Times-Standard owner Dean Singleton got a less-than-stellar write up in the New York Times this weekend.
Without mentioning Singleton’s aim to offshore news coverage, the venerable paper focuses on the Denver magnate’s news enterprise in Northern California.
Despite owning the news mecca in what is perhaps the biggest newspaper sector in the country, Singleton said the current economic downturn was unforeseen.
“[I]n our business, you buy newspapers when they’re for sale. If we could have foreseen the current economic downturn in the state, it might have changed our views, but we couldn’t foresee that.”
But such a downturn was foreseen as shown by this fascinating video posted on a local blog.
To Singleton’s credit, he wasn’t the only news czar with his head in the sand. Fox News was equally dubious about any talk of recession.
Singleton’s commitment to the T-S has come under question now that he won the battle against Rob Arkley’s Eureka Reporter. And there’s plenty of reason to worry.
“There’s no newspaper in the country that I know of that’s not suffering,” said John McManus, a journalism professor at San Jose State University. “But Dean Singleton has hollowed out The Mercury News.”
Will Singleton “hollow out” the T-S now that the competition has been absorbed?
If so, Singleton can claim shock & awe that the newspaper industry is having a hard time of it these days.
(h/t to Mr. O.)
December 16, 2008 at 6:14 am
Let them outsource the news. I read more foreign papers than local papers anyway, and I read more blogs than anything. Most news is “outsourced” to AP and Reuters anyway.
Nobody’s laughing at Peter Schiff anymore. They still call him a “kook” though.
December 16, 2008 at 6:37 am
He wasn’t the only one predicting a downturn, but he certainly was outnumbered on that broadcast. Economists everywhere were warning about this, and a local one (from HSU) made a statement about local housing prices dropping dramatically, which came true, even though that statement was angrily disputed by a (blind?) local loudmouth real estate broker.
Also, the idea that people were not saving (Peter Schiff) was not completely true. People who did save and were not utilizing sketchy borrowing or investment techniques still lost a lot of their money in their 401Ks, mutual funds, etc, so were not rewarded for doing the right thing. Everyone has lost something, IMO.
December 16, 2008 at 8:32 am
ds is an asset stripper. check out what he did to the salt lake city papers. expect to see the TS get thin and contentless.
December 16, 2008 at 8:32 am
Ouch – harsh “Noble Lie.” The only thing keeping local papers alive is local news, and as long as people are invested in their communities there’s a need for community reporting. If the owner of a paper isn’t invested in the community of the paper – the paper suffers and so does the community journalism. Yes there are blogs, but Heraldo how much do you get paid to do this? How much of your time is spend cold calling sources?
As a paid reporter you have the luxury of hearing people’s stories and getting paid to find them.
December 16, 2008 at 9:40 am
Opinion is free. I pay for the Times-Standard because I want as-close-to-impartial information as can be had… and verified information, not merely rumor.
I see the TS surviving as a weekly, more so if it one day builds itself a good website with subscriber incentives. Things like…
- A one-sentence description of the Trucker’s Parade route in the free reporting, and a subscriber-only online printable map with advice on viewing locations. First-timers usually get screwed.
- Garage sale text blurbs for all, and maps for subscribers (not that lousy web service the TS recently switched to that lists almost nothing on its map and has unprintable descriptions).
-Weekly event calendar for all, and a month-out online calendar for subscribers.
This isn’t rocket science. A newspaper can easily build subscriber incentives while keeping its readership up among freegans (which is needed to maintain dominance with classified and ad sales). But from what I understand, much of the TS website is dictated by corporate, so real innovation is not possible.
December 16, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Noble Lie is right, Schiff was out there in 04-05 talking about the economy and citizens being over leveraged. The local econ prof took punches from the editor and the realtors for his warnings…
Keep an eye on local real estate this just came over the wire; Southern California’s median home price drops below $300,000… how can Humboldts be higher?
higher…heh…
December 16, 2008 at 3:17 pm
The T-S is “thin and contentless”.
I would be willing to pay for a weekly, northern version of the Independent.
December 16, 2008 at 7:44 pm
If only someone local would print a free paper, charge reasonable ad rates, pay good salaries to attract staff and take an interest in the local community. Oh, that’s right, someone did, and they were ridiculed by the left/anti-success crowd and shut down by an out of state corporation that bought their support with a few pandering editorials. Reap what ye sow.
December 17, 2008 at 8:45 am
So the propagandists are confident, great. we can all rest assured that whatever the talking points of the day happen to be, we will have them with our morning coffee. Oh, and lets not forget the latest blabs on ‘Whitney, Brad and Jojo or JuJue” or other crap they continually shove down our throats, who do they have for local reporting, a couple of fat-guys, two women and some guy in eastern Europe. Yeah yeah, this paper like most others, it is a “pretense” of the free exchange of news and events.
They are a dinosaur, they know it. these days they are all busy making the internet safe for propaganda.