THE FUTURE OF THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY
Lauren Rich Fine, Research Director for Content Next and formerly the lead analyst for publishing, information, advertising, and online industries for Merrill Lynch.
Friday April 24, 2009
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Crawford Hall - Room 9
Inamori Center
Case Western Reserve University
Dear Colleagues,
What is Black and White and Red All Over?
According to numerous reports, the U.S. newspaper industry, supposedly “bleeding red ink,” due to declining readership and advertising revenues. Local concerns focus on rumors that the Cleveland Plain Dealer will disappear – fed, perhaps, by what some customers perceive as a Cheshire Cat-like fading away of our local paper’s news coverage. Newspaper managements puzzle over what content to provide and how to win customers in competition with internet sources – which get much of their information from the news organizations themselves.
It’s a complicated business, and Lauren Rich Fine is one of the nation’s leading experts. As a longtime managing director and industry analyst at Merrill Lynch, Ms. Fine was, in the words of one Weatherhead School professor, an analyst who could “move markets” with her judgments. She serves now as Research Director for ContentNext, and is practitioner in residence at Kent State’s College of Communication and Information.
“Interest in news today is greater than it ever has been,” Ms. Fine once said, yet “There’s no way to go back to where the industry has come from.” So where might it go next, and will we want to go along?
As usual, we will gather in Room 9 of the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence, on the lower level of Crawford Hall, for free cookies, beverages, and brown bag lunch.
Best regards,
Joe White
About Our Guest
Lauren Rich Fine, CFA, is Research Director for Content Next and a Practitioner in Residence at Kent State University's College of Communication and Information. Until recently she was a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch in Equity Research. She joined the department in 1988 and covered the publishing, information, advertising and online industries. She was a ranked member of the Institutional Investor All-American Research Team since 1994. Lauren has an MBA from the Stern School of Management (NYU) and a BA in Psychology/Economics from Tufts University. Ms. Fine has five teenage children/step children.
Lauren is on the Boards of the Brand Muscle, Cleveland Film Society, the Cleveland Jewish News, the Chautauqua Foundation, In Counsel with Women, Laurel School, and Urban Community School, a not-for-profit school for low income families in Cleveland. She is on the Advisory Boards of Dix & Eaton, a public relations firm in Cleveland, and the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in St. Petersburg.
Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
Public Affairs Discussion Group programming resumes on Friday August 28, 2009. We hope everyone has a relaxing and enjoyable summer.
The Friday Lunch discussions are held on the lower (ground) level of
Crawford Hall. Visitors with mobility issues may find it easiest to take advantage of special arrangements we have made. On most Fridays, a few parking spaces in the V.I.P. lot in between Crawford Hall and Amasa Stone Chapel are held for participants in the lunch discussion.
Visitors then can avoid walking up the hill to the first floor of Crawford by entering the building on the ground level, through the garage area under the building. The further door on the left in that garage will be left unlocked during the period before the Friday lunch. On occasion, parking will be unavailable because of other university events.
For more information about these and other Center for Policy Studies programs,
please see http://policy.case.edu.
