Where is auto market headed?

Even you can afford the free trial bro.

What do I do when it ends? Back to LH? I lose all my smarts

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Seriously, what a joke.

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Does a bear s**t in the woods, Big Dipper?

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Not sure what you are referring to, but FYI: I mostly agree with your original post other than your reference to WSJ, which is owned by the same guy who owns FOX.

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So what? VW owns Bugatti and they are not ruined yet, Disney owns Marvel and it is only somewhat ruined and News Corp owns Harper Collins - and they still publish some ok books.

Murdoch and his idiot kids have generally left the WSJ alone, unlike Bezos and WaPo.

It is all good.

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WaPo did not change much since Bezos bought it while WSJ did, IMO. But it’s not as obvious with WSJ since it is a business publication.

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IMO, WaPo did change and became way more issue-focused vs. news and certainly more liberal. Certainly obvious since Bezos got in the game.

WSJ has been trending away from “strictly business” for 30 years. Way more “news” and “lifestyle” garbage now than it used to have. Barrons, Crain’s, Business Journal, etc. are more business publications than WSJ.

Glad you actually read as most people do not.

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We can probably agree that owners have some influence on their properties.

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Aye, without a doubt.

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Not quite that bad no, but unicorns will be a lot more scarce around here.

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Well, this is new
VW of New Heaven - closed

This dealership decided to close doors for two weeks even though our state allows to sell cars online and do social distancing delivery.

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Many dealers in CA have done that as well, although most email inquiries to those “closed” dealers do receive at least almost immediate acknowledgment.

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A lot of dealers believe it or notare closing regardless of the state orders.

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This may make sense. Further reduce staffing and overhead costs as well as avoiding cleaning costs.
Dealership can still sell cars to loyal customers or high gross buyers with online paperwork and home delivery.

I’ve been a subscriber for a decade plus and think the general change started before Bezos. It’s just economics/catering to reader. The demographics of the people who subscribe to WaPo haven’t changed (overwhelmingly college educated, whiter than the regions population). What has changed is the voting patterns of those folks - see Fairfax and Loudoun County. WaPo also happens to have the right represented by Will and Rubin, who some seem to view as "liberals"now, although that view is just wrong.

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I believe this crisis will bring a great change in how consumer facing businesses work. It will escalate the move towards digital sales and services.

Businesses will realize the benefits of less overhead, space requirements and other cost savings.

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As someone who used to read the actual paper WaPo on the Metro starting in 1999, I agree. Like a lot of “big city papers” (which seems laughable in the mass consolidation over the past 25+ years), it’s written closer to an 8th grade level than a 5-6th grade level, which some people just don’t like.

I feel like the writing changed a lot in the 2000s as DC became a place for tech and food and not just politics. For a while the Style Section bled into the business section (Michael Sayler and Microstrategy, for instance).

I think all the outlets have evolved significantly in the past 10 years to meet and keep their readers. I’ve seen a lot of change at WSJ since the ownership shuffled around.

Which brings up maybe one more point: 20 years ago you rarely saw someone you knew from one outlet moving to another. In the last 5 years I’ve seen a lot of shuffling around: no longer that beat reporting gets you national exposure and hopefully a rare column/show for your parent company, but you might leave a big outlet for a boutique on the way to owning your own corner or specializing and trying to side-step into a big opening.

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I think WaPo and WSJ both were moving in their respective directions prior to the arrival of Bezos, Murdoch, et al, but the WaPo changes accelerated when Bezos was there for sure.

Every outlet has had to evolve - indeed, evolve or die like so much of the newspaper industry. When you have that kind of sea change there will be mandates given in the newsroom that tailor the content to what gets paywall subscriptions bought, what gets click-through ads bought and what makes for a sexy alert on someone’s phone.

With Craigslist, eBay, etc. killing classified ad revenue and the Internet and email killing newsprint ads in general, the money has to come from somewhere. The people “buying” papers now are not the people buying papers of old that read it front to back and actually looked at the ad inserts like many did 25-30+ years ago. As such, the content has changed to meet that “new” reader’s expectations.

Evolution of the industry, but not for the good of journalism really.

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Lotta low end employees are gonna be out of work, Some will survive the adaptation in a logistics role however.

One step closer toward socialism…

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True about a lot of low end jobs being eliminated.

People will need to invest in retraining for new skills.

Not too sure about the socialism part…if ppl gain new skills, it can reinvigorate the labor market.