State of the Media-fact and opinion

Publicists Lauded for Flackery; P.R. Gods Get Freedom From Press
By: Jason Horowitz, NY Observer “In a world where we don’t have a belief in a single source, you don’t have a Walter Cronkite anymore. P.R. is the discipline on the rise,” said Richard W. Edelman, president and chief executive of the public-relations firm Edelman.
“P.R.,” he said, “plays much better in a world that lacks trust.”
And the world must be short on trust, because public relations is long on profits. According to Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private equity firm that analyzes media trends, the industry was estimated to be worth $3.4 billion in 2004 and is expected to increase at an impressive annual clip of up to 10 percent, reaching $5.2 billion by 2009. Other industry journals, like O’Dwyer’s PR Report, consider such estimates conservative.
“It used to be I would schmooze you and I was your flack,” said Mr. Edelman, whose firm netted about $260 million in 2005. “Today, if we want to get a message into the public’s conversation, we just make a post on a blog. If The Wall Street Journal goes after a client, we don’t have to accept that anymore. Let’s post the documents we gave The Journal; let’s show the interviews the newspaper decided not to show.
“You’re not God anymore,” he said.
Mr. Edelman—and he is not alone—believes that the erosion of the public’s trust in bedrock institutions after scandals in government, big business and the press only contributes to the industry’s success. Without anyone holding a monopoly on truth, the argument goes, P.R. people can get their messages across without pesky filters like, say, the news media.
Some executives suggest that the press never had control to begin with.
“The role of public-relations people is to act as the gatekeepers for news and information,” said Andy Plesser, who runs Plesser Holland Associates, the company that handled the public relations for the public-relations awards. “Many journalists want to believe they are being enterprising on their own.”
Presumptuous? Maybe. But consider the publicist’s perspective: They are incessantly reading and watching stories that they remember pitching to reporters only days before. Still, most any self-respecting journalist will bristle at the mere suggestion of dependence.
“The dark side!” joked Laurie Mayers, 47, a senior vice president at Hass MS&L and a former reporter for the St. Petersburg Times. “A lot of people in journalism think that they have a sacred mission. They think the poor pay and crummy hours are part of it.

How technology allows little guy to beat Big Media
By Frank Wilson, Philadelphia Inquirer Books Editor

“An Army of Davids:How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths
By Glenn Reynolds
Like the baby boomers who still account for much of its staff, Big Media is perpetually nostalgic. It yearns to revisit the glory days of its opposition to the Vietnam War and, of course, Watergate. So it often portrays the war in Iraq as another Vietnam. But the analogy is facile - as Mark Twain is said to have observed, "History does not repeat itself; it rhymes."
In the meantime, something very similar to what happened in Vietnam is happening - to Big Media. As Glenn Reynolds puts it in An Army of Davids: "Where before journalists and pundits could bloviate at leisure, offering illogical analysis or citing 'facts' that were in fact false, now the Sunday morning op-eds have already been dissected on a Saturday night, within hours of their appearing on newspapers' websites."
Dissected by whom? By bloggers. Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, knows as much about blogging as anyone: He's the man behind InstaPundit.com, which on some days racks up as many as a half-million page loads.
Reynolds' highly informative book - a must-read if you want to have some idea of the direction things are taking - is about a lot more than the effect of blogging on Big Media. Its theme is "the triumph of personal technology over mass technology," which is a trend Reynolds believes is only "going to strengthen over the coming decades."
Recalling that John Kenneth Galbraith's 1966 book The New Industrial State argued that the very size of big corporations protected them from both failure and competition, Reynolds points out that now, a mere 40 years later, "a laptop, a cheap video camera, and the free iMovie or Windows Movie Maker software (plus an Internet connection) will let one person do things that the Big Three television networks could only dream of in Galbraith's day, and at a fraction of the cost."
As recently as 1993, he wouldn't have been able to, because the Web was just getting started, Wi-Fi was only a couple of years old, and Google didn't exist. Most remarkable, Reynolds says, is that "the Web, Wi-Fi and Google didn't develop and spread because somebody at the Bureau of Central Knowledge Planning planned them. They developed... from the uncoordinated activities of individuals."
The changes Reynolds chronicles have proved unsettling to a number of settled institutions, including government, corporations and the media. Reynolds, who knows his away around the First Amendment, thinks that "the press establishment's general lack of enthusiasm for free speech for others (as evidenced by its support for campaign finance 'reform') suggests that it'll be happy to see alternative media muzzled."
"You want to keep this media revolution going?" he asks. "Be ready to fight for it."
I think it will prove to be not much of a contest. As Reynolds knows, "open communication, quick thinking, decentralization, and broad dispersal of skills - along with a sense of individual responsibility - have an enormous structural advantage." If Big Media could figure out how to partner with alternative media - putting together, as Reynolds suggests, "a network of freelance journalists" or "knit[ting] together a network of bloggers" - the outcome would be good for all concerned.
But that's not going to happen as long as corporate journalism continues to insist on ever more bureaucratic protocols, on making articles conform to some goofy packaging concept, and on a top-to-bottom command structure. It's as though a World War II army were marching through a jungle infested by guerrillas. Just like in Vietnam.

