Jeremy Peters had a story about the Washington Post in Sunday’s New York Times that was fascinating on a number of different levels. Though every newspaper’s misery is a product of its own history, market and the family behind it, all newspapers suffer the same affliction as they move from the relative riches of print-based advertising to the relentless treadmill of internet ad rates. Simply put, newspapers can’t balance the demand for content with the tiny price paid by advertisers which leaves them operating with chronic deficits.
That, of course, is the unstated subtext of the story. Things might be bad at the Post but management at the Times—which abruptly threw over its CEO two months ago—is pretty bad too.
Until very recently, the Washington Post seemed to be in a much better position than the New York Times. The Times made numerous financial mistakes that squandered hundreds of millions of dollars in years leading up to the crisis. The Post, on the other hand, was cushioned by the runaway success of Stanely Kaplan until the government got wise to the rampant abuses in the for-profit education sector:
The Post faces the same problems as other daily newspapers, whose revenues have sunk as the Web and the tough economy have sapped advertising. But in some ways, its situation is even more daunting. Unlike most other papers with national aspirations, The Post serves a purely local print market, one that for decades had limited competition, and it has depended on local advertisers and subscribers who have since fled to the Web.
Though company managers say privately that The Post is modestly profitable, its newspaper division, which also includes a group of community papers and The Herald of Everett, Wash., reported an operating loss of nearly $26 million through the first three quarters of last year.
Compounding its troubles, The Post’s safety net ripped a giant hole. For decades, The Post could rely on Kaplan — the money-minting, for-profit college and test-preparation business that the company bought in 1984. But Kaplan has been squeezed under the weight of new federal rules that place greater limits on how for-profit colleges can recruit and enroll low-income students.
What’s really interesting about Peters’s story isn’t that turn of events. Instead, it is the rampant nostalgia that seems to overhang the Washington Post. Decades after Ben Bradlee and Kay Graham handed the reins over to another generation, Post-men still hark back to those leaders as a touchstone of the paper. It’s as if nothing of merit happened at the paper during Len Downie’s 17 years at the helm. At least, no one is telling those-were-the-days yarns about Downie’s paper.
Downie isn’t the villain here, though. In Peters’s story, Marcus Brauchli and Katharine Weymouth are depicted as the wooden and mechanical replacements for the dynamic figures of yore. They’re the disappointing kids who ran the family business into the ground.
But is that really what ailes the Post? Perhaps in the newsroom but not within the larger strategic landscape.
The Washington Post suffers not from its failures but from its success. Like the Los Angeles Times, the Post built its base as a regional media powerhouse with deep connections to Washington, DC’s growing suburbs and exurbs. For years where the New York Times was going national, the Post showed that really profitable media was all local.
For a while, the Post compensated for its focused footprint with canny traffic deals. Hook-ups with MSN gave its digital properties the kind of broader exposure that usually comes from being part of larger media conglomerate.
Those deals have sunset; and, though Donald Graham remains a canny media politician—his courting of Microsoft was followed by his recent friendship with Mark Zuckerberg—there is a disconnect between the reach of a media outlet and its ability to generate revenue. (That’s something he shares with Zuckerberg.)
It would be more satisfying to locate this failure to generate revenue in some personal failing or dynastic declension. But no honest analysis could really come to that conclusion. The Grahams are playing the hand they were dealt as best they can. They’ve certainly played the game better than the Sulzbergers even if the Times has emerged as the vastly more influential newspaper.
The Times’s own story reminds everyone that the continuing failure of the advertising model of media has not reached a real resolution. Until someone figures out how to support the large cast it takes to produce a high quality news report, we’re going to see more of these finger-pointing stories.
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Source: A Newspaper, and a Legacy, Reordered
Jeremy W. Peters
New York Times; Feburary 12, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/business/media/the-washington-post-recast-for-a-digital-future.html?_r=1&ref=business&pagewanted=all
1. Facebook (FB) claims 500 million subscribers. How many of these are active users — at least once or twice per week? How many of these are dead accounts, with no activity for 30 days? 90 days or more?
2. What is the average revenue per subscriber? How are you planning to grow this?
3. How much churn does Facebook go through? For every 100 new subscribers, how many subscribers leave?
4. What is the life cycle of the typical Facebook subscriber? How active are they for how long, what sort of arc do they cut across theirFB life cycle?
5. Besides advertising, how will you monetize your user base? Are you selling their data to buyers? What about anonymized data — are you selling this also?
Bonus question: What is the subscriber growth like outside of the US? Where are your fastest growing areas? What area is not seeing big penetration ?
OK, that’s more like 15 question about their users, growth and monetization prospects from a Private Equity/Venture Capital perspective.
