media
Washington Blade Owner Window Media Bled $195,000 a Month (And Had $2,100 Left In Its Checking Account)
Between Avalon Equity’s Window Media and Unite, the bankrupt and defunct gay media publisher was “faced a monthly operating loss of $195,839,” and “just” $11 million in debt (not $15M!) against $585,000 in total assets, which includes $2,100 in a checking account. Maybe that new SouthFloridaGayNews.com — the second answer to the now-dead Southern Voice — will fare better? [Project Q]
$195,000 a MONTH? What did they blow it on? Cocaine and call boys?
Windows Media took a terrific local paper and crammed it with uninteresting syndicated fluff that had little to do with DC.
They were also notorious for their bad business dealings with DC-area companies, so they pretty much deserved to shut down.
Now a new paper has risen from its ashes, the DC Agenda, and it looks a lot like the pre-Windows Media Blade that I loved.
“$195,000 a MONTH? What did they blow it on? Cocaine and call boys?”
If you pay $70 per hour (salary + benefits + various per-employee taxes), it would cost you over $12,000 per month from just that alone per employee. Then add rent, utilities, phone costs, internet connections, etc., and it is pretty easy to exceed $195K per month if you aren’t bringing in much revenue (assume 10 employees).
OUT was losing 1.5 Million a month.
“If you pay $70 per hour (salary + benefits + various per-employee taxes)”
SERIOUSLY? What journalist do you know who makes $70 an HOUR? (Even with benefits and taxes.) I’m not questioning that exceeding $195K is totally feasible, but hey, if you know some publication (let alone a gay one) that pays $70/hour, I want to work for them instead!
Wow, six publications and for 10.5 months of 2009, they barely brought in $500K in ad revenue? No wonder they shut down. Washblade itself, at 50 issues/year, 40 ad pages/issue, should have brought in $900K with a (very, very cheap) rate of $1K per page.
Hmmm. Payscale says the average salary for a news journalist working for a for-profit company in Washington is $57,290, before taxes and including benefits. Assuming 10 employees, that works out to $47,741 a month. Put in another $20,000 a month for office space rental. Lets give a generous $10,000 a month to cover utilities, coffee, office supplies, and some kind of cleaning service every week. That works out to $77,741 a month.
I know I’m oversimplifying, but there is still something incredibly wonky in now they managed to run through $195,000 a month.
“SERIOUSLY? What journalist do you know who makes $70 an HOUR?”
Your salary does not include things like your employer’s contribution to social security, payroll taxes, benefits
(usually listed separately from an hourly wage), etc.
If you want to reduce the number, however, you can simply
increase the number of employees (I assumed about 10,
which can easily be an underestimate). It’s simply not that
hard for a business to spend nearly $200K per month.
You’re not counting Atlanta and Florida. And your numbers are heavily inflated El Brucio.
How did Kitchens and Myers get stuck holding the bag in all of this? Whatever happened to Bill Kapfer, Marketing co-President, and David Unger, da man? Do they just move on and Kitchens/Myers are screwed? I’m missing this part. Anybody want to enlighten me?
And not a one of you factored in printing. A weekly prints four times per month. Circulating even 50,000 copies can cost greatly in excess of $100,000 per run (don’t forget, it has to print on paper, which costs, then there’s the actual printing, and someone has to drive it to distributors, they have to put it on stands…). Even the NY Blade’s pathetic 12 pages would cost as much to produce. $200k per month is a drop in the bucket when running any kind of publication.
Sorry, my post had a zero off. I meant to say $10,000. Just typed too fast!