Buyers are still in line, so don’t underrate print media’s value

Print media has never been at a lower point of general business disregard. Its cultural standing as a vox populi adviser and barometer is, after the Trump election, in tatters. It has all but been forsaken by advertisers, its main source of revenue. And its stated effort to save itself through digital transformation so far shows little success.

And yet there are buyers for print media. Quite a few of them.

Last week, a group, including the media- smitten billionaires Edgar Bronfman Jr. and Len Blavatnik, offered ailing Time Inc. a 30% premium for its shares — only to be rebuffed by manage- MEDIA ment. The Washington Post, which Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought, quixotically in most views, for $ 250 million in 2013, is now, even despite the Post’s lack of profits, considered by many to be a deal of the century.

Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY, for many months this year pursued Tronc, formally Tribune Publishing company, raising its offer in several rounds of bidding, and ultimately losing the deal in part because Tronc’s management, itself recent buyers into the company, believed that despite a languishing share price, its group of big- city newspaper brands has unrealized upside. say the least, some people might seem to know more than others. Or, in that investor term of art, they might appear to be smoking something. TROLLING FOR BARGAINS One way to look at this is as a bottomed- out moment. Print media is now cheap enough for new money to take a chance on. After all, many newspapers and magazines are still profitable. The huge margins of the past may be gone, but reasonable profits still exist. The problem with that view, however, is that revenues continue to

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KAREN BLEIER, AFP/ GETTY IMAGES Jeff Bezos bought The Wash ington Post for $ 250 million in 2013, and he’s spent liberally since then, with impressive results.