Newsprint demand down but will there be Play on newsprint prices?

It just isn't getting any better is it?

September 07-September 08, U.S newsprint demand went down 13%, newsprint prices went up 13%. That's the real number to worry about for the IHT because my understanding is that IHT newsprint is bought off the back of the higher NYT newsprint purchases. But in Europe the price gets worse too. As does demand.


Newspapers face fresh printing pressures (FT)
By Robert Anderson in Stockholm and Christopher Mason in Ottawa
Published: November 16 2008 17:30 Last updated: November 16 2008 17:30
Newspapers, which are already bracing themselves for falling advertising sales as the global economy turns down, face more bad news next year as newsprint producers try to push through steep price increases.
European newsprint producers led by Norske Skog, the world’s second-largest, are currently negotiating with customers to increase prices by up to 20 per cent.
They believe that recent capacity cuts have given them the market power to compensate for years of rising costs, flat prices and falling margins.
“We’ve been under quite a drastic margin squeeze for several years,” said Norske Skog’s spokesman. “We see a momentum now for increased prices.”
All of Europe’s big newsprint producers are currently lossmaking as demand continues to fall because of the switchover to internet publication, while wood, energy and transport costs have risen significantly.
European producers have responded this year by committing to cut some 1m tones of capacity – 6 per cent of the total, according to Norske Skog, double the 3 per cent fall in demand.
As cost pressures start to ease, this gives producers a shot at raising margins.
“In Europe we will see the biggest changes, as we’ve had constant overcapacity for several years,” Norske Skog says.
European producers are also benefiting from a fall in imported newsprint as North American producers turn back to their home markets.
North American producers have suffered even more from falling demand, as the switch to the internet has taken hold faster there, but they have also been quicker to consolidate and cut capacity. In the year to September North American newsprint prices soared 33 per cent while consumption continued its descent, falling nearly 13 per cent over the same period.
North American Newsprint producers AbitibiBowater, Catalyst Paper, and Tembec initially compensated for drops in domestic demand by exporting to western Europe, Latin America and Asia.
But the strengthening dollar and the steep rise in North American newsprint prices have swept away European price advantages.
In the first nine months of 2008, newsprint exports to western Europe fell 20.6 per cent from the same period last year, according to the Montreal-based Pulp and Paper Products Council. Exports to Latin America and Asia grew by 17 and 9.3 per cent respectively in the same period, reflecting producers’ efforts to seek out new growth markets.
Analysts remain doubtful, however, whether newsprint producers will be able to push through the price increases in full without more capacity cuts.
“If [North American] producers don’t come out and shut down more capacity, it looks like prices will peak at the end of this year,” said Rahul Gandhi, a New York-based paper analyst with CreditSights.
“The decline in demand though will not stop, so it’s not looking good for producers if they are unable to raise prices.”
“There is a possibility that [European] prices will go up but demand will also go down,” says Johnson Imode of Standard & Poor’s Equity Research in London. “Clients will be able to strike quite a hard bargain with newsprint manufacturers.”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2cac4b2-b400-11dd-8e35-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1


More housekeeping at the Harbinger (of doom) announced - what exactly is going on there I couldn't tell you - but equity swaps reported at around the $15.00 mark - and the NYT Company share price slips yet further.

I said $10 would be a tipping point, we got there shortly thereafter, and we have tipped. How that re-scheduling of borrowing is going I wouldn't like to say but this is beginning to look a lot like GM. Citibank cut another 24,000 jobs yesterday, taking it to 20% of its workforce, and short of the NYT doing something similar, I can't see a turn around anytime soon.

Even if 2010 (end thereof at best, I might add) sees us come out of the advertising recession, I fear that's too far off for the NYT. Advertisers by then may just have given up on print.

Yesterday, the NYT shuttered its award winning mag PLAY having said it would keep 4 issues in 2009, so there you go.

Talk was up about Play as recently as last October (as was talk of no layoffs) but according to an email to Fishbowl NY, from Play editor Mark Bryant, "The company needs to make some pretty considerable cuts going forward."

There's an understatement.

"It was on the schedule. It was in the budget," Bryant wrote when asked "why the magazine had been shuttered so soon after both he and the Times brass confirmed it would continue next year".

According to Bryant, Play wasn't losing money. "I'm am told that last year we more or less broke even, thanks largely to the Nielsen deal for the Olympic issue," he wrote. ('Nielsen bought out the entire issue. It was, according to Bryant, the "largest single day sale in the history of The New York Times".)

Et alors? More or less break even, even with the single day sale in the history of the NYT. Says it all.

