http://public.cq.com/public/20061211_media.html

CQ WEEKLY

Dec. 11, 2006 – Page 3273

. . . The thing that confuses me about [The Politico] is the business model. And I’m not alone. “I don’t get it,” confessed Larry Grimes, president of W.B. Grimes & Co. investment bankers, which specializes in media mergers and acquisitions. “I can’t imagine that there is an editorial niche here that isn’t already covered. . . . All it’s going to do is dilute the advertising marketplace further.”

. . . Is Capitol Hill big enough for three newspapers? Since 1994, The Hill and Roll Call have been battling it out for readers and ad dollars by chronicling the ins and outs of Congress on newsprint. Both have added staff, increased frequency, and moved to the Web — and this fall Roll Call acquired Gallery Watch, a Web site providing the ability to search, track and analyze legislative information. Big mainstream media outlets have beefed up online coverage with blogs such as “The Note” by ABC’s political team and “The Caucus” by The New York Times. Subscription-based specialty publications, including Congressional Quarterly and National Journal, now provide some free online coverage every day.

True, the Federal Paper folded in 2003 after only four months when ad money failed to materialize. But “what they’re doing is different than what we were doing,” its editor, Mark Willen, who’s now at the Kiplinger Washington Letter, said of Allbritton. “We were trying to do a paper for the executive branch. We assumed the Hill market was already pretty saturated. It turns out that may not be the case.”

Fair enough. Martin Tolchin, who founded The Hill and initially led the new Allbritton venture, says there is room for another ad-supported publication as a way for lobbyists, unions, trade associations and the like to send a message to Congress. “Instead of taking a $100,000 plus ad in The New York Times or The Washington Post and be read by NIH scientists and bus drivers and restaurateurs, you spend about $10,000 and get a full page ad and be read by members of Congress and their staffers,” Tolchin said. “They can no longer spend it on Redskins box seats or three-martini luncheons, or steak dinners at The Palm.

- - CQ Weekly

In short, the revenue model is to divert several million dollars a year of the rive of lobbying money which has been partly dammed and which is now seeking a new outlet. The money has gotta flow. The Allbrittons have a good chance of turning a profit within the next few years.

1. Sarkozy's a member of the current (Chirac/UMP) administration. His election is equivalent to that of Vice President George H. W. Bush in 1988. To see him as the leader of a revolution AGAINST Chirac and the UMP is kind of absurd.

2. Sarkozy is, above all, French. Instapundit and other who blather about the "Anglosphere" are going to be disappointed when they find out that Sarkozy is not actually going to join the British Commonwealth and send troops to Iraq.

3. What about Afghanistan? Would Sarkozy join the coalition there? Well, actually, France ALREADY has troops in Afghanistan, and Sarkozy has announced that he wants to bring them home soon.

4. Royal was talking about increasing the size of the welfare state. Sarkozy's main platform is about maintaining the status quo. He's talked about increasing some programs, and cutting others, but Chirac was full of similar talk, and didn't change much.

5. American pundits will talk, these coming weeks, about how Sarkozy's election indicates that Europe is turning towards America and Bush. However, in a few months, the media will start running a bunch of stories about how disappointing it is that Sarkozy turns out NOT to be Margaret Thatcher.

6. France is falling apart, Sarkozy is failing to do anything, they will say, soon. Actually, France's economic growth has been average, and most (53%) of the French decided to keep the status quo, while a sizable minority (47%) voted for even more socialism, in a country that's already considerable more socialist than the U.K.

7. Of course I could be completely wrong, and perhaps Sarko will shut down the national healthcare system, change France's national beverage to tea with milk, outlaw black stockings and 3 hour lunch breaks, invite General Electric and Siemens and Richard Branson to bid at an auction for France's nationalized industries, and pundit242 and the other pundits will turn out to have been accurate, which, lately, seems to be grounds for dismissal in the USA media. Pundit242 and the other pundits really needn't lose much sleep about that.

Average Weekly Hours Worked Per Worker (according to Eurostat)

France: 37.4
Sweden: 36.3
Denmark: 35.9
Germany: 35.8
United Kingdon: 35.6
Netherlands: 32.0

As Jerome Guillet has observered, "Full-time workers do work shorter hours (40.9 hours for the French compared to 43.2 hours for the British in 2005), but the high number of part-time jobs in the UK brings down the average; the total number of hours worked in each of the two countries is roughly equivalent, for populations of similar size. The argument that the French don't work is plainly false."

So, if Sarko attempts to create fewer full-time jobs and more part-time jobs (by lengthing the full-time work week) he could quite possibly face another one of those French national pastimes -- a general strike. After which, he could do his gallic shrug and say, "oh well, I tried."