americans keeping up their lux purchases, despite the downturn. But investors sense this trend may not last -- pushing down luxury stocks 13% just since the end of May.
9. And of course, the biggest question: So how much of this lost advertising comes back when the economy recovers? That's the 64 million pixel question. Of course, some of it will, but it's dreaming to believe it will all come back as it has after previous downturns.  You can't blame them from hoping, but that hope may be beyond audacious.

Content Bridges: More 9 Questions

Nine Questions for Publishers This "Media Week"

"Media Week" takes place in New York this week, as public newspaper company (GCI, TRB, NYT, GHS, MNI, DJ, WPO, LEE, SSP) CEOs talk about the state of their companies with Wall Street financial analysts who cover the trade. As a sign of the times, the number of those analysts covering newspapers has been diminished by a couple this year. Why? More of the newspaper industry is going private -- witness some of the ex-Knight Ridder titles and soon the Tribune company -- and anyhow the investment story being told is losing any sense of suspense. Parsing decline is not much of a pastime.

Life for newspaper CEOs is tough duty these days. For them, participating in Media Week must be like going to a friendly dentist's office. You can trade pleasantries, exchanging first names, but the activity just isn't fun. We can now listen to these sessions via webcast, available on companies' investor pages or on seekingalpha.com (by company ticker symbol).

Too often, the questions we hear just pick at the carcass of the problem, questions like. "How much of the real estate turndown is caused by particularly bad conditions in Florida and California," or "What's your capital spending plan next year?" Not unimportant questions, but there are too few questions that get to the core issues.

I'm not a member of the financial analyst community, and I don't want to make these CEO times any more difficult, but I would like to see a few more pointed questions asked -- the kinds of questions that journalists themselves are now quietly asking behind the scenes. They are tough questions, but ones that are to the point of the survival of print journalism companies as know them today.

Here's nine of them. What's yours?

1. When I open up my Sunday paper, I see smaller sections, fewer stories, but still loads of circulars. With national and large regionals moving more ad dollars to the web, do you see any slackening of preprint revenue in 2008?
2. We've been hearing for more than two years that the circulation decline will ebb as your company cycles through the elimination of marginal (giveaway, distant+) sales. Will 2008 be the year that the cycle has run its course, or is a further 2-4% daily and Sunday decline expected? The new ABC rules let you define "paid circulation" very broadly, setting about any price you want. How has the new rule changed your marketing plans for 2008?
3. With the continuing circulation declines, how much longer can you sustain the premium pricing for mass market reach that's propped up margins? In fact, what's your median ad increase -- by category -- for 2008?
4. We've heard a lot about the Yahoo Hot Jobs bump. Can you tell us in dollar or percentage terms what it will add to revenues next year? We've heard that phase 2 of the Yahoo agreement will allow you to integrate with Yahoo's sophisticated ad matching systems. But we've also heard that these ad sells will mainly be used to double remnant inventory pricing (currently at $1-3 CPMs). What kind of inventory do you plan to use Yahoo for and, here, too, what kind of dollar or percentage increase in revenues will happen next year? How do you compare the Yahoo Bump with the Google Bump, as so far gotten from the recently expanded program in which Google sells print newspaper space through its auction system?
5. In an era of inevitably declining print revenues, does your company have a plan to transition as quickly as possible from print to digital, so that you won't be forever burdened with high legacy costs while building the online business? Can you tell us about it?
6. Cost-containment is key in this transition. How much of your cost-cutting is attributable to newsprint and ink, how much to streamlining (production, advertising, circulation, publishing) systems and how much to staff reduction?
7. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, in pushing cross-ownership relaxation, has said that "Permitting cross-ownership can preserve the viability of newspapers
   by allowing them to share their operational costs across multiple media
   platforms." While Belo and Scripps have both taken divergent actions regarding print and broadcast assets, can you tell what you think of Martin's notion and of your own specific plans to both slash operational costs and create true multimedia platform journalism companies?
8. What kind of contingency plan do you have for a recession?
9. What do you tell executives who say, "It'll last until I retire"?

Nine Questions on How The Latest Circ Decline Will Drive Market Moves

Today's FAS-FAX report is numbing in its lack of revelation. The newspaper industry's circulation swoon continues, and at a pace that hasn't changed much over the last three years.

