A Suggestion For Newspapers Looking For a Savior Investor – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

Most newspapers are struggling to find a revenue model that works. Their problems stem mostly from the internet, which has made free content widely available and replaced much of paper advertising, traditionally a major revenue source.

Most conspicuously, Chicago Tribune employees are rallying to find an investor to save it; ideally, a philanthropic investor who cares more about quality journalism than the bottom line.

I hope they succeed.

But my previous career was making investments, and there’s one thought that hits me every time I see something about papers needing investors. If I were being pitched to make the investment, the first thing I would say is this:

“Let me get this straight. You want me to invest in a business that thumbs its nose at half its addressable market, do I have that right?”

I’m referring to the half of the population that is politically right of center. For the most part, that audience is disregarded if not disdained by most papers. I won’t parse through the evidence for that because it has now become so obvious, and because most readers here know that and are here for an alternative.

Local news here in Illinois is far less biased than in the national media, where bias has become absurd, both on the left and right though overwhelmingly on the left. Where local bias is severe is on story selection. Look at the syndicated stories local papers print on national and world news and you will typically see what’s essentially the left’s agenda. If you lean right or even center, you won’t find much of interest, so why subscribe?

That criticism goes for the Chicago Tribune’s news side, too. It’s made worse at the Tribune and many other outlets because syndicated stories are usually from the Associated Press or New York Times, two of the most flagrant sources of opinion masquerading as news. It’s much better on the opinion side of the Tribune, however, where conservative guest columns often appear. And their editorial board includes about the only two consistently right-leaning voices in the state, John Kass and Kristen Mcqueary, though they are outnumbered by other columnists from the left.

As a pure business matter, isn’t balance a smarter way to appeal to the entire market? One example of the wisdom of doing so is legal commentator Jonathan Turley. His daily email, which he alone writes, has a mind-blowing 50 million subscribers. His success derives from his objectivity, which is pristine. RealClear is another example. Hugely successful, it’s unparalleled in its collection of all perspectives. There are success stories of hard right and hard left media at the national level, but local publications just don’t have the luxury of picking segments that way because their addressable markets are too small.

Journalists are right when they say that the loss of local news sources is a crisis. At least part of the solution requires a good look in the mirror and some empathy with an investor’s perspective.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.

45 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Con
2 years ago

I remember when the Tribune printed in depth articles about the Cook County Property Tax Assessment and helped to oust Berrios from office. If the Tribune ceased to exist, it would be a loss for the citizens. Perhaps the Tribune could perform a huge public service again and help out with public pension reform.

debtsor
2 years ago
Reply to  Con

The county assessments were just fine. It was a fake news that south suburban properties were overtaxed while north suburban properties were undertaxed. That $2,000 bungalow tax on the south side would be $7,000 on the north side for the same dang house. The Trib was pushing it’s Agenda, which was completely obviously when the new guy came along and completely F’d everything up for northsiders who saw their already obscene tax bill double or triple, while the south side properties save a few hundred bucks. Berrios’s problem was his nepotism. He hired way too degenerate family members who were… Read more »

Last edited 2 years ago by debtsor
Susan
2 years ago
Reply to  debtsor

The Cook County assessments were the opposite of just fine.

You need to look at the coefficients of dispersion (COD), and price related differentials (PRD) in the sales ratio studies.
The extraordinarily high COD indicate the high degree of non-uniform assessments. PRDs above 1.03 indicate that higher priced properties were underassessed and lower priced properties were overassessed.

(“Underassessed”/”overassessed” are not subjective terms. These figures are derived in sales ratio studies by comparing assessed values to sales prices of each property.)

debtsor
2 years ago
Reply to  Susan

This sounds a little too much like ‘equity’ to me. And I usually agree with what you say

Susan
2 years ago
Reply to  debtsor

No, this is just the process of mathematical analysis used by property tax assessors in order to determine whether assessments are “uniform”. (If all assessments are uniformly high or low, noone is getting screwed). Assessments of property value are created based upon assessor’s judgement of what a willing buyer and seller would agree on as a sales price. Then, that tax region’s property tax rate is applied to the assessed value. Property owners pay taxes on their home just like sales tax on consumption: if the tax rate is 3% and you buy $100 of groceries you pay $3 tax,… Read more »

taxpayer
2 years ago
Reply to  Susan

As one who pays attention to assessments, and pays real estate taxes, I agree that under Kaegi the quality of assessments has much improved. Which means that the assessments are more consistent with the laws and ordinances governing them. Whether these policies are good for the community is a separate issue.

susan
2 years ago
Reply to  taxpayer

well, if property is going to be taxed, I can’t think of a fairer formula than to apply a flat tax rate to (fairly assessed) property value.

