Nolte: Advertising Karma Hits Corporate Media and the New York Times Calls for Bailout
Due to the coronavirus and a healthy dose of karma, newspaper advertising is drying up, and these same newspapers are now laying staffers off and slashing salaries while the far-left
New York Timesā media columnist screams for a bailout.
Before I get to the karma part, here are the detailsā¦
On Monday, we
learned the
Tampa Bay Times is suspending its print publication from seven to two days a week. Thatās not a typo. A newspaper that had been printing every day of the week will now print only on Wednesday and Sunday.
This, however, is not due to a lack of clicks.
āThe company reported a surge in traffic to its website ⦠and growth in digital subscriptions over the last few weeksā but āthe pandemic sent advertising sales into a plunge. In just the last two weeks, [advertising] cancellations have cost us more than $1 million, and there is no sign of quick recovery on the horizon. We must act now.ā
Gannett, one of the largest newspaper companies in the country, publisher of, among others,
USA Today, the
Des Moines Register, and
Arizona Republic,
announced a sweeping round of furloughs. A memo from Gannett CEO Paul Bascobert asked employees to immediately make a ācollective sacrifice ⦠as soon as this week.ā
āOur plan is to minimize long-term damage to the business by implementing a combination of furloughs and pay reductions,ā the memo explains.
Finally, Chicagoās
Daily Herald is
slashing newsroom salaries by 15 percent and salaries at its parent company by 20 percent.
And with this news, all released on Monday (the floundering BuzzFeed
cut salaries by up to 25 percent last week), the far-left
New York Times published a panicked and ludicrous bailout proposalā¦
āThe coronavirus is likely to hasten the end of advertising-driven media. ⦠And government should not rescue it,ā the
Times columnist says, which is fair enough: The thought of my tax dollars funding people who hate me is a bit much.
What the
Times wants, though, is sugar daddies to save journalism. Get thisā¦