I never was that big a fan of the tv show Friends. But for some reason, I’ve always remembered this line from Lisa Kudrow’s character, Phoebe: “I really wish I could help….It’s just that I don’t want to.”
That’s Eric Schmidt’s stand-in a nutshell-on the current plight of the newspaper biz:
The good news is we could purchase them. We have the cash. But I don’t think our purchasing a newspaper would solve the business problems. It would help solidify the ownership structure, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem in the business. Until we can answer that question we’re in this uncomfortable conversation.
Full Fortune interview here.