However, the powers that be, in clamoring for graduated income taxes, have ignored a lucrative potential source to obtain revenue: graduated property tax rates based upon property value brackets.

I am a bit baffled at the deafening silence from our Gov and Mayor on ‘making the rich pay their fair share’ as that ‘fair share’ relates to property taxes.

Riverbender
2 years ago

I used to love reading the original cordless news source; the print media daily paper. Today however the print media seems focused on fake news, shaming one ethnic group for some sort of so called infringement of another ethnic group and drumming up stories apparently designed to further the interests of one specific political party. Seriously I can get all of the aforementioned for free on the internet; why pay to read it in print media?

Ambiguous End
2 years ago

The Chicago Tribune is almost worthless. Kass is a good writer, but not a true original like Royko. I’d advise him to find another job.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ambiguous End
Henryk A Kowalczyk
2 years ago
Reply to  Ambiguous End

Kass is a very talented writer, just a different kind than Royko. But even the best writers have not so good days sometimes. This is were a good editor steps in, simply asking for a better text. The Chicago Tribune has no good editors. Editors define the quality of the publication. I noticed that my articles published in good publications were better than those in the mediocre ones. Kass needs a better publication for his talent to shine.

debtsor
2 years ago
Reply to  Ambiguous End

The trib is 100% worthless. Kass is at retirement age now, well past his prime. There’s much better commentary on twitter from pundits in the 25-54 demographic. I don’t need to pay the trib to read my conservative uncle’s rants. Let the trib rot. Something else will replace it. There is demand for local news. HOpefully something bi-partisan and anti-corruption will fill the vacuum.

Henryk A Kowalczyk
2 years ago
Reply to  debtsor

I am older than Kass, tell me that I am well pass my time. Andy Rooney was sharp to his last appearance, at 92.

KJ
2 years ago

Look at Illinois Politics. Our state has problems from the judiciary to legislature to the governor to cities and townships. But most of them are Democrats, so newspapers won’t make them the story.

If an investor bought a paper, it would be to make a Conservative Paper.

Henryk A Kowalczyk
2 years ago
Reply to  KJ

Wrong. Conservatives are as much in fault as liberals. The paper is worth investing if it is about facts and logic not this or that -ism.

For your reference: https://virtualagora.us/capitalism-versus-socialism-9ece51b5ff29?source=friends_link&sk=037aede4300d3b4f5140d347c27f5fbc

Henryk A Kowalczyk
2 years ago

Mark, you stepped into my favored subject. The biggest problem is not in newspapers publishing editorials and opinion pieces “masquerading as news” of this or that political inclination. The biggest problem is that they do not have down to the bone open discussions among different political orientations. You assume that the newspaper’s success is in keeping political orientation aligned with that of most of the community. I disagree. What if, for some strange reason, the majority is wrong? The majority of people do not want to stay misinformed. There might be a narrow margin of hardcore ideological zealots with minds… Read more »

Last edited 2 years ago by Henryk A Kowalczyk
debtsor
2 years ago

Because journalists, as a profession, are no longer interested in presenting facts. Journalism school is now all about activism and bringing truth to power for progressive causes. They feel their job is to fight and refute any viewpoint that doesn’t match their own. The objective, or only slightly biased, news of our grandfathers is no more.

Henryk A Kowalczyk
2 years ago
Reply to  debtsor

You describe the situation. I know it. You do not explain why we have it.

debtsor
2 years ago

I believe I have explained why newspapers are one-sided trash. Journalists have become ideologues uninterested in reporting objective facts. Every other major cultural institution in America has made the same hard left turn in recent decades. Underlying this question is why have most cultural institutions taken a hard left in recent decades? The short answer is that the 1960’s hippies all grew up to come professors, and now two generations later, their upper-middle class students all lurch to the left too, and they control every major institution. The long answer is that traditional judo-christian cultural values are no longer the… Read more »

Henryk A Kowalczyk
2 years ago
Reply to  debtsor

The right answer was: the unionization of media.

