Bring back Friday koans! Read more
Yeah, weird that people would interpret an accumulation of accusations as additional evidence of misconduct rather than remain in some imaginary state of reserved judgment. Read more
Imagine for a moment where campaign finance reform was passed, and campaigns could only use a set amount of public money. Then even just a tenth of campaign donations went to Public/private partnership with local news agencies. What a wonderful world that would be. Read more
Somewhat related but I’d love to know how much money the NYT spends on garbage employees such as Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Friedman etc. There’s a reason no one reads these papers anymore. Read more
Man, you joke about this but there’s a kernel of an idea in there. At least enough to get that sweet 2nd round funding money. Read more
I like the idea of cities and towns buying their local papers and setting them up under independent management, with dual goals of breaking even and reaching as many people as possible (maybe give them some cash to start with as well). But I don’t think that could be done independently by those cities because of the… Read more
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That’s very astute. Read more
For all the doubters out there, here’s what Google has to say:
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You have to actually produce something educational to make this claim. I highly doubt you did the proper, investigative research to ensure it is even almost entirely mellenials buying these sweaters, since no figures were presented. Education is too high of a word for this click-baiting, ego-centric trash. Read more
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Private equity seems to be just expensive management for companies that have bad ideas to grow faster than market forces would allow. I’ve yet to see a good work product from a management consulting firm. I’d lay the blame at the feet of the bad CEOs that keep trying to get rich quick by falling for their sales pitch… Read more
I work for a PE-owned media company (much smaller than GMG and not in the same line of publishing). Since we were acquired, senior management spends most of its time scrambling to manage numbers and margins for our overlords, rather than addressing obvious operations and other fixable issues that exist. Read more
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Anyone know why this isn’t illegal? Read more
The corporate business model is already a wealth extraction model which minimizes risk to the extractors. The private equity control model is that squared.
We don’t just need protections against the PE abuses (that are not only legal but encouraged in this equity system), we need to take some ticks back on the… Read more
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I left my law firm to work in-house. Like three months later, the company I was working at got acquired by a private equity firm, and three months after that I was back in private practice. Working for a PE-owned company was worse than law firm life. Read more
I’m no socialist, but this is the problem I have with modern capitalism. At some point, we switched from a capitalism for all system — I pay you, the worker, enough so that not only can you afford to live in a good place, but you can spend money on goods and boost us all — to a predatory one, where the top people… Read more
This was a good piece that didn’t even address an extremely troubling and recent knock-on effect of these industry practices: massive layoffs at The Denver Post, the last remaining statewide paper in CO. There’s little chance Alden Global Capital intended to cripple local media, but they probably wouldn’t protest too… Read more
People talk about the “retail apocalypse” but if retail fails too many just assume it will be self-contained and isolated. In 2007, when the issues with sub-prime mortgages became famous, the Daily Show was running zany segments on sub-prime mortgages — people had no idea it was about to lead to much more significant… Read more