{"id":2871,"date":"2009-02-03T09:09:59","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T09:09:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=2871"},"modified":"2009-02-03T09:09:59","modified_gmt":"2009-02-03T09:09:59","slug":"endowed-newspapers-nobel-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2009\/02\/endowed-newspapers-nobel-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Endowed newspapers: the Nobel strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span> have a new business model for newspapers. Publish provocative, but premature obituaries of the super rich – and then explain how they can redeem themselves by leaving their badly-gotten billions to – yes – a newspaper<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I call it the Nobel strategy<\/strong>, after the inventor of dynamite. When Alfred Nobel<\/a><\/strong>‘s brother, an oil magnate, died in France, local papers confused the two men and instead published obituaries of Alfred – “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”<\/p>\n

The obituaries made Nobel re-evaluate his legacy and the role of his kronor (which might otherwise have gone in things like death duties to pay for education, etc. – just saying!). <\/p>\n

But for newspapers there is a slight flaw in the strategy. Despite the obvious evidence of journalistic fallibility, Nobel chose to posthumously reward scientists, novelists and peace-makers, rather than editors.<\/p>\n

Like you – and Alfred Nobel – I can think of many more worthy uses for philanthropy than sustaining newspapers. But that hasn’t stopped a blogospheric splurge [wrap here<\/a>] on the subject.<\/p>\n

The only lesson I would draw from the whole sorry saga, is that when an endowment manager<\/a> suggests endowing newspapers<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em> it attracts more attention than when a philanthropy theorist<\/a> (yes – shock – they exist<\/a>!) suggests it in the Financial Times<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, if any Swedish arms billionaires are reading. Start a news organization. Don’t bail one out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a new business model for newspapers. Publish provocative, but premature obituaries of the super rich – and then explain how they can redeem themselves by leaving their badly-gotten billions to – yes – a newspaper. I call it the Nobel strategy, after the inventor of dynamite. When Alfred Nobel‘s brother, an oil magnate, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2873,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2871\/revisions\/2873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}