While everyone knew that it was only a matter of time, it is still remarkable to witness the incredible, rapidly accelerating decimation taking place in the daily newspaper industry. Like watching the demolition of a Las Vegas casino from the 50’s, the countdown on setting off the explosives laced throughout the daily newspaper industry has [...]
As exciting as any horse race you’d ever see at Churchill Downs or Saratoga, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Tribune Co. are neck and neck in the much-hyped D.I.D. (Daily Insolvency Derby). The old-time Norris Division/’Black & Blue’ NFC Central rivals Chicago and Minneapolis have rounded the 4th turn and are heading down the stretch [...]
In its latest attempt to stave off the inevitable, the Minneapolis Star Tribune is demanding that its unions trim off $20 million in annual salary and cost reductions or the daily newspaper will be forced to declare bankruptcy. The company also acknowledged that Avista Capital Partners will be writing off the remaining $25 million on [...]
For the past few months, I’ve assumed that the Major Metro Daily Death Match was primarily a contest between Chicago and Minneapolis to see which major U.S. metro market would lose its daily newspaper first. Of course, every daily newspaper is struggling to one degree or another (most quite severely) and dozens of papers are [...]
As bad as the news has already been this summer about the two dailies in the Twin Cities, it keeps getting worse and worse. Earlier this summer, the Pioneer Press announced that they were scaling back their daily and the Star Tribune announced that they were delaying interest payments. Now, as detailed on MinnPost, it [...]
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 [...]
Avista Capital Partners, owners of the Star Tribune, announced this morning that they did not make their quarterly interest payment on the $96 million in junior debt that accompanied the roughly $330 million in senior debt used to finance the $530 million purchase of the daily newspaper. While CEO Chris Harte reported that the company [...]
With the well-documented problems plaguing both Midwestern dailies, it’s a toss-up as to which metro market will lose its daily newspaper first, Minneapolis or Chicago. The Newsosaur Alan Mutter has another great post today on the vastly different approaches that Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell have taken since both acquired their newspapers roughly 6 months [...]