You don't need to practice sophisticated content analysis like my friends at the Project for Excellence in Journalism to figure out the industry newsmaker of the week. First Rupert Murdoch deposed Marcus Brauchli, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. Then he turned around and offered $580 million to buy Newsday, a nice fit with his perennially money-losing New York Post. 

 

But I am left wondering whether the Newsday bid (with a counterbid expected from Mort Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News) proves anything more than that there is still a market for newspapers -- in certain special circumstances.

Sherlock Holmes famously cracked the case of "Silver Blaze" by noting the "curious incident of the dog" -- curious because the dog did nothing. And with dozens of papers openly for sale this year, there has been little woofing at all among potential buyers.

 

It is early to say that there are no buyers left. In the best of times, the sales process typically takes four to six months. It is fair to say, though, that as spring turns to summer and summer to fall, we should get a definitive read on whether there are buyers, even at depressed prices, and who those buyers might be.

 

A short roster of available properties:

Gannett used to be first in line for such deals, but it has reduced its newspaper holdings by 10 this decade and expresses only faint interest in old media acquisitions. MediaNews, McClatchy, Lee and GateHouse are digesting the debt from recent acquisitions and unlikely to assume more. By my reckoning only Hearst remains in the buying mode, having bought papers in the wealthy Connecticut suburbs of Greenwich and Stamford from Tribune last fall.

 

A local investor group in Philadelphia and a private equity firm in Minneapolis-St. Paul have admitted to an urgent cash squeeze as revenues and earnings threaten to plunge below what is needed to meet debt payments. Hardly an encouragement for other such groups to come forward.

 

Turbulent ownership remains one of the industry's most important stories in 2008. For now the headline continues to be the nothing that is happening at most properties for sale.