As a small fish in the publishing industry, I understand why it can be difficult to develop a business model that is sustainable for the long term, especially when you use the old profit expectations of the 1870s through early 1990ss as a reference point. Even as someone aware of the hardship that faces the industry, I am still amazed at the deterioration in the industry over the past two decades. To get a feel for it, remember that the Taylor sold The Boston Globe (technically a publicly traded stock known as Affiliated Publications) to the New York Times for $1.1 billion in 1993. In 2013, John Henry (of Boston Red Sox ownership fame) bought The Boston Globe for $73 million. Talk about the tyranny of reverse compounding—over 90% of the newspaper’s value was lost over a recent twenty-year period.
The issue with newspapers isn’t really circulation—although dwindling circulation numbers … Read the rest of this article!