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Originally Posted by HansTWN
Your point being that an outstanding news organization cannot be profitable?
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You mean, once the transition to digital completes? In the US, that's an open question. My guess is that an outstanding news organization, in the sense of the watergate era WaPo, cannot be profitable unless all the world's serious news web sites put up a strong pay wall. That won't happen. So papers will continue to hemorrhage print readers and ad revenue, with digital not making it up.
The New York Times, IMHO the outstanding US news organization, did make money in 2012, but only after repeated rounds of layoffs. And print circulation continues to slide. And digital circulation is nowhere near as valuable as print circulation was. For example, I now pay US.1.99 a month for the ad-free Kindle New York Times Latest News Blog. Before the web, I was a home delivery subscriber paying maybe ten or fifteen times more, not even taking inflation into account -- even though the paper was mostly financed by ads. Someone could say that they should raise the price of that blog, which is indeed a bargain. But with so many free alternatives such as Calibre news, if the Times does raise the price much, I'll walk.
As for the Washington Post, their layoffs, while insufficient to restore profitability, mean the WaPo is not the outstanding paper it once was. They dropped their book review section in, I believe, 2009 and investigative journalism has been greatly cut.
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I am sure Bezos has other ideas.
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As do hundreds of thousands of others. But what does Bezos know about the news business? And what evidence is there that he wants to spend much time on it? Even if there are a few magic ideas which would restore the paper's greatness while returning profitability, which I doubt, you don't do a successful corporate turnaround working an hour or two a week.
If I believe the Wall Street Journal, your
entire island has been thrown into turmoil. Maybe the Wall Street Journal will remain profitable. And maybe the Wall Street Journal article I linked is a good one despite the possible hyperbole. But if the Wall Street Journal is the best that's possible in the digital age, I do consider that unfortunate.