MediaFile

For those following Gannett Co.  second quarter earnings on Friday, a familiar name might be popping in on the line. Douglas Arthur — the sharp analyst late of Morgan Stanley known for such hits as “Knight Ridder: A Scenario Analysis”– is back covering the sector again.  Or something akin to it.

Arthur initiated coverage of Gannett for Evercore Partners last week,  stamping Gannett with an “overweight” rating and a price target of $18. It’s likely his report sent shares in the newspaper and broadcasting company soaring about 6% to$14.16 on July 7 close.

Newspaper companies used to be covered by a boatload of analysts until around 2008 when they started dropping like flies.  Maybe if a few more come back into the fold we’ll be looking at an upward trend.

Taking a break from flogging the latest tired media business model, Morgan Stanley published a short report on Friday entitled, “How Teenagers Consume Media” by 15-year-old summer intern Matthew Robson that offers a frank discussion of what young digital media consumers are up to.  The FT has highlighted it on its front page, perhaps as an antidote to wall-to-wall coverage of the annual Sun Valley media moguls conference in recent days.

The most memorable moment in the report is its discussion of the irrelevancy of Twitter to teenagers:

Facebook is popular as one can interact with friends on a wide scale.
On the other hand, teenagers do not use twitter. Most have signed up to the service, but then just leave it as they release that they are not going to update it (mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they would rather text friends with that credit). In addition, they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their ‘tweets’ are pointless.