Bruce Sherman and his fund, Private Capital Management (PCM), have apparently been unloading their shares in daily newspaper companies at a pretty rapid clip. At one point, the fund had invested about $4 billion in a number of companies including McClatchy, Lee Enterprises, Gannett, the New York Times, Knight Ridder, Belo, and Media General. Even as recently as earlier this year, in a letter to the fund’s investors, Sherman had communicated his intent to stick to this highly contrarian (insane) investment theme. Alan Mutter, the Newsosaur, has a great chart on a recent blog post that displays the extent to which PCM has changed course. Too bad that doing ‘the prudent and correct’ thing (as he stated in that letter) occurred after he obliterated so much of his investors’ money.