Media General Inc. (MEG)
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MEG Forum Topics
- All Comments on MEG
- General Discussion on MEG
- 9 Questions on Newspapers' 2Q Reports [view article]
- Bad Week (and Decade) for Newspapers [view article]
- Help Wanted: Newspaper Classified Ad Sales Continue to Slide [view article]
- A Silver Lining in the Newspaper Crisis [view article]
- Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
- What Do You Buy When You Buy a Newspaper Company? [view article]
- Rethinking Newspapers vs. the Internet [view article]
- Newspapers' 'Near Death Spiral,' Courtesy Web 2.0 [view article]
- Memo to Print: It’s the Multiples [view article]
- Ballmer on Newspapers: Wrong Again [view article]
- Microsoft's Ballmer Kills Print [view article]
- Print Is Toast - Ballmer [view article]
loading ...Recent MEG Articles
- 9 Questions on Newspapers' 2Q Reports
- Bad Week (and Decade) for Newspapers
- A Silver Lining in the Newspaper Crisis
- What Do You Buy When You Buy a Newspaper Company?
- Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News
- Whistling 'Taps' For Media Stocks
- Few Print Readers Use Local Newspaper Websites
- Rethinking Newspapers vs. the Internet
- Yahoo and the Newspaper Publishers: Playing with Fire
- Newspapers' 'Near Death Spiral,' Courtesy Web 2.0
- Full List of Articles »
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9 Questions on Newspapers' 2Q Reports [view article]
To answer question 9, the short answer is "not much if any". A trend line model (ARIMA) and forecast (Monte Carlo) show a decline of 13% in 2008 and an additional 12% in 2009. Interestingly, when I build the last three recessions into the model, there is only a slight change in the expected values. There are going to be major realignments over the short term...and a very rough ride for some. ReplyDispundit
Bad Week (and Decade) for Newspapers [view article]
Newspapers and traditional media compete via litigation not by inovation. It's their culture.... That is why the legal budgets for news exceeds the editorial budgets.What is worse is that the national news media in the USA is still predominantly a monopoly controlled by the associated press...and we all know how they feel about the internet. Reply
9 Questions on Newspapers' 2Q Reports [view article]
No, other's will take Google's ad model and do it one better. But as a dominant market facilitator they do have time and have done wonderful preparing for the future mid and long-term. Just like K-Mart became less dominant then Wal Mart or Yahoo less dominant for Google. Was Google so wizbang or did it do something so simple and powerful to save a web-surfers time?Online ad vendors are crooked in general. Fraud is rampant and Google was not fully except from this behavior. See Google's class action lawsuit. They are cleaning up there act fast and they should, search is about the only decent performing sector of online ads.
Consolidation of major companies such as Omnicom combined with online ad networks like Ad.com and then throw in data companies like Alliance and your form some pretty serious competition. Right now, like Google for the short term and mid-term, we'll have to see what the longer term brings in economic correction that effects the entire ad market across the board.
I have no position in Google but am in Consumer Healthcare/Online Marketing, Clinical Trials etc. Reply
Bad Week (and Decade) for Newspapers [view article]
Newspapers really have a lot of opportunity to lock in current customers and gain new ones, especially the young adults that read online.1.Stop hardcopy print and buy all current and future customers computers.
2. Have the IT dept control and lock in the Newspaper for the default home page.
3. Have the IT dept run a screen saver with clients’ ads 24/7 that are clickable.
This would allow ads to run 24/7 in millions of homes and the locked-in home page would be priceless. These tasks can be done through coding. This would give the newspapers a fighting chance. Reply
Bad Week (and Decade) for Newspapers [view article]
what would the world be like without the ny time??? ReplyBad Week (and Decade) for Newspapers [view article]
Half right. Many newspaper/media companies were hot on the trail of their online futures from 1998-2001. The inflection point was the perfect storm of 9/11, dotcom crash, and economic downturn of late 2001-early 2002. Old media guys in senior management freaked out and went into wagon circling mode; new product development went out the window, and it became the cost-cutting show. What you see is the results. Replyfredrickson
9 Questions on Newspapers' 2Q Reports [view article]
It is sad what has happened to newspapers around the country. Every day the stock price of all the publicly owned companies goes deeper into the tank. The real estate mess and job boards have siphoned huge cash flow for newspapers, and that business is not coming back.Will Google own the world, and all that is reported in 10 years? Reply
Bad Week (and Decade) for Newspapers [view article]
Good piece, no sugarcoating."The newspaper industry is notorious for copying each others’ design, circulation and advertising tips..." seems to be the current strategy for "escaping the complacency of the past four decades." The bad thing is, they don't have anybody to copy. Reply
fisayo
Help Wanted: Newspaper Classified Ad Sales Continue to Slide [view article]
We have got money to lend out to serious and prosprctive customers and all kind of business firms.Email:vinfinanci... ReplyA Silver Lining in the Newspaper Crisis [view article]
I work in the print news media and I agree the problem is content. I edit a 1500-circulation weekly and virtually all the 600 street copies I put out are snapped up by the time I get back a week later. I focus on local news - crime, human features, courts, local sports and meetings.On the national level, the problem is that a lot of news is now appearing on the internet because the clowns in charge have to defer to the agenda-driven money men who are going along with the fantasy-illusions being spun by the Administrations.
