Monday was “a big day in the world of media,” said John Hinderaker in Power Line. The Tribune Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, and other papers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and The New York Times said it needs to borrow $225 million against its New York headquarters. Newspapers are in trouble because they haven’t figured out how to make up for losing their “cash cow,” classified ads, to the Internet.
And Tribune Co. is merely the “first domino” to fall, said Denny Wilkins in Scholars & Rogues. If your local paper is “a big metropolitan daily, it’s for sale—you just haven’t been told that yet.” After all, who wants to invest in a business that’s “losing gobs of money, has fired or bought out its best artisans,” and whose only solution has been “cutting more costs?”
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