John Morton
John Morton
center easier job knew pass
He made everyone's job easier because he was a center who knew how to play the game. He knew when to shoot, when to pass out.
california dailies enhance folks francisco higher motive pay presence price proper san surround
He has most of the dailies that now surround San Francisco proper and this only enlarges his presence in the area. With the California properties, Singleton has more of a motive than other folks to pay a higher price because it would enhance what he already owns.
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Tony Ridder inherited a company that had a lot of newspaper companies that are not in growing markets and would never be in growing markets. That's what he inherited, and that's what he had to work with.
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There are only so many growth markets. As concentration of ownership goes forward, you'll see future acquisitions of newspaper chains go pretty much the way this one did: The buyer will keep the growth markets and discard the rest.
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When Tribune acquired Times Mirror they acquired papers with much lower operating profits than Tribune papers have traditionally thrown off. The L.A. Times has a larger staff than is typical for that size of paper. They've been trying to address that without appearing to be a slash-and-burn company.
came improve known nightmare perfect pounding tony worst
It was a perfect target; Tony Ridder has known this for years and that's why he was pounding for the need to improve profitability. His worst nightmare came true.
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These newspapers generally have by industry standards fairly fat news staffs, so generally the layoffs are not draconian,
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An early victim would be the Philadelphia Daily News, no matter who acquires the company. It's much more profitable to publish one newspaper than two in the same market. It's a kind of miracle Knight Ridder kept it going this long.
attract bad good inclined newspaper people seem
I used to think in the good old days, all a newspaper had to do to attract circulation was to put out a better newspaper. But young people don't seem any more inclined to read a good newspaper than a bad one.
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They're sort of like anchors at a shopping mall. They tend to draw people to the newspaper.
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This is quite a dramatic change from what the history of the company has been in terms of whom the board has chosen to lead it.
history trying
The history of trying to start a daily where there already is one is that it has never worked.
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That structure is somewhat different than what we outside the deal had surmised,
above apparently attraction clearly held itself journal prefer readers saving size smaller until
Clearly there is an attraction to saving money. Readers also apparently prefer smaller size newspapers. Of course, the Journal has always held itself above that -- until now.