Today, on the eve of their Form S-1 SEC filing for an IPO, there are additional questions that are worth asking of a soon to be publicly traded company:
1. What is the IPO offering price going to be? What market capitalization will FB come public at?
2. What are the key pricing metrics? P/E, growth rate, price to book, price to sales?
3. What are FB’s future growth rate? At 800 million users, where do they begin to plateau? Top out?
4. What is FB’s plans for penetrating China?
5. How are the privacy concerns going to be handled? What else might come out of the closer FTC scrutiny of web companies use of personal data?
6. How long are insiders/VCs going to be locked up? Are they committed holding onto shares for the long haul, or are they cashing out at the IPO or as soon as possible thereafter?
Remember, Google stunned the world during their road show by revealing monstrous revenues and enormous profits. It stunned the analyst community, who had no idea as to how profitable the search giant actually was.
Will Facebook be able to do the same? Can the social media giant monetize users as effectively as Google — we shall soon find out!
ACTA: “Would Usurp Congressional Authority”, “Threatens Numerous Public Interests”, a “Backroom Special Interest Deal”, a “Masquerade”
We just beat back SOPA and PIPA with the web blackout.
Now everyone is talking about ACTA. But – because ACTA is complicated, and is just starting to receive coverage – most are not sure exactly what ACTA really is, or why we should be concerned about it.
We’ll give you an executive summary of what you need to know.
Instead of giving you the specifics about what’s actually in the bill (we provide links at the end for those who want to know), we’ll explain why the procedure used is a recipe for disaster.
Unless we understand the rotten, anti-democratic process which is causing these bad bills to be introduced, we will be caught off-guard by the introduction of one draconian bill after another … and we will lose the fight for Internet freedom.
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Eva Galperin told me:
The United States will continue to use multi-national treaties negotiated in secret without the consultation of civil society or other key stakeholders as a way of ramming US IP policy down the throats of other countries.
But this is a superficial analysis. Specifically, it is also an attempt to ram Hollywood’s interests down the throats of the American people … and Congress.
A Handful of Powerful Men Are Trying to Railroad Democracy and the Constitution to Protect Their Interests
The fastest way to understand ACTA is to look at the way in which its backers have tried to trample the normal democratic processes in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere in order to railroad it through.
As an international treaty, ACTA is supposed to be ratified by the American Senate and other appropriate government legislatures. But this is not at all what has happened.
Instead, ACTA has been negotiated for years in secret, without disclosing its contents – let alone seeking approval from – Congress or other legislatures.
In the United States, for example, President Bush and President Obama hid ACTA negotiations under the veil of “National Security”, thus keeping it away from prying eyes … including Congress.
Republican Congressman Darrell Issa says that ACTA is more dangerous than SOPA:
As a member of Congress, it’s more dangerous than SOPA. It’s not coming to me for a vote. It purports that it does not change existing laws. But once implemented, it creates a whole new enforcement system and will virtually tie the hands of Congress to undo it.
Democratic Senator Wyden has argued for years – in letters to USTR ambassador Ron Kirk, President Obama, and the administration’s top international law expert Harold Koh. – that adoption of ACTA is unconstitutional unless without Senate approval.
Regardless of whether the agreement requires changes in U.S. law, the executive branch lacks constitutional authority to enter a binding international agreement covering issues delegated by the Constitution to Congress’ authority, absent congressional approval.
The Member of the European Parliament who was appointed to be the rapporteur for ACTA in the European Parliament (Kader Arif) quit last week in protest. Arif said:
I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament’s demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly.
As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens’ legitimate demands.”
Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.
This agreement might have major consequences on citizens’ lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.
As Harvard professors Jack Goldsmith and Lawrence Lessig wrote in the Washington Post in March 2010:
The much-criticized cloak of secrecy that has surrounded the Obama administration’s negotiation of the multilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was broken Wednesday. Theleaked draft of ACTA belies the U.S. trade representative’s assertions that the agreement would not alter U.S. intellectual property law. And it raises the stakes on the constitutionally dubious method by which the administration proposes to make the agreement binding on the United States.
***
Normal constitutional procedures would require the administration to submit the final text of the agreement for Senate approval as a treaty or to Congress as a “congressional-executive” agreement. But the Obama administration has suggested it will adopt the pact as a “sole executive agreement” that requires only the president’s approval.
Such an assertion of unilateral executive power is usually reserved for insignificant matters. It has sometimes been employed in more important contexts, such as when Jimmy Carter ended the Iran hostage crisis and when Franklin Roosevelt recognized and settled expropriation claims with the Soviet Union.
***
The president has no independent constitutional authority over intellectual property or communications policy, and there is no long historical practice of making sole executive agreements in this area. To the contrary, the Constitution gives primary authority over these matters to Congress, which is charged with making laws that regulate foreign commerce and intellectual property.
