These headlines are just from this morning…
• The Nation: Future of the newspaper is just as bright as it is for the telegraph
• Tribune cuts 53 jobs from newsroom and asks bankruptcy judge for approval of $13 million in bonuses
• Ad revenue for McClatchy in Q1 is down nearly 30%
• The New York Times’ foundation [...]
Down 93% from it’s 52-week high, McClatchy stock hit an all-time low yesterday, dropping 13% to $.89 per share. The company now enjoys a robust market cap of $73 million. The stock is down 99% from December, 2004, making for one of the all-time great stock charts to snowboard down. Now, if we could just [...]
Fitch Ratings slashed its rating today on McClatchy’s $2.1 billion in debt, citing the company’s deteriorating business and the grim outlook for daily newspapers in general. McClatchy’s revenue has declined 13.6% over the past 12 months, and year to date reveneue has dropped 15.3%. Perhaps most startling, the publisher’s employment classified business has plummeted, declining [...]
The best commentator on the decline of the dailies, Alan Mutter – aka the Newsosaur, recently uncovered a very interesting McClatchy filing with the SEC and has written an excellent post about what it might mean. Essentially, McClatchy’s CEO has resigned from the family trusts that own a 41% stake in McClatchy, a step that [...]
The pace of news about the decimation of the daily newspaper industry is accelerating, and the picture is getting uglier and uglier every week. Among the recent stories, McClatchy is freezing wages, Gannett is reducing headcount by 1,000, and JCPenney and Kohl’s both announced plans to drastically cut back their newspaper circular advertising. Cox Enterprises [...]
My list of blog topics to write about has become exceedingly long, so I’m going to be lazy today and simply list a pile of links to the numerous stories in the past few weeks about the continuing death spiral of the daily newspaper industry.
1. A Durham lawyer is suing the News & Observer, to [...]
Back in May, McClatchy issued an SEC filing in which it had written down its 49% ownership stake in the Seattle Times from $102 million in 2006 to just $12 million, a drop of nearly 90%. McClatchy acquired the minority stake in its purchase of Knight Ridder and the Blethen family owns the remaining 51% [...]