Patterico's Pontifications

5/3/2006

Tribune Company “Takeover Bait”

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 10:50 pm



Bradley J. Fikes notes in comments to another post that the shares in Tribune Company, the company that owns the L.A. Times, have taken such a beating recently that the company is considered “takeover bait” by many analysts.

Interesting.

[Said in an extremely fast voice: No investment advice is implied. Patterico is not a stockbroker. Patterico does not own stock in Tribune and does not plan to. He doesn’t even like their newspapers. Haven’t you read this blog? Invest responsibly.]

19 Responses to “Tribune Company “Takeover Bait””

  1. I am so at a loss to understand why someone would by newspaper companies now.

    Yes, they are doing poorly and yes they’re cheap as a result, but aren’t they cheap because they’re doing poorly and expected to do much worse?

    On the other hand, some people by airlines, and Lord knows why because I don’t understand it.

    Chris from Victoria, BC (5d90a2)

  2. Patterico, maybe you should sell the Tribune short.

    Hoystory (de9da0)

  3. I am inclined to attribute most of the drop in the share price to Dusty Baker staying on as manager of the Cubs.

    nk (ca8012)

  4. I don’t get your disclaimer at all. This blog is basically an advertisement as to why the LAT would be a GOOD investment. They have a solid brand that they insist on sullying, and their reporting promises to continue to damage their brand. Ultimately what makes companies takeover bait is MISMANAGEMENT – a management team that is incapable of realising returns from the assets that they are running. A casual read of Patterico’s Pontifications shows that you support the position that the LAT is not well managed or edited. Does Rupert Murdoch check in here?

    [Well, it’s mostly a joke. But to the small extent that I’m serious, I’m just saying I don’t own Tribune stock and don’t plan to, so I have no interest in seeing the stock go up *or* down. — P]

    nittypig (4c1c43)

  5. There’s layers upon layers of angst at the LA Times. Being owned by an artless Chicago-based company is one layer. There’s the once and future king complex about the Otis Chander era; the confused effort to enter the Internet age (Michael Kinsley’s “goatsetorials” being the most salient example); the frustration of being beat in its Orange and San Diego County expansions. Finally, there’s the inherent difficulty of covering Los Angeles, which is so spread out into separate communities.

    Bradley J. Fikes (e619fc)

  6. If memory serves, part of the initial Hugh Hewitt Michael Hiltzik debate/brawl on the Hugh Hewitt show involved Hiltzik’s absolute refusal to admit declining circulation numbers at the LAT. His first line of defense was that any such decline didn’t exist; His second line of defense was that even if it did, it was irrelevant; His third line of defense was “You’re an idiot and a liar”. In short, Hiltzik was an example of the perfect Timesman. As long as the newsroom and editorial boards are occupied by folks like that, the LAT is going in the tank (except for the sports page, and I understand Hiltzik might be moving there), and its parent company is going to own a boat anchor on the west coast.

    Mike Myers (3a4363)

  7. For years now I have occupied a position in the ‘media bias’ debate that apparently nobody else wants:

    All media is biased. The concept of unbiased media is absurd, so long as the reporters and researchers are human. The problem with the Mainstream Media is not bias per se. The problem is the pretense of lack of bias, and the consequent impact on the quality of writing. The major fault of the Times is not bias, the major fault of the Times is bad writing and sloppy editing. Since they pretend that they are not fronting a point of view, they do not shape their opinions as arguments that need to be defended.

    This position has an addendum: If the Right is annoyed at the Left-Wing tilt of the majority of the press, the answer is simple…. Buy some papers!

    Any takers?

    C. S. P. Schofield (f8b526)

  8. This position has an addendum: If the Right is annoyed at the Left-Wing tilt of the majority of the press, the answer is simple…. Buy some papers!

    Which would be excellent advice if newspapers were still worth owning. Which I think was the point of this comment.

    McGehee (5664e1)

  9. One person who thinks newspapers are still worth owning is billionaire Phil Anschutz.

    Bradley J Fikes (52fcbe)

  10. The LAT could push Tribune stock up a point by unceremoniously dumping “look at me!” natterer Joel Stein who I now ignore and hiring a real reporter to cover the on-going affairs at City Hall (hint: newspapers are supposed to break stories in the making, not just gape with the rest of us at completed disasters like Belmont). Another point from revealing in detail who in the hell votes to allow public employees to retire with a Midas-like benefit package after 20 years of flying a desk–and why its still happening! Two more from doing the “oh so undignified” “Gotcha” stories on misuse of local funds. True I’d have to give up riveters like “Indian cabdrivers ponder future after Storms,” but the shareholders would be happier. So would I. Why can’t the LAT figure this out? The Chandlers tried everything–even using cereal execs–to pump life into the old bag. Everything but being a Newspaper. Some of us still like to read one at home with coffee. I wish LA had one.

    Frank Drebbin (bb7b00)

  11. Sorry, my previous comment was mostly a joke too. It didn’t need to be taken seriously 🙂

    nittypig (4c1c43)

  12. Newspapers are a declining industry like land line telephones. The LAT was once a great brand but those days are gone. It now seems to have chosen the business plan of CNN; cater to the left wing readers you already have and ignore those barbarians out there in the real world.

    In fact, there is a future if they would only see it. The web site is all I look at. I subscribe to newspapers and magazines to support them and then read them on the web. I even tried to resubscribe to the LAT but they screwed up the billing and I gave up.

    Newspapers 50 years ago (when I delivered them), used subscription revenue for distribution costs and lived on ad revenue. Google is getting fabulously rich on ad revenue. Why can’t newspapers ? Maybe because the libertarian who gets news from the web can’t put up with the left wing crap that infests old media newspapers. They can’t see it. There is money lying there to be picked up and they won’t bend over to look.

    Instead they cut the news bureaus that are their only real asset. There are none so blind as will not see.

    Mike K (6d4fc3)

  13. I pulled up the Times stock chart for the last ten years.

    Plunging straight down for the last two years.

    Paul (c169e9)

  14. There was a time when every two bit city had at least two newspapers, one for each major political faction. I’m not an expert, but from my reading of Reporters’ memoirs (Mencken, especially) I kind of gather that such papers were so-so profitable, as a rule. They were kept in place by their owners as bully pulpits. They were gloriously biased (although they took care not to lie unthriftily) and nobody expected otherwise.

    It seems to me that the death of the newspaper business is not a foregone conclusion. The internet is all very neat-o, but it’s hard to read standing up on a train, or in the bath. It isn’t local enough to make supermarket coupons a viable ad. It requires equipment that many find annoying.

    What I think is at an end is the monolithic Mainstream Media Conglomerate. It skews national and international news badly (that is to say, it gets caught lying a lot, and isn’t well written), and doesn’t handle local news with sufficient aggressiveness (there are honorable exceptions – on BOTH sides of the aisle).

    Too many local governments are rotten to the core in one way or another. The John Street administration in Philadelphia. The ongoing mess in Washington D.C.. The spectacular corruption and ineptitude that spreads over New Jersey like a miasma. The imbeciles in Boston who signed off on the Big Dig. There must be hundreds of other examples. Local papers that crusaded on one side or another would attract readership to the ongoing circus. It could be a lot of fun.

    Whether anybody on either side of the political fence has the guts or the talent to make this pipe dream come true is another matter.

    In the meanwhile we can pop in a DVD of FRONT PAGE and watch Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon (sp?) do it right. I don’t necessarily agree with the politics, but if the readers of THAT newspaper were bored it was time to check their vital signs.

    C. S. P. Schofield (76d7c1)

  15. The ongoing mess in Washington D.C.. … The imbeciles in Boston who signed off on the Big Dig.

    Neither of these is a one-newspaper town even today.

    McGehee (5664e1)

  16. I’ve often wondered why Murdoch doesn’t do something about Los Angeles. There’s a hungry market here for a paper that’s not Mexico-happy and biased.

    Vermont Neighbor (a9ae2c)

  17. Since I don’t live in the LA area any more, and haven’t for some time, I must ask: has the quality of the Times increased or decreased since the Tribune merger?

    aphrael (e0cdc9)

  18. ” ‘The ongoing mess in Washington D.C.. … The imbeciles in Boston who signed off on the Big Dig.’

    Neither of these is a one-newspaper town even today.”

    You appear top be missing my point. I know that there are cities with two or even three newspapers. My point was that in the era when ANY city of any size was likely to have two, three, or even more papers, those papers were not necessarily profitable, and were usually maintained by people with political ambitions, as platforms.

    C. S. P. Schofield (6a68a2)

  19. RE: Aphrael. I only get it on sundays, and that is so we get more sales ads.

    I would die laughing if Newscorp bought them.

    Reality (e11db7)


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