Share price now: $7.10 on a day that hit a low yesterday of, yes, $7.

That's 47% down on three months, 61% down on 1 year. Not that anyone's counting or anything.

Anyone want to buy a GM SUV? But where's print's Toyota Prius? It's hard to find a media outlet, print or Internet, that isn't hacking staff off as fast as it can, and one can't help wondering when this option is put into Play at the NYT.

I still fancy a 'go-private' move - hard pressed to see an alternative; hope there are some rich people who couldn't live without their NYT.

The family could sell some voting stock to Harbinger/The Mexican Gunslinger to get that debt down, but what would be the implications of that? Very ugly.

New York Times Co
(NYT:NYQ) NYT on other Exchanges
7.10 USD Last
-0.24 -3.27% Change
1.3M Below Average Volume

Data as of November 17, 2008 16:04 exchange time. Market data is delayed by at least 20 minutes

A Shot in the Arm for IHT Morale.

When was the last time you can remember a NYT editorial using the work of IHT journalists? Not in a long time.

All good, and good for the brand equity for the IHT (which seems to be being diminshed by the planned wiping from the NYT Company's asset sheet of www.iht.com at a time when frankly I'd have thought they could hardly afford to do such a thing. Have they thought this one through?)

What I find interesting about this editorial are the mixed messages.

The IHT isn't referenced as being owned by the NYT; in the paper NYT and IHT journalists aren't distinguished from one another, in the newsroom it's all talk about intergration and the IHT merely being the global edition of the NYT.

Yet here we have, in terms of brand value, a clear distinction drawn between the IHT and the NYT.

Confused? You should be.

EDITORIAL
Corruption in Bulgaria and Romania
Sunday, November 16, 2008
When the European Commission decided in September 2006 to admit Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union, nobody pretended they were really ready.
The thinking was that EU membership would keep them safely out of Russia's orbit. There were also hopes that joining the European political mainstream would accelerate their efforts to rein in organized crime and corruption. The latter was a fairly astounding miscalculation.
What actually happened, as Doreen Carvajal and Stephen Castle have reported in detail in the IHT, was that the prospect of billions in EU subsidies only encouraged the criminals to diversify from smuggling and extortion and to burrow into the political and judicial systems - the better to siphon off EU money.
Today, Bulgaria is rated by Transparency International as the most corrupt nation in the 27-nation EU. The country could lose almost half a billion euros in aid that was frozen in July because of fears that it was vulnerable. Romania is also a cause of serious concern.
This state of affairs is devastating at all levels. The Bulgarian and Romanian people badly need the EU's development aid. And the shocking reports of corruption are hardening the resistance of other Europeans to further expanding the EU, thus lessening the chances of Turkey or Ukraine to ever join.
Perhaps most grievously, the spread of corruption through all levels of government and society, as in Russia and some other Balkan countries, makes it far more difficult to eradicate everywhere.
The IHT articles chronicled how those who tried to expose or combat the criminals in Bulgaria were regularly threatened, maimed or killed, and how these crimes routinely go unsolved. The result, the reporters were told, was that people have come to accept corruption as an unavoidable fact of life and have become apathetic about fighting it.
The wrong conclusion would be to close the EU door forever. The right one would be to ensure that those who pass through it are ready and get all the support they need to be full and healthy members.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/16/opinion/edbulgaria.php

LOOKING FOR A CHRISTMAS BOOK GIFT TO BUY?

"Books about cosmopolitan urbanites discovering the joys of country life are two a penny, but this one is worth a second glance. Walthew's vivid description of the moral stress induced by his job as a high-flying executive with the International Herald Tribune newspaper is worth the cover price alone…. Highly recommended." The Oxford Times

Amazon.co.uk

A PLACE IN MY COUNTRY
by
Ian Walthew

'I read A Place in My Country with absolute unalloyed delight. A glorious book.'

Jeremy Irons (actor)

‘Ian Walthew was a newspaper executive with a career that took him round the world, who one day did a mad thing. He saw a for-sale sign on a cottage in the Cotswolds, bought it, resigned and moved in. For the first few weeks he just lay on the grass in a daze. Then he started talking to his neighbours and digging into the rich history of this beautiful part of England. Out of his inquiries grew this affecting and inspiring memoir.What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to. His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’ Financial Times

Amazon.com
A PLACE IN MY COUNTRY

by

Ian Walthew

For more reviews visit ianwalthew.com

Business trip to the IHT in Paris or friends and family coming to visit you? Fed up with hotels? Bring the family (sleeps 6) to superb Montmartre apartment - weekend nights free of charge if minimum of 3 work nights booked;. Cable TV; wifi, free phone calls in France (landlines); large DVD and book library; kids toys, books, travel cot and beds; two double bedrooms; all mod cons; half an hour to Neuilly and 12 mins walk from Eurostar. T&E valid invoices.

