![]() ![]() “Absolutely, we’re profitable,” Crist said. Some days, just a few thousand copies are sold on Triple Crown days, 350,000. “It’s like combining The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.”Īlthough its circulation is modest, the $5 to $6 price tag, depending on the market, means revenue of at least $60 million from selling 39 regional editions of the paper at tracks (where The Form also publishes programs) and newsstands. “Although it suffers from some of the same issues newspapers do, the combination of its editorial content and data puts it on firmer ground,” said Charles Hayward, the president of the New York Racing Association and a former president of The Form. But it lasted less than a year, and The Form acquired some of its assets to kill it. A formidable challenge seemed to come in 1991, when Robert Maxwell started The Racing Times, which Crist edited. Still, it is the industry’s only daily, with its competition largely from The BloodHorse and The Thoroughbred Times’s Web sites, and the industry’s central data source, Equibase. And it is a niche paper that serves a sport with considerable problems, but one that comes alive to a general audience for Triple Crown events like Saturday’s Belmont Stakes. The Form’s business model is bucking two economic trends: it is a daily in the midst of a recession that has decimated advertising and some general-interest papers. In a few years, he expects the digital side to account for at least one-third of revenue. I don’t think we’re going digital any time soon.” I think we’ll still be selling them, because there are still thousands of people who are tactile and sensual about their newsprint and Flair pens and marking up their Form. “We’re not going to be selling more hard-copy newspapers in five years. “Initially, the Internet was a small part of the company, but now I’d say that it’s 10 to 20 percent,” said Steven Crist, The Form’s chairman and publisher. ![]() Think Walmart workers' rallies.The newspaper industry is reeling and trying to adapt to an online future.īut The Daily Racing Form, the horse-racing tabloid with the familiar red, white and black logo, appears to have found a survival strategy: it feeds its readers a product with news, analysis and data, and sells them more and deeper analytic information from its Web site, drf.com. Monthly, mandatory "pat the executive on the back" meetings that only serve to stir discontent and unhappiness with the actual workers. Ownership turnover from venture-capitalists to venture-capitalists means that management has very little interest in anything other than their own equity shares.īe prepared to work 7 days a week, weekends, holidays, and vacations - without any financial compensation. Management will pull matching 401K funds when they need to pump up their numbers to lure venture capitalists. Top-heavy on the executive side, with very few "worker bees" left to carry out the tasks endlessly assigned to them. Not a female-friendly environment, unless you are a secretary or a marketing drone. ![]() Executives get bonuses every year though, handed out in front of the employees. No raises, often for years and years on end. Open plan for everyone except the executives (who have giant office where conference and break space used to be). Fortunately for management, the people who take the blame will be long gone.ĭecrepit work space. Unfortunately I see a day in the near future when for only the second time in the glorious history of the Daily Racing Form they will somehow fail to produce a newspaper. Even when advised by employees with the knowledge on which projects or endeavors NOT to undertake, management's ego and bravado would not allow them to heed the advice and put the production of the company in jeopardy several times. What used to be a fun place to work has become an episode of one of those bad reality shows about nightmarish companies with egotistical bosses who are too proud to admit their mistakes so they keep going down the same disastrous path while blaming those who aren't there to defend themselves. ![]() There's no advancement unless you suck up to management, and those who disagree soon find themselves pushed out the door. There's a reason so many people have voluntarily left the company for other work, and it's not just the money. Blame is constantly shifted from former employee to former employee, and management expects the people who've been working there for years to be too dumb to know the truth. Unfortunately, the good people are surrounded and held back by delusions of managers who don't take responsibility for their decisions. ![]()
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