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Comment by qubax | Hacker News Reader

Something ridiculous about the media environment today. If time magazine can't survive, why not just put it out of business. The same thing with washingtonpost or theatlantic.

Why are tech billionaires buying up these companies? Just to push their political agenda? To support their political ambitions? To run for office? They obvious aren't doing it to make money.

I don't see how our society benefits when tech billionaires buy up media like this. If oil titans were buying up failing media just to serve as their personal mouthpiece, we'd be a lot more upset.

Also, it's terrible for the media space because it props up failing companies. If failing news companies were allowed to fail, it would open up space for newer companies with better business models or better ideas.

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The Washington Post has been profitable for the last two years. Bezos isn’t propping it up, he just helped them transition to a new business model.

Citation: https://www.geekwire.com/2018/washington-post-profitable-gro...

Everything that's old is new again. Citizen Kane is a movie about just this sort of thing, and it wasn't fanciful (it was in fact suppressed for being too close to Hearst's real life).

Agreed. Influential people buying influential media outlets can be a concern if used in a biased way. But unfortunately it's not illegal. If one were to go ahead and make it illegal how exactly would one frame the law? There's no easy answer.

> Why are tech billionaires buying up these companies? Just to push their political agenda? To support their political ambitions? To run for office? They obvious aren't doing it to make money.

I always assumed prestige had a lot to do with it, too.

> Why are tech billionaires buying up these companies?

Because, as core actors of the tech wave, they'd feel responsible for killing them if they didn't.

>> If time magazine can't survive, why not just put it out of business

So if you own a magazine that is failing but you can sell it to a rich person for $150 million but there are no other takers above $100 million, are you suggesting this should be illegal to make $50 million?

Who will compensate you for the lost value? The government? Who decides who is a "rich person?"

You completely misread my comment. Of course it's smart for time magazine to sell a worthless business to a billionaire. My point is why are tech billionaires buying money losing businesses? It certainly isn't for profit or because it is a good financial decision. So what are they getting out of it? Certainly people like bezos and benioff don't like losing money. So what is the purpose?

My issue isn't why did time magazine sell itself. That is obvious and understandable. My issue is why did a tech billionaire buy it. That isn't as obvious and understandable.

Is it possible, in a small part, that the news business is booming in the wild post-2016 political era? I imagine that major publications like NYT/WaPo/etc would have seen a climb in traffic/subscriptions in the last 1-2 years?

Control/agenda is the obvious answer. Rupert Murdoch is immensely powerful in Australia and the US, I guess.

be careful what you wish for -- this society could be in for a startling set of transitions if the Internet as we know it was cut for some reason(s), or better yet that surveillance on consumption becomes unacceptable. "Failing companies" somehow does not seem to me to describe the situation here..

> Why are tech billionaires buying up these companies? Just to push their political agenda? To support their political ambitions? To run for office? They obvious aren't doing it to make money.

So that Trump supporters can speculate on social networks that they're doing it for some nefarious reason and so that Trump-opponents can speculate that they're doing it for the sake of their egos? Maybe they're doing it to troll the ultra-rightwing Breitbart crowd into having a deep-state conspiracy-theory induced stroke?

Clearly it could not be that they understand business and money more than your average commenter on Reddit or Hacker News and see either an intrinsic value in the traditional free press, or have a vision for the long-term financial viability of the business itself? Nah. It must be a conspiracy.

the Time brand name alone is worth more than $200M. Dude scooped a bargain

Only if they can restore the brand to its former household name glory. Time has been peddling awful, low-quality 'viral' content for years now. Their whole website, editorial voice and content quality need to be revamped. Hopefully it can be done. Journalism costs money to do well.

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