10% Discount for NYT employees; 15% Discount for IHT Employees

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IHT

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Dodging the death knell of obsolescence (cough, cough, newspapers)

My new sport is awaiting the first serious reporting by a NYT or IHT journalist about the fate and fortunes of their own employer, the NYT Company.

Today we're still at the polite 'cough, cough' stage, but watch this space.

Dodging the death knell of obsolescence
By Catherine Rampell
Sunday, November 16, 2008
By some logic, there is no earthly reason why bicycles should still exist.
They are a quaint, 19th-century invention, originally designed to get someone from point A to point B. Today there are much faster, far less labor-intensive modes of transportation. And yet hopeful children still beg for them for Christmas, healthful adults still ride them to work, and daring teenagers still vault them down courthouse steps. The bicycle industry has faced its share of disruptive technologies, and it has repeatedly risen from the ashes.
Other industries (cough, cough, newspapers) should be so lucky.
For some businesses, the current economic downturn is a bit problematic. For those already facing fundamental threats — like newspapers and American automakers — it could accelerate the path to what, it has been said, might be death.
But history offers some reason for optimism. Industries like bicycle manufacturers, when faced with a threat of obsolescence, managed to creatively reinvent themselves. What lessons do they provide for struggling industries?
There's no clear route to cheating industrial death. Those companies that have survived technological challenges have in common some combination of perseverance, creativity, versatility and luck. Their precise strategies vary. Some made sweeping changes, and abandoned their original products entirely; others were able to endure by changing little but their marketing.
Take, for example, a certain class of luxury goods. Inventors have created more user-friendly writing implements than fountain pens, more dependable time-keeping devices than mechanical wristwatches, and more efficient ways to heat houses than fireplaces. Yet, many consumers still gladly opt for the cultural cachet of technologically more primitive goods.
These older technologies have survived by recasting themselves as luxuries and by marketing their sensory, aesthetic and nostalgic appeal. Their producers emphasize their experiential rather than functional qualities.
In short, they were Ye-Olde-ed, and a boutique-y rump of the original industry now survives.
The popularity of newspapers the day after Barack Obama's election — when they were probably valued more as historical artifacts than as sources of news — had a whiff of this development.
But newspapers were not designed with maximum tactile pleasure and durability in mind. "Newspapers were always this scrubby sheet of paper with ink that came off, and that deteriorate in a few hours," said Gregory Clark, an economic historian at the University of California at Davis.
For that reason, he said, it is somewhat difficult to imagine newspapers remarketing themselves as a luxury product.
Perhaps there are other qualities unique to newspapers that can be exploited, just as previous creative industries have discovered when facing disruptive technologies.
Photography might have killed Western painting and portraiture, for example, because painters knew they couldn't compete with the speed and accuracy with which photographs represented the visual world. Instead, many painters and other traditional visual artists innovated with more abstract and less representational images.
Similarly, television might have crowded out movies. Instead, Hollywood focused on bigger, more spectacular, more risqué films — the stuff that television couldn't deliver.
Some survivor industries discovered new customer bases.
Bicycles, for example, grew in popularity in the United States through the late 19th century, peaking in the 1890s, but the craze weakened around the turn of the last century. After the First World War, manufacturers discovered a new youth market, which lasted until the baby boomers were kids. Then bikes fell out of favor again, but were revived during the 1970s when those boomers, and their kids, became more interested in personal exercise and gas-free, environmentally friendly modes of transportation.
Radio is an even better example. In its 1940s heyday, it was the center of U.S. national entertainment. Then, in the 1950s, television began stealing radio's biggest stars, like Jack Benny and Abbott and Costello. National advertisers — radio's revenue base — followed the talent. "Radio, actually shockingly, was pronounced dead in 1953," says Susan Douglas, chair of the communication studies department at the University of Michigan.
But the industry revitalized itself by tapping into new markets. First it stumbled upon the youth music market, congregating around the car radio. Then radio innovators found other neglected markets, including underground music movements, longer-form news and talk radio. Along the way, radio's business model changed; the medium cultivated new niche advertisers, rather than national advertisers, to pay for its new niche programming.
For some companies, nestling into a marketing nook wasn't enough. They made radical transitions to new products and new industries, and survived through evolution, not preservation.
"Much of the history of the 'American system of manufacturing' is the story of inventors moving from a declining industry to a new expanding industry," says Petra Moser, an economic historian at Stanford who studies innovation. "Inventors take their skills with them."
Gun makers learned to make revolvers with interchangeable parts in the mid-19th century, Moser says. Then those companies (and some former employees, striking out on their own) applied those techniques to sewing machines when demand for guns slackened. Later, sewing machine manufacturers began making woodworking machinery, bicycles, cars and finally trucks.
Some famous companies have taken more improbable turns, either because their original business was fading or because they saw better growth opportunities. Before making cellphones, Nokia made paper. Before making cars, Toyota made looms (a Toyota textile business still exists). Corning is still a specialty glass and ceramics company known to most consumers for its tableware, but for more than a century it has also profited from uses as diverse as early light bulbs, space, defense and fiber-optic cable.
Some superstar companies managed to reinvent themselves multiple times — IBM, for example. Over a century, the company has nimbly transitioned from punch-card accounting equipment (its original business) to large mainframe computers, to personal computers, and finally to information-technology — each time facing skepticism from analysts who thought IBM might be too big, too old or too entrenched to adapt.
These companies survived by keeping their ears to the ground. New customer needs emerged, and smart corporations positioned themselves to meet them. "You have to be willing to walk away from the things that have made you great," says Scott Anthony, president of Innosight, which consults with companies (including newspapers and automotive businesses) on how to foster a culture of innovation. He argues that the incumbents in the newspaper industry were caught sleeping during the initial meteoric growth period of Web sites like Wikipedia because the avenue for innovation — letting crowds rather than experts aggregate and filter data — seemed so antithetical to what newspapers did well.
Of course, straying too far from what a company does well has also proven dangerous. "If you look at the history of firms that have tried to diversify their businesses, you'll see it's virtually an impossible thing to do," says David Hounshell, a historian at Carnegie Mellon University who studies technology and social change. "Usually when a firm announces a program to diversify, they've pretty much written their death warrant."
Newspapers have faced challenges before and have adapted — including through efforts at diversification. Can these historical precedents teach newspapers how to defeat the economic forces of technological change once again?
Like previous industries fearful of obsolescence, newspapers can either develop a new product, or find a way to remarket and remonetize the old one. Right now, newspapers are doing a little of both: They're adapting their product to the Web to attract new audiences, and they're trying to re-monetize by delivering more targeted advertising.
Meanwhile, we've already seen some of the "destruction" half of Joseph Schumpeter's famous "creative destruction" paradigm, with many newspapers cutting staff and other production costs. Unfortunately for newspapers, historians say, the survivors in previous industries facing major technological challenges were usually individual companies that adapted, rather than an entire industry. So a bigger shakeout may yet come.
But perhaps the destruction will lead to more creativity. Perhaps the people we now know as journalists — or, for that matter, autoworkers — will find ways to innovate elsewhere, just as, over a century ago, gun makers laid down their weapons and broke out the needle and thread. That is, after all, the American creative legacy: making innovation seem as easy as, well, riding a bike.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/16/news/16rampell.php