I disagree with your opinion that “Sometimes your country goes full Bolshevik for 70 years and there is nothing you can do about it.
I was among those not too many in Poland who believed that we could and should do something about it. People were making circles on their forehands. We felt that it was very little we could do. But it was enough for the Soviet Union to rubble. It feels damn good now.

@ChicagoBri
2 years ago

Here we call it ‘the march of the left through institutions.’

Henryk A Kowalczyk
2 years ago
Reply to  Mark Glennon

A newspaper’s duty is even more. It is the insistence that the opposing political views address the arguments of the opponents. Journalists should point weaknesses of the arguments regardless if they agree or disagree with the view.
Please imagine the Chicago Tribune grilling everyday government union pensions bankrupting our state. Think of debates where politicians would be forced to answer in public view questions that you ask. Would investors be interested in a paper of this kind?

GM
2 years ago

I appreciate your comments, and I look forward to reading your excellent blog, thank you! One of my interests is Cold War history, especially focusing on how the once – mighty USSR dissolved, and how that process also played out in the East Bloc client states, especially in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany [a favorite quote from that era, made by East German leader Erich Honecker in January 1989: “The Wall will be standing in 50 and even in 100 years, if the reasons for it are not removed…”]

Henryk A Kowalczyk
2 years ago
Reply to  GM

Thank you for your encouraging words. I agree with you that there is too little information about the Cold War and how it ended. Somewhere in the middle of the 1970s, I started thinking that the days of the Soviet Union were counted. But, I believed that it might last for the next 50 years or so. Nevertheless, hoping that it might happen sooner, in 1980, I wrote a book about how Poles should prepare for the possibility of the Soviet Union collapse. In 1982, Wiesław Górnicki, the chief political advisor to General Jaruzelski, wrote a lengthy review of my book.… Read more »

Con
2 years ago

I remember when the Tribune printed in depth articles about the Cook County Property Tax Assessment and helped to oust Berrios from office. If the Tribune ceased to exist, it would be a loss for the citizens. Perhaps the Tribune could perform a huge public service again and help out with public pension reform.

Henryk A Kowalczyk
2 years ago
Reply to  Con

Correct, under Lipinski they had good reporting.

MikeH
2 years ago

Buy the ticket, take the ride, presstitutes. You carried water for the Dems for years, helping spread their narrative far and wide. Yet, now people aren’t turning to the old media anymore like they used to (something, something, broken social contract) and you’ve been cast aside like the useful idiots you are.

the observer
2 years ago
Reply to  MikeH

Well said. 🙂

Wally
2 years ago

It’s the distrust of the MSM. Russian election interference, the Steele dossier, Russian bounties on US soldiers, and the Capitol policeman who died of a stroke, not by an assault by Trump supporters. Stories that played out for months before being discredited. The common denominator? “Anonymous sources.” Since when did newspapers totally base stories on anonymous sources? Wow, two!! anonymous sources. Got to be credible. The chief users of these anonymous sources are WaPo and NYT. And about two years ago, the Trib started daily printing stories from WaPo and NYT which they seldom did before. And runs them. Previous… Read more »

Redwave
2 years ago
Reply to  Wally

Great point. One other troubling trend is the complete lack of journalistic courage or even curiosity. Regardless of where the truth ultimately lies, have we seen one serious journalist even ask a question about the Hunter Biden laptop for instance? Is there no journalist with the courage to raise reasonable questions about the many anomalies in the last election or the government narrative on the 1/6 “insurrection”? It’s sad, but it also makes small independent outlets like Wirepoints all the more important.

Con
2 years ago
Reply to  Wally

The anonymous sources are other journalists.

Fur
2 years ago
Reply to  Con

FBI CIA etc too.

BB
2 years ago

I canceled my tribune paper last year- They moved far to the left for my view.
Not going to pay foe something i do not agree with simple!
Good luck tribune.

Thee Jabroni
2 years ago

About a year and a half ago saw a guy at a Menards pitching a very low subscription rate for the Chicago Trib Sunday paper.So i thought,sure,why not,used to read the Des Moines sunday paper religously for years when i lived there.Long story short it took me about three times of reading the trib to realize what a left wing rag that it is,canceled my subscription but stil got the paper for another few weeks,so my typical sunday morning was…get up,go outside,pick up the trib from driveway,promptly throw it in the trash where it belonged!!!

