News Item: Newsweek Magazine Sold - for $1.00? http://tiny.cc/kj3an
And we're not talking about a newstand copy – this is reportedly what the Entire Magazine went for, 285 employees included!
A deal to sell Newsweek to a 91-year-old stereo equipment magnate will be announced later this afternoon, a move that will signal the end of a half-century of ownership by the Washington Post Company….
According to several people who have been briefed on the process, Mr. Harman's bid appealed to Mr. Graham and the Post Company because Mr. Harman has said he would retain a significant number of the magazine's 325 employees. The financial details of the sale were not known, though one person with knowledge of Mr. Harman's bid said last week that he would pay $1 in exchange for absorbing Newsweek's considerable financial liabilities.
So let's be fair, $1.00 isn't exactly the market value, it's actually much less than that since apparently Mr. Harman is going to take on significant financial liabilities in exchange for the right to lose money from here to eternity on this white elephant. The Washington Post is quite literally giving the entire operation away just to be out from under the obligations – and that tells you all you need to know about what they think the future holds for Newsweek.
But in a fascinating twist, the Post appears to have several offers that were much better than this, offers which would have given their own shareholders a much better return on these assets and on all the money that's been wasted this past year. So why did they turn down those offers and instead, make their own shareholders take a beating by giving Newsweek away for free? Because those nasty high bidders might have actually fired some employees and <gasp> CHANGED the editorial direction of the Magazine! We can't have that, oh heaven forbid, we can't have that! So better to take a huge loss and auger this entire operation into the dirt before even considering whether maybe, just maybe, they've been doing things wrong.
And that right there pretty much sums up the current state of liberal thought in this country. They're never going to change – liberals are going to powerdive anything they run straight into the ground before they even consider doing anything differently. How did they come to this state of affairs? We probably all remember Newsweek as that somewhat left-leaning newsweekly that used to mostly print straight news without too much editorializing. Then – well, the article softpedals what happened last year:
The magazine's top editors and managers redesigned it last year in hopes of attracting more readers and advertisers. But the updated magazine, which contained more commentary and analysis on the news of the week, failed to catch on.
Actually what they did was to cut out most of the straight news reporting and turn it into All Obama, All the time! And rather than reporting actual news anymore, everyone in charge felt it would be a lot more fun if they just editorialized about whatever caught their fancy that week, or more precisely whatever they thought the Administration needed help with that week. The cover hyping America's! Great! Economic! Recovery! a couple months back stands out as a particularly notable piece of disinformation.
Newsweek's dedication to the Cause undoubtedly would have put Pravda to shame.
Surprise, surprise, surprise – they found that they couldn't even give those magazines away, and circulation figures crashed. But did they change their strategy? Oh hell no. The losses got so great that even the Washington Post couldn't look the other way anymore, so they went on the auction block. But even at the End of All Things, they can't give up their hold on their precious Ideology, and they'll gladly dance their way into the pit as long as they know they've got it safely grasped in their hand.
Newsweek's attitude towards their readers and towards the idea of having to compete in a market at all was probably best summed up by Franz Liebkind:
"I am the Author! You are the Audience! I OUTRANK YOU!!!!"
Come to think of it, he should be their Patron Saint. They resemble him more and more every day.
So, who would willingly walk into this snakepit of guaranteed disaster? Enter Sidney Harman, 91 year old multimillionaire, of Harman Industries, maker of JBL and Infinity sound systems, among other things. What else is a guy like that going to do for fun at that age? (Well actually I think J. Howard Marshall made a much better choice in similar circumstances than Sidney Harman just did, but that's just me) Lest you think that he's going to actually apply some business sense to this operation, allow me to point out that his wife is Jane Harman, noted Congressional Democrat from California, an on and off ally of Nancy Pelosi. So, essentially Newsweek just got farmed out to the Democrat Party for free, with a donor who will run it as they see fit because he's old and bored and doesn't mind throwing $20 or $30 million a year away in exchange for the chance to feel that he's important again. See why Democrats love campaign finance limits? When you own the media, all that spending limits ever do is shut out the competition. But that's another story.
As one of the commenters in the original story noted, the plan is for a 91 year old man from 'Old Media' who is not interested in streamlining operations to revitalize a dying magazine.
Oh yeah, that'll work.
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