LOOKING FOR A CHRISTMAS BOOK GIFT TO BUY?
"Books about cosmopolitan urbanites discovering the joys of country life are two a penny, but this one is worth a second glance. Walthew's vivid description of the moral stress induced by his job as a high-flying executive with the International Herald Tribune newspaper is worth the cover price alone…. Highly recommended." The Oxford Times

Amazon.co.uk
A PLACE IN MY COUNTRY

by

Ian Walthew

'I read A Place in My Country with absolute unalloyed delight. A glorious book.'
Jeremy Irons (actor)

‘Ian Walthew was a newspaper executive with a career that took him round the world, who one day did a mad thing. He saw a for-sale sign on a cottage in the Cotswolds, bought it, resigned and moved in. For the first few weeks he just lay on the grass in a daze. Then he started talking to his neighbours and digging into the rich history of this beautiful part of England. Out of his inquiries grew this affecting and inspiring memoir.What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to. His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’ Financial Times


Amazon.com

A PLACE IN MY COUNTRY
by
Ian Walthew


For more reviews visit ianwalthew.com

Business trip to the IHT in Paris or friends and family com

ing to visit you? Fed up with hotels? Bring the family (sleeps 6) to superb Montmartre apartment - weekend nights free of charge if minimum of 3 work nights booked;. Cable TV; wifi, free phone calls in France (landlines); large DVD and book library; kids toys, books, travel cot and beds; two double bedrooms; all mod cons; half an hour to Neuilly and 12 mins walk from Eurostar. T&E valid invoices.