I look at the original footage CNN shot at the Pentagon onthe Second Day of Infamy and then I read the official news coverage, and I allege that accounts for the masses increasingly waking up and realizing mass media - print and electronic - are irrelevant and inaccurate.
The Denver Post has spilled tons of ink to detail the plight of poor illegally here aliens who are struggling in their attempts to get free college, free medicine and to maintain a birth rate here that is much higher than back in repressive Mejico. The Post ignores the plight of the legally here native Americans whose jobs were outsourced and now must compete with the wage-busting immigrants that callous, nation deconstructing opportunists have lured in.
The globalist driven agenda that deflates wages - has destroyed the banks, which require ever inflating wages to pay off usury. Now that wage deflation is taking out the midldle class that used to read newspapers. Young 20 somethings struggling in their jungles not only have an aversion to reading, they have an aversion to paying $300 a year for media that stains your hands black and does not have relevant content that can't be found anywhere else cheaper.
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A Silver Lining in the Newspaper Crisis [view article]
As a 26 year newspaper advertising manager....both family owned and publicly traded corporations...The problems usually lie in two areas. Publicly traded companies are primarily motivated by profit margins. Historically, the margins have been 40%. In the more recent past those margins were near 30%. Now, newspapers are hoping for something near 20%. How many businesses out there would call a 20% profit margin BAD? Publicly traded companies put pressure on local publishers to deliver that margin...no matter what they have to do to achieve it. A great many publishers fear their own jobs first, and have NO long term plan or vision at the local level. This means simply "cut", without regard to what those cuts mean in the future....a future that can be as close as the next quarter.
Family owned newspapers tend to take the content and the long term outlook very seriously. Profit margins are just as rich as the others. They tend to cut in a very different way, and usually are hesitant to cut at all.
The second area is advertising. The main reason newspapers are in the state they are now in is due to shortsighted corporate demands of the last 8 years or so. As the internet began to rise, corporations refused to execute more customer friendly pricing, and realize the need for integration of the web. When the opportunity came to capture the revenues from local customers, they priced themselves out of reach for medium to smaller sized local customers. They refused to invest in the web in a meaningful way to bring the power of the web to those same customers.
Consequently, those local customers began to drift to other mediums. Now, when the newspaper needs those locals, they are not available to them. Many newspapers have resorted to selling space at firesale prices to prop up weak days or months. What was a rare "deal" is now so common as to make published rates only a reference point. This is also the fault of local publishers, and corporate directives. Instead of moving toward the local advertiser, the shortsighted greed of the early part of this decade carried forward until the bottom began to fall out in 2006. Most advertising executives were pointing this out as early as 2004. No one took the warnings seriously, and the collapse began in earnest early in 2007. In the last 5 years or so, many publishers come from the accounting or financial disciplines, where they used to be either Newsroom or Advertising professionals. Accountants tend to cut expense to reach the profit target. They do not have the vision, or temperament to take risk. Therefore, they cut to profitability. And they did, and continue to do. Unfortunately, at some point that approach reaches an end. When that end has been reached, that visionless publisher has cut most of the talent that could have kept the long term issues from becoming as severe- possibly avoid it altogether. Now, when they need the very best and brightest talent, that talent has been driven out of the business.
Now, they still refuse to believe that the web will eventually replace them. Unfortunately, they still have no long term vision...and think the recession is the problem. Now that current short sighted view drives even more away from them. If you own stock in publicly traded newspapers...don't expect any significant return to greatness in the near future!
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Pseudonym
A Silver Lining in the Newspaper Crisis [view article]
The reason I don't read print is because there is nothing to read!Content please!
I get far better info for free and it's more up to date.
If you want to save a paper, make it worth more than the 50 cents it costs to buy it...
My local paper is nothing more than an outlet for 60's leftovers to vent their leftist views.
I don't mind listening to all opinions, but hearing the same thing from one side for 20 years is a little tiring. Reply
A Silver Lining in the Newspaper Crisis [view article]
Written like a true "suit". The only thing newspapers have done is shift their resources to advertising. Now more than ever, you have to go through a maze of ads just to find a few lines of actual content. Put a fork in them, they've simply become spammers in print. ReplyWall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
Where do you find what the price of oil closed at? ReplyWall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
The rich are different from you and me! Reply