When Demand Media floated earlier this week it started out at $17 a share, rocketed on first day trading to a high of $24, and even after falling back to trade around $22 last night its market cap of $1.8bn still makes it worth more than the New York Times.
It’s that “worth more than the New York Times” bit that evidently set journalists’ teeth on edge – if the US paper of record is worth less than a five-year-old content farm, what hope for journalism?
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The good news for journalism is that there is no rational basis for believing that Demand Media (NYSE: DMD) is worth more than the New York Times…
» Read the rest of this post on Seamus McCauley’s Virtual Economics blog…
This article originally appeared in Virtual Economics.
A lot of Demand’s content is fairly decent. — The problem for the NYTimes, is that they haven’t grown About.com — a direct competitor to Demand’s eHow.com.
So, NYTimes should look at a way to unlock value.