Yesterday, as we wrote on this blog, The Bulletin filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.
That news did not go unnoticed by the national media, including The Wall Street Journal, which published this piece online today, not just about the bankruptcy filing, but the public response on behalf of The Bulletin’s publisher and editor.
Other news outlets (another one here) have also picked up Gordon Black and John Costa’s tough words for Bank of America, which loaned the paper’s parent company, Western Communications, $18 million in loans. Both said that the bank was at fault for not working with Western Communications on the terms of the loan.
“They tried to work with us all right – by doubling our interest rate,” Black was quoted as saying in yesterday’s front-page story in The Bulletin.
This article appears in Aug 25-31, 2011.
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too bad, boo hoo…”the bank doubled our interest rate” – now you know how most of us feel when trying for our loan modification or trying in vain to save our small business! We shed no tears for you at the Bulletin – you had plenty of time – and loan monies – to right your sinking ship…problem is this – you have no one in your senior management that know squat about how to handle these challenges! betsy McCool is a chairman only in “title and name”, she has no real hands on experience in taking a losing proposition like this rag and stepping into the 21st / 22nd century – she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth!
Print is supported by print advertising. Print media is taking a backseat to social media and other meathods of internet based delivery.
As an outsider to the print media world, it seems obvious that the print and deliver system is rapidly dieing, like the pony express giving way to the automobile.
People of all political platforms will seek their local news. The Bulletin may dissapear from all this, or, re-tool to become web delivery based, supported not by subscription but by advertising.
Advetising drops either a): becasue it doesn’t work. b): Advertisers cant afford it. c): advertisers dont trust the math presented by the media and dont see eye to eye on the value/price.
If you have a sales price of $1.00 for a paper chocked full of 500 ads, isnt that .02 cents that one could up the cost to the advertisers and get the whole damn community (at least web based) reading daily? I do realize that some people who are not as right of center as the Bulletin may read it for comic relief of fodder for a good rant… either way, Bend needs daily local news.
In the digital league, advertising is very easily quantifiable. Some publications embrace this and charge accordingly, some are terrified as they will have to ‘put-up-or-shut-up’.
With a community of 82,000 and lots of small/med businesses, it sure appears that the time has come…. perhaps a decade ago, for the Bulletin to get with it.
Facility costs are less, production costs can be less, overhead can be less and if the game is played right, revenue can increase.
Perhaps BofA position was a long time coming. Maybe this stance is the one thing that restructures their (BB) business at a forced hand.
It would be nice if they came out of this a better, more streamlined papper with *gasp* more balance and a broad readership.
As a side note, it always mystifies me why a paper must have a slant, either left or right. What good does it serve to offer ‘news’ with a political slant.. wouldn’t it be great to multiple opinions in one publication.. left, balanced and wrong?