10% Discount for NYT employees; 15% Discount for IHT Employees




International Herald Tribune
IHT
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The NYT Company

Why newspapers need to come up with a paid content model.

Most group think says that paid content models for newspapers won't work.

Well, with current approaches, ideas and technology they won't.

But people like me, who have different approaches, different ideas and different technology don't agree. Problem is: we can't find a newspaper interested in talking about it or the money to invest in making it doable.

If you doubt the need for a paid content model for newspapers, do two things.

The first is to check out my other blog, www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com which is many things but not least of all an active demonstration of the need for newspapers to come up with paid content models.

My view is this, and as an author I obviously have mixed feelings about this: if you can't come up with a paid content model then you're too dumb to deserve not being ripped off by bloggers like me.

Show us a way to pay and we'll pay.

Secondly, read this little gem, which is, need I say it, a pirated article:

Pirated articles costing publishers
The Associated Press
Friday, November 14, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO: The audience for unauthorized copies of newspaper articles online is nearly one and a half times larger than the readership on the newspapers' own Web sites, a study released Thursday found.
Attributor, a company that monitors copyright issues, said media companies could capitalize on the trend if they could figure out a way to get a piece of advertising revenue from the traffic flocking to their pirated stories.
The worst copyright headaches diagnosed in Attributor's study occurred in stories about automobiles, travel and movie reviews. The readership of unlicensed stories in those three categories was four to seven times higher than on the Web sites where the content originated.
Attributor, which makes software that trolls the Internet for copyright violations, estimated that the average Web publisher could collect more than $150,000 annually in additional revenue by selling ads alongside its unlicensed material.
The company said the estimate was based on an assumption that advertisers would pay $1 for every 1,000 pages of unauthorized material viewed on Web sites that are not owned by the copyright owners.
If anything, Attributor believes its calculations understate the loss to publishers. The company is already working with a few media companies that could generate more than $1 million in annual advertising by enforcing their online copyrights, said Rich Pearson, Attributor's vice president of marketing.
"The people creating all this content are not being justly rewarded and publishers are clamoring for every dollar of revenue that they can get in this environment," Pearson said.
Attributor, which is privately held, would stand to profit if it could persuade potential customers that the Internet is riddled with copyright abuses that could translate into more revenue if the poachers were identified. Attributor's customers include The Associated Press, Reuters and The Financial Times.
But the issue of copyright infringement was a sore point for media executives long before the company began developing its detection system in 2006.
Attributor's study reviewed 30 billion Web pages hosting copies of stories from more than 100 major Web sites. None of the sites belonged to Attributor's current customers. After excluding all properly licensed content, Attributor then discarded any page that copied less than 50 percent or fewer than 125 words of a copyrighted story.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/13/business/papers.php

READ AN ALTERNATIVE IHT DAILY NARRATIVE AT
A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE

LOOKING FOR A CHRISTMAS BOOK GIFT TO BUY?
"Books about cosmopolitan urbanites discovering the joys of country life are two a penny, but this one is worth a second glance. Walthew's vivid description of the moral stress induced by his job as a high-flying executive with the International Herald Tribune newspaper is worth the cover price alone…. Highly recommended." The Oxford Times

Amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Place-My-Country-Search-Rural/dp/0753823888/ref=pd_sbs_b_title_14

'I read A Place in My Country with absolute unalloyed delight. A glorious book.'
Jeremy Irons (actor)

‘Ian Walthew was a newspaper executive with a career that took him round the world, who one day did a mad thing. He saw a for-sale sign on a cottage in the Cotswolds, bought it, resigned and moved in. For the first few weeks he just lay on the grass in a daze. Then he started talking to his neighbours and digging into the rich history of this beautiful part of England. Out of his inquiries grew this affecting and inspiring memoir.What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to. His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’ Financial Times


Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Place-My-Country-Search-Rural/dp/029785173X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225089096&sr=8-1

For more reviews visit ianwalthew.com

Business trip to the IHT in Paris or friends and family coming to visit you? Fed up with hotels? Bring the family (sleeps 6) to superb Montmartre apartment - weekend nights free of charge if minimum of 3 work nights booked;. Cable TV; wifi, free phone calls in France (landlines); large DVD and book library; kids toys, books, travel cot and beds; two double bedrooms; all mod cons; half an hour to Neuilly and 12 mins walk from Eurostar. T&E valid invoices.
10% Discount for NYT employees; 15% Discount for IHT Employees

http://www.montmartreabbesses.com


International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
The NYT Company

NYT Company goes as low as $7.25; Harbinger Capital Partners does some housekeeping.

