This will be the first of many terrible years for newspapers

There are no longer any suckers left with deep pockets and the desire to buy newspapers even at fire sale prices.

Last week, Hearst CEO Victor Ganzi abruptly resigned, citing “irreconcilable policy differences” over the future direction of the company.

 

What does he mean by that? Usually executives say “I’m taking time off to spend with my family…”

The New York Times and Business Week reported that the reason for Ganzi to leave a multi-million dollar-a -year, ivory tower position was recent investments and dismal returns in newspapers. He made some bad decisions.

Fortune and Portfolio said no, that was just an obvious-suspect guess and that the conflict was really over something else. Yeah, right.  Becuase Hillary was out of the race, perhaps?

 

Hearst made its last big newspaper acquisition in November 2007, buying the Tribune’s (former Times-Mirror) dailies in the well-heeled Connecticut suburbs of Greenwich and Stamford. Hearst has also signed on to numerous joint ventures with Dean Singleton’s MediaNews (bottom feeders), bought an interest in the company and thus has been poised to take over, should Singleton falter under its heavy debt load. That would be like owning the rights to own Enron in 2006.

This has been the longest, most grueling month for newspapers. Advertising reveue continues to fall like a brick thrown out of the new Hearst building. The editors need to fire the “business side” and get things turned around. That’s the ticket.

How about editors delivering the paper before they come to work in the morning?

The editors may be finding out that their ivory tower positions of filtering only the news that fits their liberal agenda is not viable any more. Each exectutive editor may want to pull their head out of their ass and look around at the massive layoffs.