The New York Times Needs To Be Bought By Google To Survive? Maybe.

Or, alternate title, "Extra! Extra! Dateline December 11, 2008, Print Media Discovers New Phenomenon Called the Internet!"

For years a good friend has been pointing out the dead-end road the traditional print media is on. Apparently, some media types, such as the New York Times, are starting to look at their circulation numbers, balance sheets, and real worth of their traditional media companies and see the end of the road too.  They're worried, and for good reason.  Below is a link to an article that points out the obvious problems papers, like the NYT's, are facing.  The solution?  Sell to a Google-type company.  Of course there's only one Google-type company, Google.  So sale options are limited.  Good for the buyer/Google, bad for the seller/ the Old Grey Lady.  

Plus, I just heard today that NewsWeek is cutting jobs and may cut number of pages per issue.  The print media survived the invention of the TV and some print-media-honchos probably thought they could survive this whole crazy, computer, internets, world wide web thingy too without significantly changing their business model. Whoops. 

They'll tell you that they have changed their business models and point to their online content for example.  The key word in the phrase, "signifcantly changing their business model," is "signifcantly".  All the traditional print media types have online content but they're also still losing money hand over fist.  So now we'll see what happens to the traditional print media.  It should be interesting. 

http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/will-google-buy-i-the-new-york-times-i