Economic Crisis
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May 24, 2012 05:59 PM
Audit notes: Buffett on newspapers, Times-Picayune, SEC lets Lehman go
A vow to invest in newspapers and protect them from interference
This is the most hopeful thing I've read about the business of newspapers in a long, long time:
I'll quote at length from Warren Buffett's letter to editors and publishers of his newly expanded portfolio of papers:
Berkshire buys for keeps. Our only exception to permanent ownership is when a business faces unending losses, a remote prospect for virtually...
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May 24, 2012 12:21 AM
Audit notes: No more daily in New Orleans, McClatchy, private equity
The NYT reports the Times-Picayune will print two or three times a week
If ever a town needed a newspaper, it's New Orleans.
But David Carr reports that Newhouse is preparing big layoffs at the Times-Picayune, which will no longer be a daily newspaper.
Newhouse Newspapers, which owns the Times-Picayune, will apparently be working off a blueprint the company used in Ann Arbor, Mich., where it reduced the frequency of the Ann...
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May 22, 2012 05:58 PM
Audit notes: Facebook disclosure, Facebook value, soft corruption
Business Insider's Henry Blodget, who knows a thing or two about analyst/IPO scandals, writes that Facebook and/or its bankers could be in trouble for not disclosing material information to the public about its financial health.
Reuters has been reporting for several days that analysts at three of Facebook's bankers cut estimates for the company during the roadshow leading up...
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May 18, 2012 03:00 PM
A game of telephone fools the Times
And the newspaper-of-record short-arms the correction
The New York Times posts a nasty correction on its Sunday op-ed by William Deresiewicz, who asserted that a study had found that 10 percent of people on Wall Street were "clinical psychopaths."
That 10-percent-psycho baloney was the lead anecdote—critical framing for the whole op-ed. The Times has since re-written the lede paragraph almost entirely, disappeared the errors, and...
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May 17, 2012 06:11 PM
Audit notes: Questions for JPMorgan, hindsight journalism, Ticketmaster
Jesse Eisinger asks what and when Dimon & Co. knew about the bank's big loss
ProPublica's Jesse Eisinger, in his NYT DealBook column, writes about what the press and the authorities should be asking about JPMorgan's $3 billion (and counting) loss:
The first lesson of the financial crisis is not that the capital markets were poorly regulated or that the banks were too leveraged or that the government needed better processes for taking over...
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May 15, 2012 11:15 PM
Audit notes: Commercialization, GM and Facebook, Saverin’s taxes
Conor Friedersdorf makes a nice catch on Tom Friedman's Sunday column bemoaning the commercialization of seemingly all aspects of American life:
For example, his column is bizarrely titled, "This Column Is Not Sponsored by Anyone," despite the fact that right above it on NYTimes.com there is a banner ad for a Citi/American Airlines credit card.
But Friedersdorf...
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May 14, 2012 11:04 AM
The business press embarrasses Jamie Dimon
London Whale, sighted one month ago, knocks billions off JPMorgan's worth
In what FT Alphaville called "the most excruciating bank conference call we’ve ever heard," press favorite Jamie Dimon announced last week that JPMorgan Chase has lost more than $2 billion on bad derivatives bets made by its chief investment office. It could (meaning, it probably will) lose more than that. On Thursday, we were told up to another...
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May 11, 2012 07:34 PM
Audit notes: Chesapeake woes, the Untaxable, Reuters on HSBC
The hits keep coming at Chesapeake Energy.
Today, it's The Wall Street Journal's turn. It reports on page one that the company has put $1.4 billion in unreported liabilities off its balance sheet, far more than analysts had estimated.
Most of these costs will hit this year and next, at a time when the company needs to raise substantial...
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May 11, 2012 06:10 AM
The Washington Post Co.’s Self-Destructive Course
Dividends, share buybacks, and an anti-paywall stance help bleed the paper dry
The Washington Post Company‘s dismal quarterly earnings release last week was received with something of a shrug—more of the same. But the report is worse than the reaction suggests and raises fundamental questions about the Post's strategy, not just for the newspaper, but for the whole company.
If you hadn’t heard, the Washington Post Company is basically a for-profit...
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May 10, 2012 07:58 PM
Audit notes: WSJ dings austerity, Weisenthal, The Global Mail
If you're looking to get up to speed on what happened with the euro and Greece, you could do a lot worse than Marcus Walker's excellent page-one story in The Wall Street Journal today.
The Journal recounts how Angela Merkel and the Germans' disastrous insistence on punitive austerity has led Greece to the point of collapse—and threatens the entire...
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May 10, 2012 02:12 AM
Audit notes: Blodget’s anonymous Zuck fans, Ongo no-go, social news apps
New York cover story dispenses with named sources
Here's the sourcing in Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget's New York cover story on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: "a colleague of Zuckerberg," "another early colleague of Zuckerberg," "one Silicon Valley veteran," "one Valley veteran," "A Zuckerberg confidant," "one insider," "a former Facebook employee," "a former Facebook executive fired by Zuckerberg," "A longtime Facebook exec," "some Zuckerberg skeptics," "One former...
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May 10, 2012 12:58 AM
Clearly, Quartz wants to help elites go optimize themselves
The Atlantic’s new business site enters a crowded field catering to the 0.1 percent
The Atlantic's big new business-journalism project is off to an inauspicious start.
First there's the name: Quartz, which is different, and that doesn’t mean worse, necessarily, but…whatever. It's a name.
Here's the press release explaining why the venture will be called Quartz instead of The Atlantic Business, Bizlantic, Blantic or, say, Topaz or Borax:
“We’re making great progress...
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May 9, 2012 06:10 AM
Audit Notes: Murdoch’s Influence, Reuters’s Chesapeake drumbeat
A sweeping indictment of the corruption of British politics by News Corp.
The News Corp. scandal is so massive and so sprawling that it's just about impossible to bring all the pieces together to see a relatively complete picture.
So find some time to read this remarkable 8,000-word essay by openDemocracy founder Anthony Barnett on News Corp. and its corruption of the British government.
Barnett does a tremendous job of showing how...
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May 8, 2012 12:55 AM
Audit notes: News Corp.’s board, Lehman’s hubris, Awards and Slideshows
David Carr eyes Rupert Murdoch's crony-filled board of directors
David Carr takes a look at the News Corporation board of directors, which is as stacked with the CEO's cronies as any board out there—and that's saying something:
Like many media companies (including the one I work for), News Corporation has a two-tiered stock setup that gives the family control of the voting shares. The current board includes family...
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Desks
The Audit Business
- Audit notes: Buffett on newspapers, Times-Picayune, SEC lets Lehman go A vow to invest in newspapers and protect them from interference
- Audit notes: No more daily in New Orleans, McClatchy, private equity The NYT reports the Times-Picayune will print two or three times a week
The Observatory Science
- Reparative journalism Reporter sinks a controversial paper on “ex-gay” therapy
- The western frontier KQED Quest, Pacific Standard keep their eyes on the other coast
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- Herald’s Caputo dives deep on diverging polls Do other news organizations undermine their credibility when they don’t do the same?
- Many stations don’t factcheck super PAC ads: survey Conference highlights difference in attitudes between industry, watchdog groups
Behind the News The Media
Blog
The Kicker last updated: Thu 11:20 AM
- The Times-Picayune cuts staff and print runs
- Broadcasters sue to keep political ad buy data offline
- The Pulitzer Prize luncheon, storified
- A game of telephone fools the Times
- What Warren Buffett sees in local newspapers
