"Stripped for Parts" - PBS documentary on the destruction of the US newspaper media

[GreatGazoo]

3. Only newspapers

PBS describes the doc as: "A handful of journalists rebel against a hedge fund that is gutting newspapers nationwide."

That hedge fund is Smith Management LLC, a firm founded by Randall Duncan Smith, initially using the $20,000 cash prize he and his wife won on the 1968-1970 gameshow Dream House.

They established Alden Global Capital as a division which targeted legacy newspapers that were valued lower than the real estate the owned, similar to what was done to the Boston Globe which sold in 2014 for $70-million yet owned RE worth $75-million+

Legacy newspapers were a very different business than television news aka cable news. The customer for cable news is advertisers, PACs and lobbyists who seek to profit from influencing government policy changes. So although viewership is relatively low, under 1-million for most programs, cable news is still treated as the scoreboard within the DC beltway. IOW they aren't paying to reach average viewers but rather are paying a premium to reach the ~10,000 beltway types.

The customer for legacy newspapers was the both the reader and advertisers, a double dip. The two paid for different things. Readers paid for information, sport scores, stock market prices, crossword puzzles and the classifieds. Advertisers paid to have their offers and branding mixed into that content (ETA: with rates tied directly to total circulation / readership).

The internet destroyed readership and put newspapers in a very bad position. Many paywalled their content which gave them even less reach which decreased their value to advertisers.

Journalism moved to YouTube, Substack, etc.