Not a great week.

The opening bell rung Monday at $9.25, so if you thought that was a good buy under $10 you lost 22% of you investment by the weekend. Hope you didn't.

NYT Company stock traded at an all-time low of $7.25 on Friday and closed out the week a cent above it's previous low of $7.33.

At $7.34 that represents a drop of nearly 47% in the last 3 months, -58% YTD, -61% in a year, -74% in 3 years and -84% over 5 years. More than that you really don't want to know.

Feb. 26th, 2004, it closed at $48.60 at a volume of nearly 3.5 million shares traded. Looking at recent volumes, who knows what's going on.

Meanwhile Friday, a Form 4 regarding The New York Times Company was filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission concerning 10% Class A Common Stock owners Harbinger Capital, moving some 40 million shares from its Special Situations Fund into another of its vehicles last Wednesday. This they did at $8.38. They also did some derivative stuff on nearly 400,000 shares that maybe made them some bucks, so someone, at least is making money.

You've gotta ask yourself if some naked short selling on NYT stock isn't the way forward. But remember:

Ring-a-ring o'roses,

A pocket full of posies,

A-tishoo! A-tishoo!

We all fall down.

New York Times Co
(NYT:NYQ) NYT on other Exchanges
7.34 USD Last
-0.62 -7.79% Change
2.4M Above Average Volume

Data as of November 14, 2008 16:05 exchange time. Market data is delayed by at least 20 minutes.
Today's Open
7.82 USD
Previous Close
7.96 USD
Today's High
8.06 USD
Today's Low
7.25 USD
Today's Volume
2.4M
Avg Volume (10 day)
1.3M

READ AN ALTERNATIVE IHT DAILY NARRATIVE AT
A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE

LOOKING FOR A CHRISTMAS BOOK GIFT TO BUY?
"Books about cosmopolitan urbanites discovering the joys of country life are two a penny, but this one is worth a second glance. Walthew's vivid description of the moral stress induced by his job as a high-flying executive with the International Herald Tribune newspaper is worth the cover price alone…. Highly recommended." The Oxford Times

Amazon.co.uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Place-My-Country-Search-Rural/dp/0753823888/ref=pd_sbs_b_title_14

'I read A Place in My Country with absolute unalloyed delight. A glorious book.'
Jeremy Irons (actor)

‘Ian Walthew was a newspaper executive with a career that took him round the world, who one day did a mad thing. He saw a for-sale sign on a cottage in the Cotswolds, bought it, resigned and moved in. For the first few weeks he just lay on the grass in a daze. Then he started talking to his neighbours and digging into the rich history of this beautiful part of England. Out of his inquiries grew this affecting and inspiring memoir.What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to. His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’ Financial Times


Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Place-My-Country-Search-Rural/dp/029785173X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225089096&sr=8-1

For more reviews visit ianwalthew.com

Business trip to the IHT in Paris or friends and family coming to visit you? Fed up with hotels? Bring the family (sleeps 6) to superb Montmartre apartment - weekend nights free of charge if minimum of 3 work nights booked;. Cable TV; wifi, free phone calls in France (landlines); large DVD and book library; kids toys, books, travel cot and beds; two double bedrooms; all mod cons; half an hour to Neuilly and 12 mins walk from Eurostar. T&E valid invoices.

10% Discount for NYT employees; 15% Discount for IHT Employees

http://www.montmartreabbesses.com


International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
The NYT Company

New York Times Company to be bailed out by private investors?

I've been blogging for some time on the very real possibility of the NYT Company taking themselves private as part of some sort of philanthropic bailout by civic minded members of the great and the good of New York. No pressure to make vast profits, worry about shareholders etc.

Interestingly, this tongue in cheek piece from Businessweek, like any satire, has more than a grain of truth behind it.

The money won't come from government, but it may come from a group of very rich, liberal investors.

I wonder if the Family are working the dinner parties and putting out feelers to see if anyone is willing to throw their hat into the ring?




