I just want you to know,
my offer still stands
By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
DEAR McCLATCHY: This is to assure you that my offer is still open.
    You folks have a lot on your plate right now, what with sorting out your acquisition of a company three times your size and the need to sell the 12 Knight Ridder papers that the whole world has essentially said, for the past four months, it doesn’t want.
    But I figure you could use some cash right now, just in case Philadelphia, San Jose and those other big papers don’t jump off the shelves as quick as you’d like.
    I hereby offer to help you keep the lights on in the interim by paying you up to $500 million for the dinky old State paper, which you don’t need, seeing as how you already have a bunch of papers around here.
    When will you have the money? Soon as somebody gives it to me. I explained all that in my Friday column. (I’ll add that my business plan doesn’t absolutely depend upon my saving Bill Gates’ life and him being insanely grateful. Any other billionaire who feels endangered should just holler; I will come running.)
    Readers may wonder why I’d part with such a large chunk of my soon-to-be-hard-earned pay. After all, isn’t being bought by the McClatchy Company the best possible outcome for The State and the community it serves? Besides, whenever I do get the cash, why would I want to blow it on a newspaper? Haven’t Wall Street analysts made it clear that print is all but dead?
    First, yes, most KR journalists, and probably most of the business side folks, too, have been crossing fingers, rubbing rabbits’ feet and otherwise doing all we could (which ain’t much) to ensure that McClatchy would be the buyer. That’s why, as readers of my blog might have noticed, when I said in my Friday column there was one scenario (out of many awful ones) in which we would have a good outcome, that sentence linked to a Financial Times story about McClatchy leading the bidders.
    All the signs right now are that we will be better off than we were before. But as great as it is for McClatchy to own us, think how much better it would be if I did. I’m sure you can see that.
    And the analysts’ dire predictions? Well, if you took everything the Wall Street analysts know about the future of newspapers and converted it into high-quality chicken manure, you’d be better off, but you’d have to go to the store and buy another bag to have enough to fertilize a fig tree.
    But I’ll admit they sure helped out McClatchy, running down perceptions to where it was able to buy KR for at a bargain price. (I wouldn’t have sold my piddling shares for that. But I guess now I will.)
    Knight Ridder — which was doing so badly that the greedheads who owned the biggest chunks of it just had to dump it — has recently been running a profit margin of under 20 percent. And 20 percent is only twice the average of companies in the S&P 500.
    To be sure, McClatchy does better, at 23 percent. But both look pretty low compared to what The State pulls in.
    But that’s now, say the analysts. With all that competition online for the advertising dollar, they say, this can’t last.
    The gaping hole in that logic is that newspapers are also online, that our online ad revenues are climbing astronomically, and that we have an advantage competitors can’t match: an unrivaled franchise in local news — which has great appeal among customers our advertisers want — as an added inducement to come to our sites and see the ads. Our competitors either have no content, or much less, or content that you can find in a thousand other places.
    Newspapers are going to be around for a long time (for the rest of my career, anyway, which is all you need to worry about). If The State didn’t exist, somebody would start something like it. Why? The demand is there.
    It would actually be a huge boost to our business if people suddenly did decide they don’t want their news printed on dead trees. That would leave us growing online, and would cut our operating expenses almost in half: We could take those gargantuan presses and create artificial reefs off the Grand Strand. No more newsprint and ink to buy by the trainload. No more delivery trucks; no more gasoline. No more waiting half the night from the time we’re done putting the news together to when it’s placed in your driveway.
    We would simply finish writing and editing, press a button, and you would have your news instantly. Which is actually how it works now, from our end — the fact that you don’t get it for hours after we press the button is purely a function of the fact that the market still wants a newspaper.
    I’ve been waiting for that demand to evaporate since the early ’80s, when we started writing and editing the news with computers. There’s nothing sacred to me about the paper part of the paper. I mean, I have a sentimental attachment. But paper, plastic or digital, our value is in our content.
    The determining factor, though, is that the market still has a substantial attachment. People still want the paper — not as many as once upon a time, but far too many to quit printing it.
    So we continue the extremely expensive practice of producing a paper while still innovating online. For now. But however you want to get your news, our industry’s future is bright. And The State’s is more so, which is good for you, as one of those bright folks who understand how critical a good newspaper is to a community. McClatchy will see you have that.
    As for me, I would very much enjoy working for McClatchy in my current capacity. But I’ve reached a time when I need to start putting my money — once I have some — into a solid investment to take care of me and mine in our Golden Years.
    As the song says, God bless the child that’s got his own. Newspaper, that is.

Related Posts

• On Saturdays, you’ll find us on the Web
• Newspapers as an investment
• I need half a billion. Now.
• Profitability column
• A Pulitzer for Charleston, more staff reductions at The State
• Touring USC’s new Darla Moore School of Business
• Enough with the pop-ups!
• You’ve seen the movement; now wear the boot
• A closer look at Nikki’s idea of fiscal responsibility
• Where was The State on Alvin Greene TODAY?