Tuned In

The Bids on Newsweek, and the Future of Media Ownership

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The initial bids came in yesterday in the first round of the Washington Post company’s sale of Newsweek. I’ve held off saying much of anything about the magazine’s sale, because (1) I don’t want it to seem like Schadenfreude (as a working-today-but-tomorrow-who-knows journalist, I feel none) and (2) the last matter on which anyone is going to take a TIME columnist seriously as an objective observer is the business fortunes of another newsweekly.

But I have blogged here before on something that affects a lot more media outlets than newsweeklies; namely, if the old means of financing journalism don’t cut it, who will pay for (which is to say, who will own) the media outlets of the future? The bidders for Newsweek at least give of some of the alternatives:

* Politically interested parties. One attention-getting bidder for the magazine is conservative magazine and website publisher Newsmax. Now Newsmax says that, should it end up buying Newsweek, it will maintain the magazine as a nonpartisan outlet. Now, you can read that a few ways. One is that Newsmax actually believes that Newsweek is not a slanted outlet of the “liberal media,” which would put it at odds with the vociferous views of, well, pretty much every conservative organization in America (not just about Newsweek but also about TIME, the New York Times, every TV news outlet besides Fox, &c.). Another is that Newsmax believes Newsweek slants liberal but would want to, ahem, “correct” it to make it, in Newsmax’s eyes, fairer and more balanced. Yet another is that neither of the previous two matters, and Newsmax just sees Newsweek as a potential source of ballast and status for the company’s more ideological outlets.

* Rich guys looking for a platform. An old-media brand that’s losing money—and again, I have not looked at Newsweek’s books so make no claims as to its business status—can still be worth a lot to someone who’s already made his dough and simply wants something intangible, be that a megaphone, respectibility, or what he sees as a public service. Newsweek has reportedly generated interest from a hedge-fund manager and a founder of Harman Kardon. Is the Warbucks solution good or bad for journalism? It can play any number of ways, depending on the involvement and the aims of the buyer, but it certainly has the potential to put a lot of media brand equity in a few hands.

* Bargain hunters. OpenGate Capital is the other bidder, seeking to continue its shopping spree after buying TV Guide—for a dollar.

One type of potential journalistic sugar daddy is conspicuously not represented here: the nonprofit journalism or public-interest group. But I still think that they’re likely to play, if not in this sale, then in future ones. (Except if the iPad saves us! Because the iPad is going to save us all!)

Again, I’m not making any predictions about Newsweek’s viability, and as someone in the same line of work I wish them well. (Personally I think that for someone like me to cheer for it to fail would be extremely short-term thinking.) But regardless, whether its fortunes are better or worse than speculated, and whether its mission (and TIME’s) is outdated or not, it—like a lot of other troubled media companies—has a brand that is worth something besides its ability to make money. Who will value those sorts of brands enough to buy them will be an ever-bigger media question in the coming years. You might want to save your pennies.