Media Centric November 13, 2008, 5:00PM EST

A Bailout Plan For U.S. Newspapers
A modest proposal for a lobbying campaign to save America's battered dailies
By Jon Fine

TO: Senior executives at U.S. newspaper companies
FROM: Tongue & Cheek Lobbying Innovations LLC
The post-Election Day landscape brings great change for America and its governing philosophy, and this is why we must move quickly to craft a federal bailout for the newspaper industry.
I know from some previous discussions that not all of you agree. Unlike with banks, the collapse of American newspapers does not endanger the world's financial system. Unlike car companies, the newspaper industry does not lose billions of dollars each month. No matter. We can position this as a proactive move to save the only industry prominently mentioned in the Bill of Rights. (Our message team likes that last bit. You'll hear it a lot.) This industry employs over 52,000 journalists, thousands of other workers, and it faces unprecedented challenges. It takes more than a quadrennial sales spike from a closely watched election to save newspapers. Also, the bailout money is there, and—ask any struggling retailer or chain of hair salons soon to claim that they, too, are banks—it won't be there forever.
An Obama Administration will likely show little love for the workaday press, as a simple holler out to your reporters that covered his campaign will confirm. (If you still employ campaign reporters, that is.) But Barack Obama is a civic-minded man. He will appoint civic-minded staffers. They may not love reporters, but they grew up with newspapers. They won't want them to go away, especially since we will paint a news paradigm without papers as being dominated by Fox News and bloggers banging on spittle-flecked laptops.
Decades ago, legislation passed to allow joint operating agreements between competitive local papers, in order to preserve diverse editorial voices. Our mission today will be cast as preserving educational voices.
Two potential Newspaper Rescue Acts:
Debt Relief/Subsidization. The U.S. assumes all outstanding debt at all newspaper companies. At midyear that was $14 billion for the publicly traded players (excluding News Corp., which only owns two U.S. newspapers, but more on them later), $12.5 billion for the Tribune Co., plus more for other private players. The U.S. may take equity stakes in all companies, should the government deem this wise. This plan also includes a onetime sum to offset current revenue shortfalls. Newspapers took in $45 billion from advertising in '07; let's assume ad declines this year and next will total $15 billion. Cost: Around $45 billion.
Industry Digitization. Think of the "license fee" British households pay to the BBC. Government will subsidize Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle (or equivalent device) and mandate that each household purchase one for $50. (Households below the poverty line will get one free.) This plan also provides several billion dollars to develop new digital news products, retrofit or dispose of obsolete assets (like printing presses), and roughly maintain existing newsroom staffs. Government again has the option to secure passive equity stakes. We will stress this plan's "green" aspects. Cost: Approximately $55 billion.
To paraphrase incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, never let a crisis go to waste—it allows you to do big things. Tongue & Cheek can guide the lobbying push essential for our mutual success, but we will require the participation of industry leaders who can navigate Washington with finesse and charm. In other words: Sam Zell, please stay home and tend to Tribune. (By the way, Tongue & Cheek has cultivated News Corp. (NWS) executives. Having Rupert Murdoch on board will defang those who howl about liberal media bias.)
Should our proposals fail, we can still shake loose much low-hanging fruit. For starters, a special—and substantial—tax credit for daily newspapers, given our "educational" rebranding. Consumers' subscriptions will win tax-deductible status as well. I'm less certain than some of you that lifting laws preventing newspapers from owning radio or TV stations in the same market will fatten bottom lines. But here, too, a persuasion campaign can reap benefits.
I recognize some may perceive all this as an admission of defeat. But let's feel a sense of opportunity, not shame. And always remember how your business differs from the other supplicants. No newspaper ever bankrupted a country or peddled a product as patently putrid as the Pontiac Aztek.
Fine is BusinessWeek's MediaCentric columnist and Fine On Media blogger .

Meanwhile, how are those stocks doing?

Er, not too good. As of about 20 mintutes ago, here's the story.

New York Times Co
(NYT:NYQ) NYT on other Exchanges
7.49 USD Last
-0.47 -5.90% Change
687.4K Below Average Volume

Data as of November 14, 2008 13:27 exchange time. Market data is delayed by at least 20 minutes

That would be a 20% drop this week, with a low of $7.33 and a low of $7.44 this week. If there's ever a time to do this, it's now.

It's not a strategy for survival, it's not a business plan, even as a non-profit making foundation funded newspaper, but it would buy some much needed time for someone, please someone to come up with some ideas.

This ad recession is going to go into 2010, no doubt about it, and that means 2 years of agencies and clients finding cheaper and cheaper alternatives that work. I don't think there is a lender out there right now with that much patience or risk carefree.

People are talking about GM going bankcrupt. Well, wait till you see the Q4 earnings, then the 2009 Q1 and Q2 and need I go on......

