![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
There are two big questions on the business side of the journalism business these days: Who will buy the New England Media Group, which includes the Boston Globe and my employer, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, and who will buy the Los Angeles Times. Curiously, these keep being addressed in the press as unrelated questions, as though they were pieces on different corporate game boards. They are not: several of the same potential buyers have been name checked for each media group, and indeed, Evercore Partners is handling both sales, which puts that organization in an interesting brokerage position. Most observers, mostly speaking out of regional interest, have reflected on the possibility of individual companies being broken up -- say, the Telegram being separated out from the The Globe -- but no one has really explored the possibility of an even bigger media merger, even though some of the players have been definitely eyeing expanding their media holdings.
It's definitely the less likely scenario, but it's not entirely out of the question, especially as -- as The Daily Show so effectively spoofed -- "merger mania" is in the air. Aaron Kushner, current publisher of The Orange County Register, has at various times expressed interest in both groups. Warren Buffett is on a buying spree. Generally, I think smaller news organizations are both more profitable and easier to manage, but then, corporate America has never been entirely sensible.
Of course, being a displaced Southern Californian in New England with personal and professional ties to both media properties, I'm hardly objective in the matter: I couched my feelings on the Telegram being up for sale in an essay revisiting the album Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails. (My friend and colleague Dianne Williamson wrote about it much more sensibly here.)
Others, less emotionally invested, have been writing about the potential sales more clinically. Worcester Magazine has a pretty good story on what might happen to the Telegram, which features, as one Telegram reporter pointed out, a pretty classy quote from the police chief, who has no reason to be friendly toward the paper, and a hilariously self-serving quote from that Four Loco website. LA Weekly has a story out on what might happen with the LA Times. (Interestingly, I've been personally and professionally involved with both of those papers, too. All of which reminds me that I'm old and have worked, mostly freelance, for a lot of companies over the years.)
But really, when it comes right down to it, everyone is speculating. No one knows a damn thing right now, and that's what makes this all a bit maddening. Somewhere, less than a year down the road, there's going to be a major realignment of the media companies we currently refer to as "newspapers." It's going to be a fairly substantive change, but whether it's for the better or worse ... no one knows. Maybe those terms don't even mean anything. Maybe it'll just be different.
Whatever happens, the change feels both overwhelmingly large and terrifyingly personal. I don't know how to wrap my brain around that dichotomy. I only know how to write.
It's definitely the less likely scenario, but it's not entirely out of the question, especially as -- as The Daily Show so effectively spoofed -- "merger mania" is in the air. Aaron Kushner, current publisher of The Orange County Register, has at various times expressed interest in both groups. Warren Buffett is on a buying spree. Generally, I think smaller news organizations are both more profitable and easier to manage, but then, corporate America has never been entirely sensible.
Of course, being a displaced Southern Californian in New England with personal and professional ties to both media properties, I'm hardly objective in the matter: I couched my feelings on the Telegram being up for sale in an essay revisiting the album Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails. (My friend and colleague Dianne Williamson wrote about it much more sensibly here.)
Others, less emotionally invested, have been writing about the potential sales more clinically. Worcester Magazine has a pretty good story on what might happen to the Telegram, which features, as one Telegram reporter pointed out, a pretty classy quote from the police chief, who has no reason to be friendly toward the paper, and a hilariously self-serving quote from that Four Loco website. LA Weekly has a story out on what might happen with the LA Times. (Interestingly, I've been personally and professionally involved with both of those papers, too. All of which reminds me that I'm old and have worked, mostly freelance, for a lot of companies over the years.)
But really, when it comes right down to it, everyone is speculating. No one knows a damn thing right now, and that's what makes this all a bit maddening. Somewhere, less than a year down the road, there's going to be a major realignment of the media companies we currently refer to as "newspapers." It's going to be a fairly substantive change, but whether it's for the better or worse ... no one knows. Maybe those terms don't even mean anything. Maybe it'll just be different.
Whatever happens, the change feels both overwhelmingly large and terrifyingly personal. I don't know how to wrap my brain around that dichotomy. I only know how to write.