NoHope4Illinois
2 years ago

At least with citizens refusing to pay for news media run by propagandists, not journalists, that is the free market working. However, the 2nd wave now is censorship and cancel culture – I can’t believe I am saying this in America!!!

Thank you WP.

susan
2 years ago

The nature of investing in modern times is to leverage public funds
(through taxpayer-stop-lossed, incestuous private-public partnerships known as ‘licensed lending institutions’
(which get leveraged funds for free from government-controlled taxpayer-funded entities)
to ‘qualified individuals’
(which judging by past performance means qualifications like party-line lockstep political support economically and in the form of social manipulation through public influence).

If that is true, then ownership of a ‘journalism’ industry factory is a lucrative ‘loss leader’.

Pscheff
2 years ago

Exactly right. Heidi Stevens is out begging for people to subscribe what she doesn’t understand is plenty of people don’t want to hear her lectures and leftist screed. The self importance of these “journalists” is amazing

debtsor
2 years ago
Reply to  Pscheff

Heidi, Zorn and crew are the worst, just the worst. Zorn is the guy who said that he was switching his allegiances from the Cubs to the Sox, and encouraged the entire city to do so, because the father of the owners of the Cubs received some ‘conservative uncle’ email forwards. Who wants to pay $$$ for this drivel? I haven’t paid for a Tribune in almost a decade now. Kass is good, for sure, but he’s 65 years old now, and has the conservative world view everyone’s retired conservative uncle. There’s so much better commentary a click or two… Read more »

Last edited 2 years ago by debtsor
Jerry Felsenthal
2 years ago
Reply to  debtsor

Dear Mark: The problem is wider than the Tribune. All kinds of newspapers are failing all over the country. Left wing, right wing, and the middle of the road papers. If your answer, add more pundits that you agree with, would cure the crisis of newspapers in this country, your would have seen, by now, a million papers that would have tried adding right leaning journalists. But that is not what is ailing the Tribune and a thousand other newspapers. Advertising revenue is, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are sucking up, at least according to what I have read,… Read more »

debtsor
2 years ago

The left-wing bias of the Trib specifically turned off many of their core subscribers, the older, centrist or conservative leaning readers. They could have slowed the hemorrhaging if everything wasn’t Orange Man Bad all the time. This week my Trib reporter’s beat update reported: a local civic event; a village board meeting the upcoming agenda for a politically left wing Indivisible affiliated political action group. Indivisible meetings, which is about 30 lunatics in a town of 40,000 people, is not news. I won’t pay money for this. Has the local reporter once reported on a local GOP meeting? Of course… Read more »

Last edited 2 years ago by debtsor
Marcia
2 years ago

I stopped getting my local paper when it stopped providing local news. It had national headlines….but not more in depth than the sound bite you get on tv…and you could find better, more in depth coverage on-line.

But what about local news? That too….the local coverage was not more in depth than the local tv news. Once upon a time, you would hear the short story on the tv news and pick up the more in depth coverage in the newspaper. When that stopped being true, I stopped reading it. I actually get more information on the tv news website.

NB-Chicago
2 years ago

Jerry, you got it right– FB & Google ARE the new business model for news media as well as all other media as they suck up all the add revenue news papers depend on. Recent push in Australia and some European countries to make FB, Google & others share their add revenue with news providers was meet by FB & Google fighting vociferously against sharing any of their add revenue. Having internet providers share revenue with news provides could perhaps be a partial solution to news papers revenue problems but doesn’t address the left news bias issue.
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/microsoft-urges-u-s-adoption-of-google-facebook-revenue-sharing

SIGN UP HERE FOR FREE WIREPOINTS DAILY NEWSLETTER

Home Page Signup
First
Last
Check all you would like to receive:

FOLLOW US

 

WIREPOINTS ORIGINAL STORIES

A statewide concern: Illinois’ population decline outpaces neighboring states – Wirepoints on ABC20 Champaign

“We are not in good shape” Wirepoints’ Ted Dabrowski told ABC 20 Champaign during a segment on Illinois’ latest population losses. Illinois was one of just three states to shrink in the 2010-2020 period and has lost another 300,000 people since then. Ted says things need to change. “It’s too expensive to live here, there aren’t enough good jobs and nobody trusts the government anymore. There’s just other places to go where you can be more satisfied.”

Read More »

WE’RE A NONPROFIT AND YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS ARE DEDUCTIBLE.

SEARCH ALL HISTORY

CONTACT / TERMS OF USE