While I haven't been following it lately, not long ago the NYT was reported to be worth approximately the market value of its real estate holdings (that is, the paper itself was essentially worth nothing).
That may be shocking, but it's happening everywhere -- Newsweek was supposedly sold for $1.00 and the assumption of its debt. I certainly wouldn't be putting any money into print-based media.
Well, remember the same thing happened with all the movie studios in the late 1980s - someone sat down and calculated that the market price to buy a studio was less than what they could get by selling all the shooting lots in Century City to a real estate developer. This was also just a few years after the studios freaked out that the VCR was going to put them out of business. There were a ton of takeovers of the studios after that, but it's not like movies aren't still around and still profitable. Of course, their revenue model has changed significantly since then.
Of course, the same thing also happened to Silicon Graphics in the early 00s and they really are dead now. I'm not saying it's not a worrisome sign for print media, just that it doesn't necessarily mean they won't make it through, albeit with lots of changes.
It happens all the time today. Companies like Sears and Burger King have been taken private (through leveraged buyouts) to unlock the value of their real estate (i.e., sell them).
Richard Gear's character in 'Pretty Woman' made a living out of just that; the sum of the values of the parts of some companies is more than its market value (Price to Book < 1).
(Then he fell in love with a red-headed hooker and decided not to break up a ship building company, and help manage the company to build more ships instead.)
Not to nitpick, but SGI is not actually dead - they're Rackable with the SGI name. And FWIW, if you're looking for hardware, their pricing and configurability is really great.
That may be shocking, but it's happening everywhere -- Newsweek was supposedly sold for $1.00 and the assumption of its debt. I certainly wouldn't be putting any money into print-based media.