Daily: Down 2.5%
Sunday: Down 3.5%

So nine questions on how today's numbers will drive the next set of market moves:

1) Last year, newspaper publishers said they were ending junk (freebies+) circulation that advertisers really didn't want and that those terminations were largely responsible for the 2%+ decline in circulation. They said 2007 would be better. Now who believes them that 2008 is the year that those cuts will have cycled through?

2) The New York Times wowed Wall Street with 3Q earnings, in part based on a 4.1% increase in circulation revenues, due in part to its aggressive price increases. Now, does the Times have a significant new churn problem, as evidenced by its woeful numbers, down 4.5% daily, and huge 7.59% on Sunday?

3) The Times' newest competition, the Wall Street Journal, had a smaller turndown of 1.5% daily. So don't the Times deepening woes just whet the appetite of the Journal's soon-to-be-owner Rupert Murdoch?

4) Today, soon-to-be-former New York Daily News TV columnist (and Fresh Air contributor) David Bianculli announced his own place on the web, www.tvworthwatching.com. Isn't it a good irony that he did it on the day his paper reported its circulation decline of 6.8% on Sunday and 1.7% daily. It's another sign of the times that the top talent is jumping (and being pushed) off boats as they take on more water. 

5) With the Star Tribune down (6.5% daily and 4.3% Sunday ) and the Pioneer Press eking out .1% increases, daily and Sunday, don't you think the MinnPost people -- set to launch their site Thursday are smiling, seeing, at this point, only upside?

6) With the Tribune's top three papers all down on Sunday (Chicago Tribune, 2.1%; L.A. Times, 5.1% and Newsday, 4.3%), how much deeper a hole will the Tribune have to dig out of, if the Zell deal falls apart, on FCC moves or other factors?

9 Questions on the Launch of Fox Business Network

Ah, we're into the week of The Wiles and Wails of Roger Ailes. Fox Business Channel launches Monday, all industry eyes glued to the story, the first demonstrable play associated with Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones putsch. That sale is due to close in November, but this FBN launch is a first act in Murdoch's quest for global domination of the business news and information business.

Ailes has long been a character of Rovian dimension, and he gets to see if he can put the same fright into CNBC that he put into CNN. His confident swagger was on glorious display in -- naturally -- the Wall Street Journal last week, as he gave an interview.

A little trash talk, a few war metaphors, and tomorrow, we'll be off to the races:

WSJ: How has the network changed since you left?

MR. AILES: It's gone down in ratings dramatically. I checked the numbers of the fourth calendar quarter in 95, my last year there. Their total day is down 5 percent and their demographic is down 15 percent. Prime time is down 61 percent and prime time demo is down 53 percent. So, it's changed quite a bit since I was there.

And leave it to Ailes to use war metaphors to make his point:

MR. AILES: I never predict offensive goals. I think that was Israel's problem in Lebanon. Look, there are too many variables: is there gonna be a recession? Will that affect the ratings on either channel? Will CNBC suddenly get better? Will something work out with The Wall Street Journal? Will we be better than expected? Is it gonna rain? There are just too many variables. So you don't go out there and say: I'm gonna do this.

But the wiles of the man are well-earned. Here are nine questions for News Corp upon launch:

1. What’s the attitude of FBN going to be? Ailes’ Fox News Channel is all about attitude. It’s news with a scowl, the face of Bill O’Reilly. That won’t work as easily with FBN. Will it be business news with a knowing insider’s wink? No, we don’t expect the Fox News spin here (two well-coiffed, super-carnivorous Irish-Americans vs. a single bespectacled, nice-guy (on nice-gal) weakling du jour from NPR).

Plenty of Americans like spin with their politics, but they won’t want it with their pocketbooks. “Free Markets, Free People” – the cry of the largely discredited neocons – only goes so far. Already, we’ve heard from FBN managing editor Neil Cavuto that other media over-covered Wall Street’s recent spate of company scandals, for which incidentally the soon-to-be-Foxed WSJ has won accolades. But investors have been outraged by the dealings, and they know they were getting screwed. Money is money, and FBN’s viewers will want the network to help get them get more of it.

So Fox’s moves here will have to be more nuanced. It will be tricky getting this formula right, but it did take FNC 4 years to overtake CNN.

2) How many more Carly Fiorinas are going to come out of the woodwork? Hey cable TV and the web have proven anyone can be an analyst. Fiorina – short on recent success, but a name that will be a shiny lure as FBN fishes in CNBC’s big pond and beyond – will get viewers to look. Expect more names to line up for the FBN show.  Forget Scott Boras and A-Rod, this is a great time to be an agent for the likes of Suze Orman, Jane Bryant Quinn, Jim Cramer, Andrew Tobias and James B. Stewart.

3. How Main Street will FBN go? Organic, a San Francisco-based ad agency, defined four potential targets from Nest Egg Newbie to Middle American Main Streeter, as it suggested FBN broaden its scope beyond CNBC’s narrow focus. Advantage to FBN: Getting beyond the narrow CNBC Investing-oriented reader, reaching more money-oriented viewers, in two huge personal finance categories: Spending and Saving.  Disadvantage to FBN: Going mid-market reduces the demographics FBN has to sell ads against. CNBC’s viewers have average net worths of $2.7 million, says the company.

Remember the current market is all about niche. While the potential audience of CNBC is 90 million households, most of us find it way too boring compared to the Top Chefs, the Survivors and the Discovery specials. In August, CNBC’s average audience numbered only 87,000 people, aged 25-54, according to Nielsen.

So, yes, FBN is on to a big idea here. There may well be a market vacuum. But it exists for a reason. Most Main Streeters don’t look at stopping by the bank as fun, they’d rather spend money and leave the strategies to others.

Consequently, expect this Main Street approach to take on lots of the per fi magazine evergreens – Retire Rich! (yes, yet again this month from Time Inc.’s Money). You know the 24-hour TV cycle can endlessly run “How to Save for Your Kids’ Education,” “Top 10 Places to Retire,” and “Picking the Right Financial Advisor for YOU.”

4. How will FBN leverage the reporting and personality assets it is buying (in November) as it closes the Dow Jones purchase? We do know that CNBC has a fairly tight exclusive to use WSJ reporters on air into 2012. Murdoch has publicly made the point that the deal applies to “hard news”.  It would be fun seeing a court apply a hard/soft scale to stories. Look at Murdoch’s posturing as setting up the argument that all those personal finance writers and columnists, all those contributors to the Journal’s expanding Weekend (arts, leisure, spending) and Pursuits sections plus all those Marketwatch and Barron’s writers aren’t covered by the deal.

5) How much will FBN be a TV play, and how much will it be a well-coordinated multi-channel play? Let’s recall that Rupert bought Dow Jones for $5 billion – at a 67% premium – because he sees its global multi-channel value. He’s named this initiative the Fox Business Network, unlike the 10-year-old Fox News Channel. First off, we’ll have to check out how FBN’s website evolves, how it connects to interactive financial advances of Marketwatch (nice customizable portfolio recently launched in beta) and how it connects to the company’s other online brands – wsj.com, barrons.com and Marketwatch.com. Those sites offer FBN a big leg-up over CNBC – never a leader in the online money space – if connected smartly. Is there a growing online money space? Yes, such ventures like FNN and CNNfn were too early, but that was then, and money, like other top categories benefits from the maturing of web business.

Though most everyone is pitching the launch as a TV battle, it’s clear that video, audio, text and photo assets are all merging – yes, finally converging – on websites near and far, with a fast-growing base of Internet-based advertising under them. Make no mistake this is not just a TV battle.

One useful data point: check out Comscore’s top 20 news websites, and you’ll see that the Fox News Channel leads all of them in duration – number of minutes spent on the site monthly – now at an eye-popping 48 minutes per unique visitor, in the September numbers just released. Fox has figured something out better than the competition here, or at least how to make its numbers look bigger.

Free Par! Nine Questions on Alternative Punishments

It's too easy. Par stays at the Star Tribune. Par leaves the Star Tribune. That's the end all the high-priced legal talent is driving to as the Twin Cities journalism community watches gape-mouthed at the sight of a Ridder scion pushed into the dock for stealing company secrets.

The basic issue: did Pioneer Press Publisher Par Ridder steal and then share confidential business information with his new employees at the arch-rival Star Tribune when he scurried across the river in the dead of day to become publisher there in March?

