The Return of the Moguls
How Jeff Bezos and John Henry Are Remaking Newspapers for the Twenty-First Century
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- $36.99
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- $36.99
Publisher Description
The Return of the Moguls chronicles an important story in the making, one that will affect more than just the newspaper business—it has the power to change democracy as we know it. Over the course of a generation, the story of the daily newspaper has been an unchecked slide from record profitability and readership to plummeting profits, increasing irrelevance, and inevitable obsolescence. The forces killing major dailies, alternative weeklies, and small-town shoppers are well understood—or seem obvious in hindsight, at least—and the catalog of publications that have gone under reads like a who’s who of American journalism. During the past half-century, old-style press barons gave way to a cabal of corporate interests unable or unwilling to invest in the future even as technological change was destroying their core business. The Taylor family sold the Boston Globe to the New York Times Company in 1993 for a cool $1.1 billion. Twenty years later, the Times Company resold it for just $70 million. The unexpected twist to the story, however, is not what they sold it for but who they sold it to: John Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox. A billionaire who made his money in the world of high finance, Henry inspired optimism in Boston because of his track record as a public-spirited business executive—and because his deep pockets seemed to ensure that the shrunken newspaper would not be subjected to further downsizing. In just a few days, the sale of the Globe was overtaken by much bigger news: Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the world’s richest people, had reached a deal to buy the Washington Post for $250 million. Henry’s ascension at the Globe sparked hope. Bezos’s purchase seemed to inspire nothing short of ecstasy, as numerous observers expressed the belief that his lofty status as one of our leading digital visionaries could help him solve the daunting financial problems facing the newspaper business. Though Bezos and Henry are the two most prominent individuals to enter the newspaper business, a third preceded them. Aaron Kushner, a greeting-card executive, acquired California’s Orange County Register in July 2012 and then pursued an audacious agenda, expanding coverage and hiring journalists in an era when nearly all other newspaper owners were trying to avoid cutting both. The newspaper business is at a perilous crossroads. This essential book explains why, and how today’s new crop of media moguls might help it to survive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kennedy (The Wired City) collects insights from case studies of three American newspapers, arguing that wealthy, civic-minded owners are key to the survival of newspapers in America. Focusing on the Washington Post under the leadership of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the Boston Globe under Red Sox owner John Henry, and California's Orange County Register under entrepreneur Aaron Kushner, Kennedy looks at what led to the sale of each paper between the years 2012 and 2013 and the vitality of the businesses in the years since. The goal of all three organizations was to transition to a subscription revenue model, but the companies differed in their approaches. The Post under Bezos expanded national news coverage in an effort to amass a larger online audience, a portion of which pays for access and has made the paper the most successful venture of the three. At the other end of the spectrum is the Register under Kushner, who resigned as CEO in 2015 after financial trouble stymied his plan to develop the print newspaper. Much of the book chronicles the industry's long and painful transition from print to online in the decades prior to the sale of each paper, and the narrative tends to get overloaded with digital jargon, focusing on minutiae such as how websites measure clicks for advertisers. The conclusions Kennedy draws are neither definitive nor terribly optimistic. The book reads more like a chronicle of the death of daily newspapers than a glimpse into their possible future. This review has been updated. A previous version of this review contained a quote from the book which was presented out of context.