newspapers

Newspapers' fall from grace

Forbes has a profile of McClatchy Co. after its absorption of Knight-Ridder that's titled "McClatchy's Fall From Grace." It includes this data point: "The [share price] decline leaves McClatchy, the nation's third-largest newspaper publisher by daily circulation, with a market capitalization of barely $1 billion."

That's about what McClatchy paid for the Star Tribune in 1998.

Moore's law kills CompUSA

For awhile part of the Sunday morning newspaper-reading ritual at my house has been to dig through the "guy toy" inserts from Lowe's, Home Depot, CompUSA and Best Buy.

Three of those companies are doing pretty well (in fact, Home Depot just opened another store within walking distance of my house). One is doing very poorly: CompUSA, which announced Friday that it's throwing in the towel and will close its stores after the holiday sales.

Oddly enough, there's a lesson in this for newspapers.

The decline of factory journalism

Journalism organizations are factories.

I don't mean the manufacturing and distribution process of newspapers (printing), but rather the way news is handled. It's shuttled along a Henry Ford assembly line through reporter through copy desk (subeditors to you Brits), handled by a series of specialists, processed by automated machinery, combined, reorganized and shot out the door as a unitary product, whether it's print or online.