Dana Blankenhorn

The Daily News

A lot of people are shocked (shocked) about the demise of The Daily News and countless other newspapers across the U.S.

I’m not.

One of the primary obsessions of my 40-year career as a reporter has been journalism business models. How do you get money out of customers and leave yourself a profit? How do you replicate that process so that profits flow constantly through your business?

Northwestern’s Medill School taught that this was simple. You aggregated a group of readers based on their location, their industry or their lifestyle. You served them through your editorial effort. You monetized them by selling access to businesses in the form of advertisements, billboards along your editorial road. The price readers paid was the cost of delivering the paper to them. The editorial effort was paid for entirely by ads.

Even before graduating from Medill, 40 years ago last month, I was focused on the question of how writers and editors might make even more money, for even better work. I knew that the online world would let journalists do more than sell billboards. You can run an entire business here, taking people down the sales funnel, selling them goods or services, then supporting them after the sale. As early as the mid-1990s I was asking publishers, “How hungry are you,” and salivating over the possibilities.

The answer was that they were not very hungry at all. I remember back in late 1995, hiding in the back of an Atlanta Press Club Christmas party, laughing my butt off as Cox Enterprises CEO James Cox Kennedy, whom I’d once interviewed, talked about making easy money online by simply “repurposing” existing content. His naivete was hilarious, because even then I knew, in this new world, publishers would quickly find themselves competing with advertisers.

Stupid on Stupid

Recessions are a little like the Spanish Inquisition

Nobody expects them.

Their chief weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthlessness. They come in when they’re least expected, they do incredible economic damage, but when they’re gone they’re forgotten.

I have seen three recessions during my business career, each one worse than the last.

The 1991 recession wasn’t expected, because we’d just won the war in Kuwait. But we’d also poured enormous effort into our military, which was no longer needed, and it took years to get something sustainable to replace it.

The 2000 dot-com bust certainly wasn’t expected, but I saw it coming in 1997, when I launched my newsletter a-clue.com. I cried bubble for three years, but when it burst I won no prizes. I lost out like everyone else and had zero income in 2002 and 2003.

The 2008 recession also wasn’t expected, although I’d been writing about the “big shitpile” for two years before it exploded all over everyone, taking Wall Street down with it. We might have never gotten out of it but for the leadership of Barack Obama, who used the opportunity to pass a $1 trillion stimulus bill that is still providing economic benefits.

Humility and Democracy

America has been the terror of the world for nearly 75 years now. Along the way we have overthrown many elected governments, killed and brutalized millions. When the Cold War ceased to be our excuse, we did it for oil, or because “terrorists” were doing it back.

We glory in our military excess. This is bipartisan. President Obama attacked Libya to get rid of Qaddafi, which is now a hellhole and source of migrants destabilizing Europe. He got involved in Syria but did nothing to stop the war there. Europe’s refugee crisis has “Made in USA” stamped all over it.

We’re still in Afghanistan. Obama refused to get out. He never moved against the military control of sporting events, the staged reunions, “God Bless America” replacing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” or thank you for your service.

The United States spends more of its treasure on the military than all our conceivable rivals do, combined. We have usually gotten away with it, but not always. We still haven’t gotten our heads around losing in Vietnam, or the Iranian Revolution.  

Thanks to Trump, the price of arrogance is now going to be paid. Trump’s stupidity guarantees it. And there’s nothing for us to do but take it.

This is where the next Democratic Administration will get its fiercest pushback.

The Reckoning

Are we the baddies?

The British comics David Mitchell and Robert Webb did a sketch about that a decade ago, portraying two German soldiers. It was funny because, indeed, we couldn’t conceive of ourselves as the baddies.

But we often are. We usually are.

Even Barack Obama didn’t stop us from being bad. He didn’t get out of Iraq until he had a government there of his choosing, not the Iraqis’. He never got out of Afghanistan. Those detention centers kids are languishing in were built under his Administration.