"How toxic have print assets become?"

From the New York Times Media Decoder column today:

How toxic have print assets become? This toxic: Media companies have begun to quarantine them.

On Wednesday, Time Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the country, found itself at the wrong end of a 10-foot pole. Its corporate parent, Time Warner, which has a broad and lucrative array of entertainment assets, was making plans to spin off much of the tattered print unit in a shotgun marriage with Meredith, a Midwest-based company that was trying to do much the same thing.

Under the plan, which is far from final, the two companies would contribute magazines to create a new, publicly held company that would be left to make its own way.

Read the full article here.  Do our readings for this week offer a way to think about such developments?