So rather than a simple up or down vote, let's look for some creative ways of dealing with the case. Nine questions about suitable punishment. What's yours?

1) Couldn't Par just be sentenced to a two-day course of creating Excel templates? He says he didn't want all those complicated ad rate numbers in the spreadsheets, just the formatting.

2) Since the judge David Higgs, is a Jesse Ventura appointee (yes, it's been four years since the pro wrestler was still appointing judges), could Higgs sentence Par to a showdown with Jesse, who's always been good at instructing others on right and wrong?

3) How about turning off Par to the protective custody of the Vulcans, the longtime, semi-secret Saint Paul fraternal society, who know what to do about boys who alight to big city and bright lights of Minneapolis?

4) Could Par stay in Minneapolis, but the laptop -- with data -- gets buried in the annual Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt, as readers follow the paper's daily clues and dig up half of the area looking each winter for a medallion?

5) How about Par stays in Minneapolis, maybe buying a new place on the Lake Minnetonka, but has to donate his new $1.3 million Sunfish Lake place to the St. Paul Boys and Girls Club?

Nine Questions, Post Dow Jones Sale

Well, it appears almost wrapped up. Rupert took his position, offered his price, and alternated between petulance and bonhomie in playing the DJ board and Bancrofts like the fine fiddler he is.

So, if the deal gets done done, let's begin to sort out what it means going forward. (And happy to adjust, should Christopher Bancrofts' Hail Mary seize the historic moment.)

Nine questions for now; what's yours?

1) When the next Oscar nominations get announced, will Ron Burkle get one for Best Continuing Cameo in Newspaper Negotiations? Post-Knight Ridder, Post-Tribune, Post-Dow Jones, what are we to make of his late-to-the-dance, always a down-the-line bridesmaid act?

2) Doesn't this tell us that the day of the standalone newspaper company is coming to an end? Gannett's the biggest U.S. daily newspaper company, and its market cap is a puny $13 billion. That seems paltry in days of such players' heft as News Corp's $23 billion, Google's $168 billion, Comcast's $59 billion and Disney's (ABC, ESPN+) $68 billion, Dow Jones pre-bid cap of $3 billion or so just seemed so small when the board and the Bancrofts saw the Powerpoints that pushed them to sell.

3) What plum job is in Clare Hart's future? She's the clearest and highest-profile voice of how information players need to adapt their B2B businesses in the Internet age. Assuming Rupert sells off the Factiva business (he's a B2C kind of guy), will she tumble to a post with current competitors like Reed Elsevier or the new Thomson Reuters, or maybe become a Googleite?

4) Whither Brad Greenspan? His oddball offer for 25% of the company stirred interest, but hasn't gone anywhere. And who were his mysterious backers? If he's serious about saving serious, independent journalism, he should have plenty of other opportunities.

5) With Knight Ridder, Tribune and Dow Jones all picked off, what does this mean for Gannett? Its newspaper portfolio is performing a tad better than the industry -- given its smaller markets -- but its minor diversification is in broadcast, which itself is fairly mature. Do investors think they can better maximize their value by pushing for a sale or have the tepid KR and Tribune sales taught them a lesson?

6) What's News Corp's ad play, post sale? It’s building an impressive portfolio with MySpace, IGN, Dow Jones and most importantly know-how in the fast-growing online ad space. Will it centralize operations, finding synergy that transcends -- and incorporates -- its disparate audiences? It bought start-up Strategic Data Corporation, and we can expect to see more such plays.

7) So can you imagine the Journal's storied editorial page turning leftward (!?!) and endorsing Friend of Rupert Hillary for Prez?

8) Can we expect to see a major play to team up Dow Jones content with a Yahoo Finance, an MSN Money or a Google Finance, reminiscent of the deal Rupert pulled off early on with Google to finance his MySpace purchase?

9) When will the new "independent" editorial board hear its first case, and will News Corp mouthpiece Gary Ginsberg say that the very issue is "insulting" to the proud tradition of News Corp editorial independence?

Sam Zell, Alfonso Soriano....and David Geffen?

