Aram Zucker-Scharff

“”Who’d want to buy dozens of newspapers? The industry’s print advertising revenue is in barely controlled freefall, down eight percent a year since 2011; this budget season’s now-familiar gut-wrenching forecast for 2015 is the same. Paywall-related revenue and digital advertising initiatives have only partially offset that loss. Consequently, figure it’s been 84 months or so of unending downward revenue trajectory; 2007 was the last year of significant revenue growth. Only deep cost-cutting, including the downsizing of America’s daily newsrooms by 30 percent or 20,000 jobs, has maintained high single-digit to to low-double-digit profitability. How long can that strategy last before the last print subscriber cancels in frustration?””

– The newsonomics of auctioning off Digital First’s newspapers (and California schemin’).

The newsonomics of Forbes’ real performance and price potential:

Financial documents being shown to potential buyers raise questions about its future growth. Has Forbes peaked? And can it justify the high price it’s seeking?

Forbes’s ‘buzzy’ new content initiatives meant spending $10.9 million to make $11.9 million. 

In reality Forbes is likely worth less than $200 million, regardless of what it expects people to pay. It looks like the innovating financial media giant may end up being another magazine purchased more for it’s respected brand than anything else.