Snooze takes bath on Belo Building sale

Last fall, after moving out of the historic Belo Building, AND not even spending money to move "The Rock of Truth" to its rented digs, the, I am sorry, The Dallas Morning News sold the building for $33 million.

Although nobody would officially tie this to Amazon's national Grifting for Dollars work as it hunted for a second headquarters, which it eventually of course split into two parts and has now pulled back on the NYC part, everybody saw it that way, especially since KDC and Hoque backed out soon after Amazon said sorry to Dallas.

Well, the Snooze has now sold it again.

For $5 million less.

In addition, original buyer KDC said that if it resold to Amazon, the Snooze would get a cut. New buyer Ray Washburne made no such pledge, even though, technically, Amazon could come calling. He's also paying less than $6M of it up front.

There's that anti-Midas touch at work! And, it should be noted that Belo, at the time of the original sale and the run-up to it, had said it thought the site was worth more than $30 million. Guess again.

Per that second link, which is from D Magazine, it seems hard not to see a push by an activist shareholder for Belo to go private and/or sell the paper as being behind this in some way. A letter from said shareholder notes that Belo's digital marketing has tanked even more than the paper itself.

I think, re the digital marketing, what we have is a signature moment mix of Belo arrogance and Belo stupidity. That said, said activist investor could have found 15-20 straight years of semi-regular occurrences of that; nobody forced him to buy his shares.

Meanwhile, back to the buildings.

The Snooze had first semi-promised the legend-hoary Rock of Truth would move. Then it didn't.

And on that legend-hoariness? Per D Magazine, Jim Schutze hoist teh Snooze by its own petard three years ago.

Dallas Morning News hits a new online-only low in teh stupidz

The Boboes of Beloville announced a month or so ago that they were canning the paywall on their website, but that they would come back with a premium site in a month or so that would be paywalled.

I joked then that all they would really have  in terms of premium content was blue-haired/big-haired ladies at society bashes in Highland Park or Preston Hollow; JFK assassination anniversary memorabilia, or Dallas Cowboys swag, and that trying to run a premium website off those three was bound to fail.

Oh, silly me!

The Snooze has more to offer.

Part of the premium website's paywall "come-on" sales pitch? The Snooze tells us we can buy our way out of seeing so many ads!!! Apparently the Dallas Morning News is betting its readers are too dumb to know about AdBlock if part of the sales pitch for its new premium website is "seeing fewer ads." (Doorknob help us all if the paper's marketing staff [since IT people wouldn't be this dumb, but see below] find out that some of us use Ghostery or other add-ons that block tracking cookies.)

Plus, analysts note the Snooze has struggled to find the paywall sweet spot for some time.

The News’ plan “is something of a disappointment,” said Barry L. Lucas, senior vice president of research for Gabelli & Co. in New York. “It’s the second or third go-round for the website.”

Meanwhile, Jason Dyer, chief marketing officer for The News, says:

 “What we’re going to sell is experience,” said Dyer, who joined the newspaper in January from Google. “I don’t know if there’s anything like it.”

They say insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. I guess Dyer calls that "experience." Especially when somebody coming from Google, and to a halfway techie city like Dallas, thinks people will fall for this as a selling point, the "fewer ads."

And, the mainstream media continues to hang itself with its own rope.

But wait, that's not all!

The premium website is free if you have a hardcopy subscription.

What's really at work, IMO, is "captive audience pageviews." This is going to be used to attempt to sell premium ad space to premium advertisers on the premium website at premium rates.

Good luck with that, premium "experience" and all.

But wait again, that's still not all.

Since the Snooze, per the story, doesn't break out digital-only subscriptions, this seems like an el cheapo way to jack with pageviews in general. And that too coming from someone who used to work at Google, home of the Silicon Valley where tech companies tell us counting pageviews is yesterday's news.

I know Mr. Dyer is a marketing guy, but, at the same time, he came from Google. Surely he's heard of AdBlock (or Plus) once or twice before. Perhaps even of Ghostery. It's an insult to reader intelligence, a double insult to the intelligence of online-only readers, and also a blatant attempt to game the world of pageviews. Given that the Snooze is only No. 16 in terms of digital subscriptions, it's also no wonder it doesn't break out digital-only subscription numbers. They're probably pathetic for a major daily.

Update, Oct. 10: Belo just sold the Riverside Press-Enterprise to Freedom Communications/Orange County Register. As much as I've bitched about the OCR doubling down on advertorial content, at the same time, it's doubling down on newspapers. The move is a smart "clustering." The price is probably a bit steep for today's newspaper world, for the paper itself, but, land in Riverside County is always worth a buy. That said, is the Providence Journal up for sale next?

Update, Oct. 25: Yes, ProJo may be for sale in the near future; perhaps yet another round of staff cuts there is supposed to make it a more attractive buy.

Update, April 10, 2014: If my words on the stupidity of a "premium" website aren't enough?

People should read this piece by Jack Shafer. Shafer gives a good smackdown to the NYT's "Premier" premium website in specific, and to the concept of "premium" newspaper websites in general. Folks in Dallas, Boston, and likely San Fran, who think they can "sell" a premium website while keeping a totally free, totally unpaywalled basic one, should take note. But almost surely won't.  

DMN gives employees a haircut

Similar to what the Fort Worth Star-Telegram announced last month, A.H. Belo, parent of THE Dallas Morning News, is trimming the salaries of anybody making more than $25K, on a sliding percentage scale.

Dallas Morning News goes in financial tank

The Snooze’s parent, A.H. Belo, lost nearly $20 million in the third quarter alone.

Now, a large chunk of that was one-time costs related to employee buyouts which Belo says will save about $30 mil a year in the long term.

I’m guessing the $4.5 million printing press impairment charge is Belo’s write-down of officially shuttering the doors on the Snooze’s south Dallas printing plant site.

But, while Bob Dechard tries to spin the good news, there’s other turds inside the silver lining, including an 11 percent drop in Internet revenue.

Frankly, I have to wonder if closing the Denton Record-Chronicle and rolling it into the News is on the table for discussion.

Belo deathwatch: The Quick is now the almost-dead in Dallas – as is Decherd’s brain

The Dallas Morning News’ grab-and-go five-day daily, modeled on similar publications in Chicago, is now going to be an entertainment-focused weekly.

Given that 20-somethings can find that already in the Observer or online at Pegasus News, I can’t see where this does anything but aim Quick straight for an early death.

And this new Briefing? If younger wealthier subscribers want a local newspaper, it’s either the Observer or maybe their suburban weekly, depending on how good that is.

Basically, Belo doesn’t have a clue and is grasping at straws.

Especially not when A.H. Belo (print side of the old Belo Corp. media combine) Chairman Bob Decherd utters a truism like this as supposed brilliant insight:

“The key to long-term success is revenue generation,.”

No shit? I’ll bet some of the 14 percent of people you are firing to try to justify your massive CEO salary bet they had thought of that.