Congratulations Mr. Zell. You have now joined a proud, but reeling fraternity. Nine questions in celebration of the end of the story that wouldn't end, Gawker's sentiment among many others:

1. So does this mean that the group that ended up with the prize are the unwilling employees of the Tribune Company, whose proxy was voted by Sam Zell?
2. Won't the record show that Zell got effective control of the company -- and its chairmanship -- for $315 million?
3. Is it really Alfonso Soriano's fault -- that big contract which grants him a right to learn Wrigley's center-field -- that the Tribune had to be sold?
4. While Zell has experience at seeing through distressed assets, isn't it the industry -- rather than the company -- in this case, that's distressed?
5. How much of the facts of Zell's Chicago connections and indication that he'd keep management in place swung the deal his way?
6. Did Ron Burkle ever really have a chance -- again? Will he try it again and somehow pierce the brotherhood more easily, and without public recrimination at the Eleventh Hour? Did his hiring of Jeff Johnson as a strategic adviser at the last minute hurt his case?
7. With a now-critical pass of newly independent owners -- Brian Tierney's group in Philly, Avista in Minneapolis, Zell -- will we see a new group band together to get their properties better deals from Google, Yahoo and the rest of the audience channels?
8. So, what will the new Tribune do with or without Yahoo, as 10 of its newspaper chain brethren, expand that consortium?
9. What sells after the Cubs? David Geffen, is your $2 billion offer for the Times still open?

What's your question?

Billionaire Bingo: Nine More Tribune Questions

Thanks to all for the points, questions and comments, on yesterday's post. Here's the next nine questions at this point:

1. So what will the role of former L.A. Times Publisher Jeff Johnson (shown here, left to right, in happier days with editors Dean Baquet and John Carroll) in a post-sale world be, if Ron Burkle gets the prize? Will Johnson, a once-loyal Tribune exec, who was sacked for impudence in publicly resisting budget cuts by CEO Dennis FitzSimons, play an operational role, and have FitzSimons, even for a day or so, reporting to him?

2. Recalling that Knight Ridder top execs walked away with three years pay,  what are the colors of those parachutes for Tribune management?

3. With Brian Tierney and Eric Grilly promising whole new approaches to modern newspapering online and off in Philadelphia and Chris Harte doing the same in Minneapolis, will a Tribune sale give juice to the next generation of independent outsiders bent on seeing these franchises differently and breaking molds?

4. So this week, is it more fun being part of The Chicagoist (which today sports a WSJ Online ad banner across the top of its home page) or the Chicago Tribune?

5. On the lure of an ESOP, is it a good idea for Tribune company staff to keep repeating, "It's not Peoria, it's not 1983," in reference to the much-cited Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star ESOP that left a bunch of reporting and copy-editing slugs early-retired and well-heeled?

Tribune Tower Totters: Nine Questions

Consider this. When the Chandler Trusts, owner of 19% of the company, first pushed to "maximize their investment" in Tribune last June, the share price stood at $33. It dipped and rose, but as Sam Zell's offer looked like it would win the day, we were back to the same number. $33. There's an irony in that, but so much irony abounds in the Tribune's recent tribulations, it's hard to isolate it.

Now of course, it's L.A. billionaires vs. Chicago billionaires, and Tribune shareholders -- if not employees -- look like they will pick up buck or two from the bidding, as Ron Burkle and Eli Broad slug it out with Zell. After the bidding is settled -- we think Saturday when the Tribune board meets -- many questions will remain about the Tribune Company going forward. Nine of them; what's yours?

1. Explain it to me again, how is the debt of $10 billion-plus going to get paid down, as revenues decline and capital expenditures for both the old business (presses, trucks) and the new businesses (ahead-of-the-curve classifieds and editorial publishing platforms) are required? If the proposition includes putting more of the current $2.3 billion in employee pension funds into the deal as an ESOP, aren't the employees doubling down on their prospects at what seems a poor time?
2. When Sam Zell says, "My intention is not to break it up," don't you just hear the inflection on "intention"?
3. If the keys to future growth are the stakes in the classifieds properties, CareerBuilder and Classified Ventures, what's the impact in a change of control of the company? Can Gannett increase its 42.5% in CareerBuilder and take a majority?
4. If one private equity formula is to find the greater fool, which fool do these buyers believe will be standing in the wings?
5. What might be the impact of the sale on the one initiative that has mojo in the industry, the growth of the Yahoo/newspaper consortium, already encompassing 10 chains and more than 22o papers?