Paton claims that measured against an industry average, his chain is doing very well. He does not say – and the reporter does not ask – where this industry average number comes from. Nor does anyone say what the chain’s performance was against this industry average prior to Paton taking over.

More puzzling is the complete absence of any circulation numbers. Paton carefully avoids mentioning whether circulation has gone up, down or remained the same since his takeover. And although these numbers are central to the story as well as being fairly easy to get, the reporter is equally oblivious.

We are told the chain has turned a 15 percent profit under the new regime. Paton points to this as proof that his “innovations” are working and the reporter accepts this without question. However, from what little I can learn from this story as well as reading the full text of Paton’s remarks, the company’s situation seems a bit more precarious. I believe Paton arrived at about the time the company emerged from bankruptcy. Presumably the chain shed debt during bankruptcy. Then Paton by his own account cut costs by outsourcing anything he could. In the short term such cost cutting is bound to result in some sort of profit. But if circulation is falling and web site revenues are anemic, the long term outlook is not good.

Of course, one could argue that I am assuming declining circulation and poor revenue growth. That is absolutely true. But since the story addresses neither issue, what is a reader to do.

I am also left scratching my head about these claims of innovation. Cost cutting is innovative? Since when?

Also left unexplained is what exactly Paton’s digital strategy is. What we see throughout the industry is that web sites generate a huge amount of traffic but relatively little in the way of advertising revenues. This is hardly surprising since readers are not fools. If they can get for free on the Internet the news that newspapers charge for at the newsstand, they will. And as long as newspapers are competing for advertising dollars with millions of other web sites, what they can charge for advertising will be less than the print product. (Even in the newspaper industry the laws of supply and demand still rule.)

Has Paton found an answer to that problem? He does not say and the reporter does not ask. All we know is that Paton is giving his employees time to come up with new ideas. That’s nice but what have they come up with? Paton, as usual, does not say and the reporter, as usual, does not ask. Sigh.

Which leads to one final observation. Paton touts his attempts to motivate his employees through profit sharing and paid time to innovate. That all sounds very encouraging. But in the next breath he says, “Stop listening to newspaper people. We have had nearly 15 years to figure out the Web and as an industry we newspaper people are no good at it. No good at it at all. Want to get good at it? Then stop listening to the newspaper people and start listening to the rest of the world.”

So let me understand this. The head of a newspaper company just told everybody that works for him that they are idiots. Did I miss something here?

And what does our intrepid reporter think of all this? “..it’s refreshing to see a newspaper publisher not just talk about going “digital first” but actually put his money where his mouth is.”

Yeah, right.