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 [...]
It was another dismal week for the daily newspaper industry. Here in Minneapolis, the Star Tribune could only muster 6 pages of employment classifieds on Sunday for thye 2nd week in a row (actually it was about 4 with 2 pages of filler). At that level, the paper has got to be inching ever closer [...]
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 [...]
The quarterly numbers for daily newspaper publishers are starting to come out, and they’re pretty ugly. The New York Times reported yesterday that earnings fell by 82% with an 11% decline in revenue. Given how bad the environment is right now for daily newspapers in general but especially given the economic environment, there shouldn’t be [...]
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 [...]