NY Times

1. Writes Megan McArdle about the NY Times:

And Felix is right on when he points out that for a long, long time, articles on swinging into spring with patent leather have been subsidizing coverage of less-popular-yet-more-vital topics like foreign policy and the Department of Agriculture. The web is rapidly disaggregating the readers, and hence the subsidy. And that’s a big problem for society. One for which so far, no one has proposed any very satisfactory solution.

That’s true. On the other hand, the web has made the market more of a winner-take-all market. I wouldn’t be surprised that as smaller newspapers close down (witness the desperate moves of the Detroit Free Press) or become more local (like many European local newspapers who don’t make a pretense of covering news beyond their city and co-exist instead of competing with real newspapers), the NY Times becomes more and more dominant as the single national player.

Right now, there’s over-supply in the industry as a whole. All the players are losing money, but the best positioned might still come out ahead if they stick it out.

1. Writes Megan McArdle about the NY Times: And Felix is right on when he points out that for a long, long time, articles on swinging into spring with patent leather have been subsidizing coverage of less-popular-yet-more-vital topics like foreign policy and the Department of Agriculture. The web is rapidly disaggregating the readers, and ...