Basically prior to the being sold the paper was profitable every year except the last year. Then in 1976 Murdoch bought. I put an excerpt that explains the market challenges of running the paper. Despite these market challenges he ran it for a long time at a loss. It’s my opinion that the purpose of owning the paper which loses money every year is influence and power, not just numbers on a balance sheet. That’s why Murdoch ran it at a loss for so long. Likely he believed the influence and power netted more money for him overall.

The article says:

The Post at this point was the only surviving afternoon daily in New York City and its circulation under Schiff had grown by two-thirds, particularly after the failure of the competing World Journal Tribune; however, the rising cost of operating an afternoon daily in a city with worsening daytime traffic congestion, combined with mounting competition from expanded local radio and TV news cut into the Post’s profitability, though it made money from 1949 until Schiff’s final year of ownership, when it lost $500,000.

When you own a newspaper you can do things like this: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/new-york-post-writer-resigns-kamala-harris-book-story/

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Elon is doing the same with X. The rich always find a way to shout their propaganda.

      • WeUnite@lemm.eeOP
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        4 days ago

        Exactly! Twitter cost $44 billion but his wealth doubled from $200 billion to $400 billion after becoming President of the United States along with co-president Trump.

  • niktemadur@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    The long-term goal was to make and keep people as dumb and ignorant as possible. What a parasite.

  • comfydecal@infosec.pub
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    Wild is if you have a small business in the US, if you fail to have profits for an extended period of time, they classify the business as hobby and shut you down. Nice to see the same rule applies to large business as well!

  • frezik@midwest.social
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    You know the whole “you have mettled, Mr Beele” speech in Network? The one where the business guy lays out a capitalist cosmology, and is willing to lose money on spreading the word of that cosmology? Turns out, it’s close to the truth of these guys.

    • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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      3 days ago

      The speech scene for those that haven’t seen it.

      Here’s another good speech from the movie

      We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

      We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’

      Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. (shouting) You’ve got to say: ‘I’m a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!’

  • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    NY post is just a buncha conservative clap-trap, Murdoch trying to get my home city more conservative with fox and the post.

    Eat shit and die, Rupert!

  • shalafi@lemmy.world
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    Only in part of the 20th century was media expected to be unbiased. Papers were run by scum like Murdoch since Colonial times.

  • fodderoh@lemmy.world
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    2022 is when it bought Wordle. If it wasn’t for the games division, it would probably still be losing money.