READ AN ALTERNATIVE IHT DAILY NARRATIVE AT
A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE

LOOKING FOR A CHRISTMAS BOOK GIFT TO BUY?
"Books about cosmopolitan urbanites discovering the joys of country life are two a penny, but this one is worth a second glance. Walthew's vivid description of the moral stress induced by his job as a high-flying executive with the International Herald Tribune newspaper is worth the cover price alone…. Highly recommended." The Oxford Times

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'I read A Place in My Country with absolute unalloyed delight. A glorious book.'
Jeremy Irons (actor)

‘Ian Walthew was a newspaper executive with a career that took him round the world, who one day did a mad thing. He saw a for-sale sign on a cottage in the Cotswolds, bought it, resigned and moved in. For the first few weeks he just lay on the grass in a daze. Then he started talking to his neighbours and digging into the rich history of this beautiful part of England. Out of his inquiries grew this affecting and inspiring memoir.What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to. His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’ Financial Times

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For more reviews visit ianwalthew.com

Business trip to the IHT in Paris or friends and family coming to visit you? Fed up with hotels? Bring the family (sleeps 6) to superb Montmartre apartment - weekend nights free of charge if minimum of 3 work nights booked;. Cable TV; wifi, free phone calls in France (landlines); large DVD and book library; kids toys, books, travel cot and beds; two double bedrooms; all mod cons; half an hour to Neuilly and 12 mins walk from Eurostar. T&E valid invoices.

10% Discount for NYT employees; 15% Discount for IHT Employees



International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
The NYT Company

Hoaxes and Non-existence: When is Richard Pérez-Peña going to start writing about the future of the NYT Company?

Richard Pérez-Peña, the New York Times senior media writer, does a stand up job of covering the American media scene, most recently A senior fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence By Richard Pérez-Peña and coverage of the hoax NYT edition (covered by this blog before the NYT).

The IHT is happy to run corporate press releases concerning good news stories - appointments of new editors, opening of print sites, publishing partnerships etc.

But there seems to be a resounding silence from the NYT and the IHT's media writers about the future of their employee.

Normally, I am against in-house media writers covering their own paper, and don't like the above mentioned examples of corporate puff pieces - there is a credibility problem.

But if the senior editors will run these puff pieces, isn't it time for some serious reporting about the rather dire straights of the NYT Company. It is, presumably, a two way street, and of some interest to IHT readers (at least judged by emails and traffic to this blog).

Time, I think, with NYT time stock trading below $8 and the blogosphere awash with NYT stories, for either Pfanner or Doreen C. to be tasked this story, because it sure ain't coming from Richard.

They even managed to run a piece about how companies were turning to blogging to report layoffs (especially in media sector) to be ahead of the blogosphere. Perhaps someone might re-read that story and see whether they can see any relevance in it to the NYT itself.

READ AN ALTERNATIVE IHT DAILY NARRATIVE AT
A PLACE IN THE AUVERGNE

LOOKING FOR A CHRISTMAS BOOK GIFT TO BUY?
"Books about cosmopolitan urbanites discovering the joys of country life are two a penny, but this one is worth a second glance. Walthew's vivid description of the moral stress induced by his job as a high-flying executive with the International Herald Tribune newspaper is worth the cover price alone…. Highly recommended." The Oxford Times

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com


'I read A Place in My Country with absolute unalloyed delight. A glorious book.'
Jeremy Irons (actor)

‘Ian Walthew was a newspaper executive with a career that took him round the world, who one day did a mad thing. He saw a for-sale sign on a cottage in the Cotswolds, bought it, resigned and moved in. For the first few weeks he just lay on the grass in a daze. Then he started talking to his neighbours and digging into the rich history of this beautiful part of England. Out of his inquiries grew this affecting and inspiring memoir.What sets it apart from others of its ilk is the author’s enviable immunity to cliché and his determination to love his homeland better than he used to. His elegiac account of relearning how to be an Englishman should be required reading for anyone who claims to know or love this country.’ Financial Times



For more reviews visit ianwalthew.com

Business trip to the IHT in Paris or friends and family coming to visit you? Fed up with hotels? Bring the family (sleeps 6) to superb Montmartre apartment - weekend nights free of charge if minimum of 3 work nights booked;. Cable TV; wifi, free phone calls in France (landlines); large DVD and book library; kids toys, books, travel cot and beds; two double bedrooms; all mod cons; half an hour to Neuilly and 12 mins walk from Eurostar. T&E valid invoices.

10% Discount for NYT employees; 15% Discount for IHT Employees

http://www.montmartreabbesses.com


International Herald Tribune
IHT
New York Times
The NYT Company