Congress should follow Biden’s lead. If the president succeeds in expanding his power of sole executive agreement here, he will have established a precedent to bypass Congress on other international matters related to trade, intellectual property and communications policy.
***
Congress should resist this attempt to evade the checks established by our Framers.
Over 75 law professors – some of them quite prominent – wrote a letter to President Obama in October 2010 stating:
ACTA’s negotiation has been conducted behind closed doors, subject to intense but needless secrecy, with the public shut out and a small group of special interests very much involved. The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has been involved in negotiations relating to ACTA for several years, and there have been drafts of portions of the agreement circulating among the negotiators since the start of negotiations. Despite that, the first official release of a draft text took place only in April, 2010. And following that release the USTR has not held a single public on-the-record meeting to invite comments on the text. Worse, in every subsequent meeting of the negotiating parties, the U.S. has blocked the public release of updated text.
***
This degree of secrecy is unacceptable, unwise…. Rather than seeking meaningful public input from the outset, your Administration has allowed the bulk of the public debate to be based upon, at best, hearsay and speculation. Yet, ACTA is a trade agreement setting out a range of new international rules governing intellectual property; as the G-8 called it, a “new international framework.” It is not (the claims of the USTR notwithstanding) related in any way to any standard definition of “national security” or any other interest of the United States similarly pressing or sensitive. The Administration’s determination to hide ACTA from the public creates the impression that ACTA is precisely the kind of backroom special interest deal – undertaken in this case on behalf of a narrow group of U.S. content producers, and without meaningful input from the American public – that you have so often publicly opposed.
Second, the Administration has stated that ACTA will be negotiated and implemented not as a treaty, but as a sole executive agreement. We believe that this course may be unlawful, and it is certainly unwise.
Now that a near-final version of the ACTA text has been released, it is clear that ACTA would usurp congressional authority over intellectual property policy in a number of ways. Some of ACTA’s provisions fail to explicitly incorporate current congressional policy, particularly in the areas of damages and injunctions.[1] Other sections lock in substantive law that may not be well-adapted to the present context, much less the future.[2] And in other areas, the agreement may complicate legislative efforts to solve widely recognized policy dilemmas, including in the area of orphan works, patent reform, secondary copyright liability and the creation of incentives for innovation in areas where the patent system may not be adequate.[3] The agreement is also likely to affect courts’ interpretation of U.S. law.[4]
The use of a sole executive agreement for ACTA appears unconstitutional.[5] The President may only make sole executive agreements that are within his independent constitutional authority.[6] The President has no independent constitutional authority over intellectual property or communications policy, the core subjects of ACTA. To the contrary, the Constitution gives primary authority over these matters to Congress, which is charged with making laws that regulate foreign commerce and intellectual property.[7] ACTA should not be pursued further without congressional oversight and a meaningful opportunity for public debate.
The USTR has insisted that ACTA’s provisions are merely procedural and only about enforcing existing rights. These assertions are simply false. Nearly 100 international intellectual property experts from six continents gathered in Washington, DC in June, 2010 to analyze the potential public interest impacts of the officially released text. Those experts – joined by over 650 other experts and organizations – found that “the terms of the publicly released draft of ACTA threaten numerous public interests, including every concern specifically disclaimed by negotiators.”
***
Academics and other neutral intellectual property experts have not had time to sufficiently analyze the current text and are unlikely to do so as long as there is no open public forum to submit such analysis in a meaningful process.
***
Finally, we are concerned that the purpose that animates ACTA is being deliberately misrepresented to the American people. The treaty is named the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement”. But it has little to do with counterfeiting or controlling the international trade in counterfeit goods.
***
Our conclusion is simple: Any agreement of this scope and consequence must be based on a broad and meaningful consultative process, in public, on the record and with open on-going access to proposed negotiating text and must reflect a full range of public interest concerns. For the reasons detailed above, the ACTA negotiations fail to meet these standards.
Indeed, just as most copyright lawyers actually oppose SOPA and PIPA, the secrecy and dishonest end-run which has characterized the ACTA process mean that the main U.S. and international intellectual property organizations have had no input into the drafting of ACTA.
We Can Still Stop It
While ACTA has already been signed by dozens of countries, it will not go into effect unless the European Union parliament ratifies it in a couple of months.
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. —John Kenneth Galbraith
Knowing that the vote over the weekend in Greece was really a referendum on Euro membership, a majority of the Greek Parliament said yes to staying. European Finance Ministers meet again on Wednesday to solidify the 2nd bailout package for Greece at the same time hopefully a deal is consummated between Greece and its creditors this week. The Greek 14.5b euro bond that matures on March 20th is up by 2 pts. The optimism that all will be completed and contained AGAIN to Greece has yields lower in Portugal, Spain and Italy. The iTraxx Financial Index is also narrower by...
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