Press deemed in state of peril
By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 14, 2006
Americans continue to be troubled about the state of the press. But journalists themselves are troubled as well, according to "The State of the News Media 2006," a massive series of surveys and analyses released yesterday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research group affiliated with Columbia University.
Local TV news and local newspapers won the most accolades from the public. Both were rated favorably by three-quarters of the respondents with majorities agreeing that local news organizations concentrated on facts rather than opinions. Such major dailies as the New York Times did not fare so well, garnering a 38 percent favorability rating.
Overall, the public increasingly sees their press as "slanted," with 72 percent thinking the press favored one side or other, according to a poll of 1,464 adults. The number is up from 66 percent two years earlier. About 60 percent found the press politically biased, up from 53 percent.
"Republicans and conservatives are even more prone to feel this way than Democrats," the survey stated.
It found that the percentage of the public who think press criticism of the military weakens the country is at its highest point -- 47 percent -- in two decades. Although 60 percent of the public approve of the press in a watchdog role over politicians, just 43 percent say the national press is moral.
The researchers found a "values gap on social issues." In a survey of 547 journalists, 6 percent felt that belief in God is necessary to be moral; the figure was 58 percent among the general public. About 88 percent of the press, compared with 51 percent of the public, think society should accept homosexuality.
An ideological divide between the national press and the public also persists. The survey found that 20 percent of the public described themselves as liberal; the figure was 34 percent among journalists. Although 33 percent of the public deemed themselves conservative; 7 percent of the press members identified themselves as conservative. The majority of journalists -- 54 percent -- say they are moderates, compared with 41 percent of the public.
"Most liberals don't see a liberal point of view," the researchers said, noting that fewer than a quarter of the liberal journalists could think of a news organization that was "especially" liberal; 79 percent could name a conservative news outlet. Among the conservative journalists, 68 percent could name an especially liberal news organization and 68 percent could name an especially conservative one.
Meanwhile, 55 percent of both print and broadcast journalists from national news organizations say the coverage of the Bush administration has not been critical enough in recent years.
"News people are not confident about the future of journalism," the researchers said, noting that 51 percent think journalism is going in the "wrong direction" for myriad reasons.
The entire poll can be viewed at www.stateofthenewsmedia.com.

Post Co. Plans to Cut Jobs in Newsroom
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post Co. yesterday announced plans to eliminate the equivalent of 80 newsroom positions over the next year by offering an early retirement plan to eligible employees and through attrition of full- and part-time workers. The Post said it has no plans to lay off any of its more than 800 newsroom employees.
Newsroom managers told employees in staff meetings that the cuts were part of an overall effort to reduce costs while at the same time implement editorial changes to improve The Post's ability to reach audiences in multiple media.
"The goal is to bring the overall news costs back to where they were several years ago," said Post publisher and chief executive Boisfeuillet Jones Jr. He said the company planned to offer a similar buyout to the non-newsroom staff but declined to provide a specific target. "I don't have any precise set of staffing numbers, but I do have the goal of seeing overall costs in the newsroom go back to where they were."
Like many newspapers suffering from declining circulation, The Post's revenue has remained flat for several years. The number of paid subscribers has declined 4 percent a year. The Post is trying to extend its reach by adding features to its Web site, such as blogs and podcasts, and with the launch of a Washington Post radio venture later this month.
In meetings yesterday with staff members for each section, Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said The Post is doing better, financially, than many of its competitors. "But it is obvious that a significant change is taking place in our readership, with a sizable portion of it migrating to the Internet," he said.
The Post offered employees an early retirement package two years ago, and more than 100 longtime employees accepted, about half of them from the newsroom. This year's buyout appears to be more targeted than the previous one, said Rick Weiss, co-chairman of The Washington Post unit of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, which represents 600 editorial employees.

THE GRAND RUSH
TO DECLARE DEFEAT
NY Post editorial
A media obsessed with Vietnam-Iraq "parallels" ever since the day Operation Iraqi Freedom began three years this month finally got its Tet Offensive moment last month.
Such as it was.
Violence following the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra two weeks ago "proved" that, this time - for sure - America's mission to Iraq was ending in ignominy.
"IRAQ - BREAKING POINT," screamed a Time magazine cover last week. "This is it," the magazine quoted one Sunni pol saying. "This is the start of the civil war."
A front-page New York Times headline proclaimed: "Political Talks Are in Ruins." Yet, 48 hours later, the once-upon-a-time paper of record reported: "Iraqi Sunni Bloc To Rejoin Talks on Government."
So much for "ruins."
Equally reckless was The Washington Post's report that some 1,300 people died in the week-long violence after the shrine-bombing. A review by Editor and Publisher magazine of news-service accounts found no evidence to support that number.
"When our correspondent examined the books at the morgue, he could find only about 250 bodies logged in as killed in the violence," the E&P story quoted a Knight Ridder editor saying. Iraq's Cabinet said 379 people were killed.
Meanwhile, our own Ralph Peters - who's been patrolling with U.S. troops while covering the story from Iraq - also concluded that the 1,300 figure was wildly inflated.
Peters dispatches have been, to put it mildly, illuminating: He searched high and low for that civil war. "I've been trying all week," wrote Peters, a former Army intelligence officer. "I'm looking for . . . civil war . . . and I just can't find it."
Obviously, it's not there. So let's be clear.
American troops remain in Iraq out of necessity; a precipitous withdrawal would create a power vacuum that would indeed degenerate into civil war - and quickly.
That would be a catastrophic blow to American power and prestige in the region - and the world. For that reason alone, it will be some time before the last U.S. soldier leaves Iraq.
The American media, twisted with hatred of President Bush and his policies, needs to get used to this fact of life.

Jack Kelly: All bad news, all the time
In covering Iraq, mainstream media give terrorists a boost
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
More than 8,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have deserted since the Iraq war began, USA Today reported Tuesday.
"Some lawyers who represent deserters say the war in Iraq is driving more soldiers to question their service and that the Pentagon is cracking down on deserters to discourage antiwar sentiment," wrote reporter Bill Nichols.
" 'The last thing (Pentagon officials) want is for people to think ... that this is like Vietnam,' said Tod Ensign, head of Citizen Soldier, an antiwar group that offers legal aid to deserters."
Mr. Ensign is full of horse manure, as Mr. Nichols demonstrates in his story. The data show desertions have plunged since 9/11, and are much lower than during the Vietnam war.
The Army, Navy and Air Force reported 7,978 desertions in the 2001 fiscal year, but only 3,456 in 2005, Mr. Nichols noted. In 1971, the Army reported 33,094 desertions, 3.4 percent of its total force. In 2005, desertions represented just 0.24 percent of 1.4 million of active service members.
Mr. Nichols also quoted military spokesmen who said most deserters desert for reasons unconnected with political protest, and most return voluntarily.
Though it ran under a headline that emphasized the negative, the USA Today story is an example of journalism as it ought to be. Mr. Nichols reported a fact relevant to the war on terror, and put it into context.
The opposite is true of "reporting" by most news organizations in the wake of the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra Feb. 22. Journalists who accused President Bush of "cherrypicking" intelligence to support the war in Iraq have cherrypicked facts and quotes to give the false impression there is civil war in Iraq.
"Much of the reporting has exaggerated the situation," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday. "The number of attacks on mosques had been exaggerated. The number of Iraqi deaths had been exaggerated. The behavior of the Iraqi security forces had been mischaracterized."
For instance, The Washington Post reported on Feb. 25 that 120 Sunni mosques had been attacked in retaliation for the destruction of the Golden Mosque, holy to the Shiites. In a March 3 news conference, Gen. George Casey, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said:
"We can confirm attacks on about 30 mosques around the country, with less than 10 of those mosques moderately damaged, and only two or three severely damaged. We visited eight mosques (in Baghdad) that were reportedly damaged. We found one broken window in those eight mosques."
Exaggeration and misinformation are hallmarks of chaotic situations, and it is hard for journalists who do most of their reporting from the safety of their hotels to sort fact from fiction. But Secretary Rumsfeld noticed a pattern in the errors:
"Interestingly, all the exaggerations seem to be on one side," he said. "The steady stream of errors all seem to be of a nature to inflame the situation and give heart to the terrorists."
Here is how The Washington Post reported what Gen. Casey said above:
"He said 350 Iraqi civilians had died in a surge of sectarian killings, militia violence and revenge attacks on about 30 mosques around the country after the bombing."
There is sectarian violence in Iraq -- as there is in India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland -- but no civil war.
The Iraqi army held together and performed well in the aftermath of the attack on the Golden Mosque, reports Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer and writer who was embedded with U.S. troops during the troubles. The Iraqi army deployed more than 100,000 troops, who kept order without killing a single civilian, he noted.
Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders continue to negotiate forming a national unity government. (Two days after declaring negotiations were "in ruins," Edward Wong of The New York Times had to write: "The main Sunni Arab political bloc is close to returning to suspended talks.")
There is no civil war in Iraq, but al-Qaida would dearly love to provoke one. Knowledge of that fact should make journalists more careful about separating rumor from fact. But many apparently have chosen instead to act as the propaganda arm of our enemies.

Annual State-of-Media Report: 2005 'Three Times Worse' Than 2004
Editor and Publisher ^ 03/12/06 E&P Staff
NEW YORK The annual “The State of the American News Media” report, to be released Monday, declares that while 2004 was a bad year for the newspaper industry, with circulation and advertising declines, “2005 was about three times worse.”
It also asserts that at many old media companies “the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over. The idealists have lost. The troubles of 2005, especially in print, dealt a further blow to this fight for journalism in the public interest.” The report quotes an editor a major paper: “If you argue about public trust today, you will be dismissed as an obstructionist and a romantic.”
In a surprising finding, the report states that the audience for online news appears to have leveled off. The growth now is not in how many people get news online, “but how often they do so.”
The 700-page report, from the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ), reveals that newspapers are expected to have lost about 1,500 jobs in 2005. That represents a drop of about 3,800 jobs, or about 7% since 2000. Since 1990, circulation will have fallen nearly 15% or more than 9 million, on weekdays.
“The variety of news sources available today makes relying on a single outlet seem like an outdated idea,” Project Director Tom Rosenstiel said. “But consumers need to be careful about where they go and even when. Stories come and go fast and getting a comprehensive picture of the news can be difficult.”

