Journalists are worried this week, following the one-bid sale of Knight-Ridder to McClatchy Co. The editors of The Wall Street Journal offer this reassurance:
[B]oth McClatchy and Knight Ridder remain profitable, stable companies that produce plenty of cash flow. The sale of Knight Ridder was precipitated not by financial distress inside the company but by a large institutional shareholder looking to cash out and avoid a loss on his shareholdings. Newspapers may not get the kind of stock-market valuations on present profits that the big Web sites do. But there is not yet one of those sites, as far as we are aware, that currently does what quality papers have done for years--independently gather, edit and supply reliable news and analysis. The one big Web company that tried to create such a product, Microsoft's Slate webzine, sold it to the Washington Post Company.Gathering news, reporting stories and making editorial decisions about what is important and of interest to readers--these are the core competencies of newspapers. And the Internet hasn't changed those jobs at their fundamental level. Both the skills required to do them well and the newspaper brands with reputations for integrity remain valuable in the information marketplace.
Peggy Noonan's advice to broadcast journalism a year ago is still pertinent, as is an observation by the omniscient InstaPundit: