I suspect we might see something like this in the forthcoming book by the recently paroled newspaper operator David Radler:

  • Buy small newspapers
  • If you have three people in their newsroom, make two of them sell ads
  • Obsessively micromanage costs
  • Fine people for "provoking the publisher"
  • When you do buy bigger newspapers, count the desks and remove one-quarter of them (along with the people who occupy them, of course). You won't miss a beat
  • In a vainglorious frenzy, spend $200 million to create a brand-new newspaper and conservative bully pulpit from scratch so it can be in fourth place in the country's biggest market
  • Non-compete fees are like free money

Actually, the newspaper to which I not-so-vaguely refer in my second-last bullet point was the brainchild of inmate number 18330-424. The satirical press said back in the day that Radler didn't much like the concept of creating the N-P.

Paul Waldie has an interview with Radler in which he expands on some of his future plans.

From the Globe and Mail:

Yesterday morning he was back running his business, Alberta Newspaper Group, but he stopped briefly to talk about life behind bars, where he learned some Chinese, and his plans for the future. "I'll get back to doing what I do best, which is to work," he said. "I have no desire for any profile. I will do the book and that will be it." ...

If you want the inside scoop on the trial or the collapse of Hollinger, you won't find it in Radler's book.

"... I think what perhaps is more useful and more interesting is the process, at least the business process, of building up the company."

The book will be "mainly about my career," he added. "There's going to be no bitterness in it. There's going to be no prison nonsense in it."

Radler says he bears no enmity towards Conrad Black, his former partner:

"Life goes on," Mr. Radler said yesterday from his office in Vancouver. "Look, I remember the good times, not the bad."

When asked what he will say about Lord Black in the book, Mr. Radler replied: "All positive things. Why would I say anything negative?"