Comments on: I are an elitist.

By: jr

jr — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:37:24 +0000

I have been reading those Abrams memos assuming they were jokes… but I realize now, to my horror, that it’s all true. I’m shocked. Could someone actually rise to a position of power without knowing that Broadway shows took place in New York, and that reporters writing about war actually went to wars to witness it first-hand? I’m horrified.

By: » Miscellaneous musings for a TGIF Friday MiniMediaGuy: studying the media ecosystem

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 15:27:25 +0000

[…] But he also delivered them in a rather breathless and some golly gee whiz manner which is lampooned by former newspaper columnist turned blogger Nancy Nall Derringer. * * * Despite the debt burden on […]

By: Maria Padhila

Maria Padhila — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:39:44 +0000

CAN I HAZ CAPSLOKK? (Thanks to you and your commenters for the good reads…)

By: joodyb

joodyb — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:49:02 +0000

‘subsidized’ by classifieds? wow.

By: ydnews

ydnews — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:48:50 +0000

I’ll never forget the time I saw Sam Zell at a San Francisco institutional real estate confab and discovered he had like one tooth on his top gumline. I always wondered why — not like he didn’t have the money to get his teeth fixed. But if you ‘ve seen him in action, you know Zell likes to be outrageous, and there’s no better way to outrage elitists than to be a multi-billionaire flashing a one-toothed grin! Now THAT’s elitist!

By: Donnieb78

Donnieb78 — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:33:18 +0000

Jeff (the mild-mannered one), although I haven’t heard that song in 25 years, easy, that would be Cathedral by Graham Nash/CSN, no?

By: Big Tuna

Big Tuna — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:17:58 +0000

My whole argument was based on the business, not whether talk radio is a better product than newspapaer or NPR.

Satellite radio is a great product, I love it. But it’s a product that has never turned a profit, lost BILLIONS of dollars and will likely go bankrupt if they don’t get approval of their merger. The resources it takes to make this great product will always exceed the revenue it produces.

NPR is a great product. But if it did not get federal funding and it was required to turn a profit, it would be bankrupt.

Newspapers could be a very smart, wonderful product. But the resources it would take to make that product would be far more than the revenue generated.

Ironically, it turns out that all of these years most newspapers were also subsidised.…..by classified ads. Once those dollars went away, the reporting and journalism couldn’t stand on it’s own from a business standpoint.

By: ZamSell

ZamSell — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:32:06 +0000

Sam Zell is a pathetic, small-minded fool who got lucky finding loopholes in the real estate business to make a lot of money. He bent a lot of rules. He bilked a lot of little people. His shady business dealings may have worked in the real estate arena, but as soon as he tried to make money in a business that is highly transparent and scrutinized, his flaws as a businessman and as a human being became clear. He is a bully — a small-minded shopkeeper who swindled so much cash he began to believe his own lies about being a business genius. He surrounded himself with a bunch of adoring, well-paid acolytes who consistently affirmed to him his genius in exchange for fat salaries. People like Abrams aren’t smart or have any particular business savvy. (Come on. Who WASN’T making money in radio and real estate during the late 1990s and early 2000s?) They just know how to pucker up to the boss and flatter his crude sensibilities and assauge his insecurities.

By: nancy

nancy — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:21:39 +0000

NPR may not be profitable, but its b-model is not-for-profit. I've yet to visit an NPR station that wasn't pretty well-equipped, because they're not giving all the profits to the owner's wife's plastic surgeon. They also have a pretty good record of slavish listener loyalty. And my point isn't that newspapers need to be more like NPR (although that would be fine -- perhaps we could start with the assumption that our readers aren't clueless morons who need us to tell them how to raise children), but that they don't need to be more like all-news radio. We have dumbed ourselves down considerably already, and all that's happened is a steadily increasing circulation slide.

By: Big Tuna

Big Tuna — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:11:51 +0000

My contention was never with Abrams, but the author of this article.

NPR does not have a profitable product, why should newspapers expect to become more profitable by being more like NPR.