Bundled up

Jack Shafer riffs on Phil Anschutz's Examiner strategy in a nice overview of how newspapers have dealt with niche and broad-market competitors. The money shot?:

The moral of today's story, then, is that nobody's niche is safe and all the dancers must keep moving. Which brings us back to the Washington Examiner: Given the history of media, the dynamism markets, and all the shifting technology, does Philip Anschutz know something the rest of us don't? Do rich ZIP codes really need the tightly edited, free read on newsprint that they can already get faster and fresher for free on the Web?

If he commits himself to losing $10 million a year on his Examiners, we'll only have to wait 520 years to find out.