For years- Cox Enterprises refused to sign a contract with most of their unions. All of a sudden, every bargaining unit is under contract.
There has been a mad rush to create new online properties like Dayton.com, which is laughably late- and an amateur production.
They recently offered a digital subscription for $20 a year- while they’d been robbing me for $10 a month.
Claims are, they are making money. First time in a long time, but, it’s come at a steep price. They’ve sliced staffing of actual news people to the bone. Institutional knowledge and even the rare few super-talented people they had- cut.
They’ve created an editing stable on the top floor- that attempts to edit the copy from their entire network – with disastrous results. I’m sure I’m not the only one who snickers every time I see 9/11 turned into a fraction, or key people’s names mangled or missing.
All this points to only one thing- they’re getting ready to sell the whole shooting match, and think that some internet billionaire with a J. Jonah Jameson complex is going to buy them. It happened to the Washington Post- so why not? (Amazon’s Jeff Bezo’s bought the paper, on the side, unrelated to Amazon).
I personally don’t think anyone is stupid enough to reach down this far in the barrel to buy the DDn, which is no longer separable from WHIO etc.- as part of “Cox Ohio”- etc. but, the reality is what they would buy is the biggest mess of Internet incompetence ever concocted.
The entire digital strategy, platform, and management is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Just the fact that I, as a subscriber, have to log in so many times to the same machines- since they can’t keep track of my login screams that they have no clue how to digitally target and sell value added ads to advertisers. Just because you are the only game in town, doesn’t mean you play it well.
How long it takes for them to find a sucker and negotiate a deal isn’t something I’ll venture to guess a timeline for, but mark my words, it’s being packaged and primped for a push as you read this.
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You know the DDN creation I miss most? MeetFred. I can’t believe it’s been eight years since Fred was around.
I can only hope someone would buy it, sever all ties with COX TV, kick Julia Wallace out on her pompous ass and start fresh. Who would be dumb enough to care about it though? The only decent attribute it has ever had is their sports writers (some paradox when you consider the parent company has employed that slug Mike Hartsock all these years).
David Lauri- I’d forgotten Fred. Here was my original post: http://esrati.com/ddn-wants-to-be-myspace-same-for-oregon-district-portal-madness-comes-to-dayton/157
So, what’s the value of DDN/Cox Media? What about a fundraiser to buy it out and make it a community entity? A news source that wasn’t a corporate shill?
[…] assured me that the Dayton Daily news was not for sale. I think that decision is way above his paygrade, but, I’m glad he’s so […]