Clinton's Spying [what the antique media won't tell you]
Liberals are whipping themselves into a frenzy over "Bush's domestic spying." But the left's outrage is new. During the Clinton era, they found government surveillance just peachy. In 1999, in fact, The New York Times itself had no problem with the Clinton NSA's Echelon project, which - without warrants - monitored millions of phone calls between U.S. citizens: "Few dispute the necessity of a system like Echelon," assured The Times, "to apprehend foreign spies, drug traffickers, and terrorists."
That was then. Now the antique press is too busy getting its panties in a wad about Bush Administration security measures to mention Bill Clinton's spying.
Let's refresh the record:
The Clinton Administration listened to every domestic conversation.
* On Feb . 27, 2000, "60 Minutes" aired a story on Clinton's massive spying program. Steve Kroft reported: "If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called 'Echelon' ... The mission is to eavesdrop on enemies of the state: foreign countries, terrorist groups, and drug cartels. But in the process, Echelon's computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world." Unlike Bush's NSA program -- which targets international calls from those with known al Qaeda ties -- Echelon's net caught everybody.
* Echelon was frequently used for economic espionage. Former CIA Director James Woolsey told France's Le Figaro that "spying on Europe is justified" in order to meet U.S. economic objectives -- such as "track[ing] corruption in international business." Mike Frost, a former member of Canadian intelligence, was quoted in The New York Times in May 1999 claiming that "[Echelon's] focus now is towards economic intelligence."
* According to Insight magazine, the Clinton Administration bugged Asian businessmen and allegedly sold the information to Democratic National Committee (DNC) donors. In mid-1997, anonymous sources told Insight that 1993's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation [APEC] conference, held in Seattle, was thoroughly bugged in a "top-secret operation run by the FBI in conjunction with intelligence personnel from the ... NSA, and the Office of Navel Intelligence, among other things.
The Clinton Administration had an online wiretapping system.
* In July 2000 The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Clinton FBI required Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to install a government "black box" on their servers which could read all of their customers' electronic communications -- chat sessions, instant messages, website visits, etc. This blanket wiretap was dubbed "Carnivore" by the FBI itself, a name that contradicted the Agency's claims that the program was equipped "with a 'surgical' ability to intercept and collect the communications which are the subject of the lawful order while ignoring those communications which they are not authorized to intercept."
The Clinton Administration argued for warrantless spying before Congress.
* In 1994, Clinton flack Jamie Gorelick made the case for "warrantless physical searches" -- obviously more intrusive than wiretapping -- before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Gorelick, was the architect of the infamous "wall" barring communication between the FBI and the CIA that thwarted pre-9/11 counter-terrorism efforts. Here's Gorelick's now-conveniently-forgotten testimony: "[T]he President has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches ... in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities."
* As Byron York of National Review reports, Gorelick also "made clear that ... President [Clinton] believed he had the power to order warrantless searches for the purpose of gathering intelligence, even if there was no reason to believe that the search might uncover evidence of a crime."
* Gorelick further asserted that the Clinton Administration would reject Congress's oversight of its warrantless searches if demands "restrict[ed] the President's ability to collect foreign intelligence necessary for the national security."
The Clinton Administration used satellites for domestic spying.
* The McCurtain Daily Gazette, a small Oklahoman newspaper, recently obtained and reported on a Secret Service log detailing how a government satellite was used during the Clinton era to spy on a "white separatist compound" the feds believed may have been involved in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. "Satellite assets have been tasked to provide intelligence concerning the compound," the log says, in what even the Associated Press considered an "unusual" use of foreign surveillance equipment.
* The Gazette notes that the "domestic use of a military satellite for domestic spying is a violation of DOD [Department of Defense] and CIA regulations regarding proper use of top-secret national security satellites." And yet Sen. Robert "Sheets" Byrd (D, WV) didn't decry such spying as akin to "the thuggish practices of our enemies," as he did with the Bush wiretapping story. You'd think he would have been upset about the government spying on a "white separatist compound," but no.

Internet means end for media barons, says Murdoch Owen Gibson, media correspondentTuesday March 14, 2006The London Guardian
Rupert Murdoch last night sounded the death knell for the era of the media baron, comparing today's internet pioneers with explorers such as Christopher Columbus and John Cabot and hailing the arrival of a "second great age of discovery".
The N ews Corp media magnate nurtures a long-held distaste for "the establishment" but last night confided to one of the few clubs to which he does belong - The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers - that he may be among the last of a dying breed.
"Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry - the editors, the chief executives and, let's face it, the proprietors," said Mr Murdoch, having flown into London from New York after celebrating his 75th birthday on Saturday.
Far from mourning its passing, he evangelised about a digital future that would put that power in the hands of those already launching a blog every second, sharing photos and music online and downloading television programmes on demand. "A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it," he said.
Indicating he had little desire to slow down despite his advancing years, he told the 603-year-old guild that he was looking forward, not back.
"It is difficult, indeed dangerous, to underestimate the huge changes this revolution will bring or the power of developing technologies to build and destroy - not just companies but whole countries."
The owner of Fox News added: "Never has the flow of information and ideas, of hard news and reasoned comment, been more important. The force of our democratic beliefs is a key weapon in the war against religious fanaticism and the terrorism it breeds."
"Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall," he warned. "That applies as much to my own, the media industry, as to every other business on the planet."
"I believe traditional newspapers have many years of life but, equally, I think in the future that newsprint and ink will be just one of many channels to our readers," he said, predicting a future in which "media becomes like fast food" with consumers watching news, sport and film clips as they travel, on mobile phones or handheld wireless devices.
"Great journalism will always attract readers. The words, pictures and graphics that are the stuff of journalism have to be brilliantly packaged; they must feed the mind and move the heart," he enthused.
Following its chairman's change of heart, News Corp has splashed out close to $1bn (£578m) on internet investments.
Most tellingly, the company spent $400m on MySpace.com, the social networking phenomenon that has proved hugely popular with 35m regular users on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr Murdoch has undergone a Damascene conversion, admitting he hugely underestimated the power of the web. He said last night: "It is a creative, destructive technology that is still in its infancy, yet breaking and remaking everything in its path. We are all on a journey, not just the privileged few, and technology will take us to a destination that is defined by the limits of our creativity, our confidence and our courage."

Newspaper naysayers win
Marketwatch.com ^ March 13, 2006 Herb Greenberg
SAN DIEGO (MarketWatch) -- On a personal basis, Knight-Ridder's $4.5 billion to McClatchy is bittersweet.
As a native of Miami, I was raised on the Miami Herald, considered the flagship of what was then known as Knight Newspapers. I went to the University of Miami on a scholarship from the Herald, where I interned during college.
My first job after graduation was at the Boca Raton News, then Knight-Ridder's (KRI) smallest newspaper -- yet, at that time, probably its most innovative daily.
I later worked at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the headquarters of Ridder Newspapers before its 1974 merger with Knight. I even used my Knight-Ridder stock, bought at a discount while at the Pioneer Press as part of the employee-stock-purchase program, to pay for my honeymoon.
Now, as part of the McClatchy (MNI) deal, the Pioneer Press is likely to be sold to avoid antitrust issues, since McClatchy owns the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
St. Paul won't be the only one to go: Among the dozen Knight-Ridder papers on the chopping block: the San Jose Mercury and Philadelphia Inquirer; in their heydays, both were considered to be among the best U.S. newspapers.
That was before Knight-Ridder went on a cost-cutting spree in which it excised muscle as well as fat. The good news, from a journalist's standpoint, is that the remaining Knight-Ridder papers are going to a chain known for good journalism.
The bad news: that it had to come to this.
But that's the reality of newspaper publishing circa 2006. A year ago I wrote that I'd love nothing more than to invest in a mutual fund that owns nothing but down-and-out publishing stocks -- just as I did with biotech several years ago when it was like the plague. Newspaper stocks were so hated they appeared to be the ultimate contrarian play.
Now I'm thinking I'm lucky no such fund existed. (Yet another case of being saved from myself.)
Despite their strong cash flows and brands, newspapers, in reality, have continued to struggle to expand revenue. No need to hash over all of the obvious reasons, but let's just say that when my daughter recently looked to rent an apartment in downtown San Diego, her first stop wasn't the San Diego Union Tribune's classifieds; she headed straight to Craig's List, where she found a condo unit being rented out (not surprisingly) by someone around her age. Granted, even before the Internet became renters' primary source, niche publications had eaten away at that market for years.
Still, it's no wonder that the stocks of chains I mentioned in that year-ago column, including the likes of Tribune (TRB) , are sharply lower than they were then. Knight-Ridder, in fact, is only back to year-ago levels because of takeover talk.
Even the deal price of $67.25 is just a point or two above where Knight-Ridder was at the time. While that marks a roughly 30% premium over Knight-Ridder's October 2005 trough, before its shareholders started agitating for a transaction, news of the deal has done little to jumpstart other newspaper stocks.
That's perhaps the most troubling part of the story: No matter what happens in this space, short of rising revenues, investors want to treat newspapers -- cash flow or no cash flow -- as yesterday's news.