The Emperor [NYT] Has No Clothes and Somebody Noticed!!!

Henry Blodget at Business Insider has an interesting article.

Here's the article.

After a near-death experience in 2008, and thanks to sharp cost-cutting, the NYT company has returned to profitability. And thanks to frantic debt restructuring, the NYT has also removed its creditors' foot from its throat and bought several more years to figure out a long-term plan.
But this happy escape has not alleviated the company's long-term problem:
Its core business, the print newspaper, is shrinking, and its digital business, however successful, cannot replace the lost revenue and profitability of the print business.
The chart below lays out the problem: After a century of growth, the New York Times's news business peaked earlier this decade with just over $3 billion in revenue and $500 million of operating profit. In the years since, however, the company's revenue and operating profit have begun to shrink.
And despite the enormous cost cuts the company has made since the early 2000s, its operating profit--even in a recovery year like 2010--doesn't approach the fat years of a decade ago.
Unless the New York Times Company can figure out a way to turn around the print newspaper circulation revenue (highly unlikely), this shrinkage will continue. Even if the online paywall is wildly successful, it will not replace the circulation and ad revenue the company will lose as print subscribers cancel. And as the print business shrinks, the print cost structure that supports it will have to shrink, too.

Ed Driscoll riffs on the NYT's rigid libtard strait-jacket and how it uses Gramscian tactics [and an Alinsky strategy] to keep the majority of conservatives [vis-a-vis the 20% libtard minority] from exerting its throw-weight politically and ideologically.

A couple of interesting comments:

Paul
The internet undoubtedly has impacted their revenues, but its also the case that the NYT decided some time ago to forgo journalism and join the opinion news party that the rest of the media outlets attend. This self-undermining has meant that they are no longer the paper of record, just the paper of opinion and we literally have thousands of alternate choices for that.

nailed it on Apr 27, 10:40 AM said:
@Paul: You nailed it.

I remember when media was a leftist cartel. Then this one fat guy showed up with a right wing talk show and the whole talk radio phenomenon exploded into a major "news" competitor. Talk about suppressed demand. Murdoch saw it and set up an actual right wing news channel. At the time he noted that it was curious that while half the population considered themselves conservatives, only 3% of newscasters did so. And what do you know? The channel shot straight to the top of the ratings chart.

That killed the cartel. Then the internet came along and buried it.

Bottom line: the New York Times model, i.e. shovelling leftist opinion under cover of news to a captive audience, has collapsed. Short of shutting down the internet, talk radio and News Corp there's no going back to the days of a captive audience.

The leftists populating old media have a simple choice; either find a leftist rag where you can be a leftist (i.e. a wannabe saint desperate to order people around) or learn to do your job and report in an unbiased manner.

Powerline notes William McGowan's Grey Lady Down: What the Decline and Fall of the New York Times Means to America has gone unreviewed by Sam Tanenhaus, who told us in 2009 that Obama's election meant the end of conservatism in America.

Finally, the culprit for resuscitating the moribund Times might be Carlos Slim. I wonder what the hidden residuals that the RICO maestro Pinch Sulzberger has pledged to Carlos for that "one-off" infusion of life-saving cash?