How Sam Zell is right

Update: I didn't address whether Pulitzers sell papers. Here are takes on that from Steven A. Smith's blog and Alan Jacobsen's letter to Romenesko. I'd just add that, judging from my conversations with our readers, the U-T's Pulitzer for exposing Duke Cunningham's corruption enhanced our local reputation and was a great selling point but was not a circulation driver.

While it’s easy for any longtime newsroom hand like me to to find stuff to bristle over in Mr. Zell's remarks in that Portfolio, interview, from my vantage point, Zell was spot-on on the following points:

§ The newspaper business has to shake its monopolistic business thinking, its arcane rate cards being a good example.

§ "… the business must reflect the needs and demands of the customer. And to the extent that we don't do that, we will disappear."

§ "…somebody has to address the home-delivery question. Right now, if you go across the street and you buy a newspaper from a vendor, you will pay 50 cents. But if you get it home-delivered, which costs the company 10 times as much, you pay 30 cents. ... and it don't make any sense." (Though arguably there is a buying in bulk and advance defense to this practice. -tm)

§ "…when you do focus groups with people and you ask them, "What do you want from your newspaper?" they tell you, "local, local, local." And they say it over and over again, "I want to know what's going on locally because that's the only thing I can't find from 10 other sources." "

§" …we have to come up with a product that our customers want."

§ "... to the extent that you have journalists who are unwilling to listen and only want to talk, they really should give up journalism and become college professors."

§ "… Eighty-six percent of the cost of the newspaper business is print, paper, distribution, and promotion. That's untenable long-term and…short-term. ... Right now, that infrastructure sets the floor. That makes newspapers uncompetitive."

The words sting, perhaps because they’re on the mark.