Monday, July 23, 2018

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo Makes Statist Economic Offer to the 'New York Daily News"



Tronc Inc. has announced it is laying off half the news staff at the New York Daily News.

The economic guillotine fell quickly according to The New York Times:
The meeting lasted less than a minute. By the time it was over, reporters and editors at The Daily News had been told that the newsroom staff was being cut in half and that the editor in chief, Jim Rich, was out of a job.

Grant Whitmore, an executive at Tronc, the media company that owns The News, presided over the meeting, which took place shortly after 9 a.m. on Monday in the seventh-floor newsroom at 4 New York Plaza in Lower Manhattan.

It appears to be a very calculated business move. The Times explains:
Since Tronc, which is based in Chicago, bought The News from the New York real estate developer and media mogul Mortimer B. Zuckerman in September 2017 — for a reported $1 — it has been examining its latest asset. In a memo sent to the paper’s employees minutes after the quick Monday morning meeting, the company said that it had been working to transform the tabloid into a publication better suited to the digital age.

“But we have not gone far enough,” the memo said.

After noting the paper is grappling with “significant financial challenges,” the Tronc statement got down to the nitty-gritty: “We are reducing today the size of the editorial team by approximately 50 percent and refocusing much of our talent on breaking news — especially in areas of crime, civil justice and public responsibility.”
But the New York governor doesn't seem to want market factors to re-focus the NYDN.

He issued this statist statement:
In other words, Cuomo wants to stop Tronc from readjusting the NYDN to the current economic and technological environment. He wants an outdated buggy whip-style NYDN model to continue. That is, he wants to apply the equivalent of newspaper Grecian formula to the paper's operations, using New York taxpayer money to pay for the fake-1930s model paper.
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-RW  


6 comments:

  1. Oh how easy it is (Andy) to be magnanimous with someone else's money.

    And I'm willing to bet that the business would be more viable absent taxes and regulations in New York.

    How does the broader population put up with this imbecile?

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  2. I was stuck in NYC waiting for a relative so we could get the hell out and escape to New Jersey(!) a few years ago. In the meantime, sitting on the filth outside Port Authority, I bought a Daily News to pass the time.
    Holy Cow! Living outside the states doesn't prepare you for the vitriol you get from the tabloid press.
    So I'm reading something like: :Stinking raghead bastards!! Kill the F#$^king Muslims!!! Hate Hate! Hate!! Kill them all!!!
    It was like reading some KKK rag from the South in my youth. I had to go wash my hands!! REALLY!!!
    No, I won't miss them.

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  3. "These layoffs were made without notifying the State..."

    And there it is.

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  4. Consider the possible political influences in this recent and related economic inquiry. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2018/07/16/how-closures-of-local-newspaper-increase-local-government-borrowing-costs/

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