nieonline.com
It's grim out there for newspapers, as they never get tired of telling us: Today it's the Washington Post that chronicles the tribulations of the dead-tree biz. That's because it's been a big week for the declining fortunes of newspapers: First the outster of fan-favorite Dean Baquet at the LAT — a move directly tied to his defiance on staff-slashing and cost-cutting — then the announcement that Philadelphia Inquirer editor Amanda Bennett had stepped down in favor of recently-appointed NPR Ombudsman Bill Marimow, a Philly native and Inky vet . It's not the change at the top that's the problem — by all accounts, Marimow will be a great and energetic leader — but he'll probably have to start by cutting one-third of his staff. Meanwhile, the New York Times is being challenged where it hurts: Wall Street, after Morgan Stanley cut the rating on the stock and urged investors to unload their shares. Investors also challenged the NYT's family-ownership shareholder structure, which keeps the Sulzberger family comfortably in control, saying it detracts from company value and is not accountable to shareholders (which, considering it's meant to keep the Sulzbergers in power ad infinitum, is kind of the point).
It's worth remembering at this point which newspapers are not in crisis: Two that saw their circulation climb this year, despite ruthless competition from...each other — The New York Daily News and, particularly, The New York Post, up 5.3% in an industry where almost everything was going south. Cue the "Warm Up The Virgins" front pages? Probably not (it's not exactly Pulitzer bait). But as Howard Kurtz said this past Sunday on "Reliable Sources" (so long ago, when the botched Kerry joke mattered):
[I]t's easy to make fun of "The Post". It can be sensational and simplistic. Sometimes irresponsible, and sometimes wrong... I wouldn't want to see other metropolitan dailies imitate the tantalizing tabloid, except in this one respect: "The Post" is fun to read. Too many papers are cautious and timid and feel like homework.
Let's see if newspapers start to take that advice — if not for the readers, then at least for Morgan Stanley.
