Jack Shafer, in “When bad financial news for newspapers is good news for journalism,” thinks the implosion in stock value of newspaper companies — and newspaper sales for well below what they’d have brought only a few years ago — is
potentially good news for journalism. It pops the bubble that had carried newspaper valuation beyond the Van Allen Belt. And by doing so, it presents publishers—and Wall Street—with more rational expectations about what sort of profits the newspaper industry can make without destroying itself.
I’m skeptical. Investors won’t change their fundamental ways. They’ll continue to demand even bigger cuts.
Hard to see a way out of the implosion anytime soon.