What's the Boston Globe Worth? A newsstand copy may cost you more than the company

Posted by Ben Compaine

So The New York Times Co. has put the Boston Globe on the market and has acknowledged that a few folks are kicking the tires.

What could the Globe fetch? Well, certainly nothing within a rifle shot of the $1.1 billion it paid 16 years ago. David Carr, himself of the Times, asked six experts who specialize in valuing media properties. You could get the short answer in his column.

But even more fascinating is the almost stream-of-conscious responses of the six that he posts verbatim on the Media Decoder blog at the Times site.

The values—all guesses of course-- range from $250 million to a negative $25 million. Yes—The Times Co. might need to offer a buyer (if it could be called that) cash to take off their books the stream of losses projected for the paper into the immediate future, the union contracts and the 400 guaranteed-for-life jobs.

Bottom line? The price of the newspaper company may be less than what it charges ($1.00) to buy a copy of the newspaper.

Who woulda thunk?