Steve is in meetings at the Times-Union.
Subscribe via RSS
User login
Corante Media
Media blogs
Reflections of a Newsosaur
Correction: Billions, schmillions
“A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money,” goes a famous quote attributed to Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen, the late, gravel-voiced Republican leader from Illinois.
The quote, which actually may not have been uttered by the great man, came to mind this morning when several sharp-eyed readers noted that I incorrectly stated here the price paid for the
Categories: Media blogs
Perilously funded papers hit the wall
The most precariously financed newspaper deals apparently are starting to hit the wall, wiping out equity investors and causing at least some lenders to try to sell their loans at distressed prices.
The lenders who provided the bonds for the $530 million purchase of the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2006 have hired an investment bank to try to sell the loans at heavy discounts to either local
Categories: Media blogs
Why publicize newspaper job cuts?
A hundred chairs plastered with pink slips were set up in front of the Baltimore Sun today as the centerpiece of a protest against the latest staff cuts at the paper. It was a clever bit of street theater. But was it a good idea?
I am as angry as anyone about what is happening at the Tribune Co. (and elsewhere) and I am as sympathetic as can be toward the people who are losing their jobs. But I
Categories: Media blogs
‘Private’ time for GCI, LEE, MNI and NYT?
The shares of Gannett, Lee Enterprises, McClatchy and New York Times Co. have fallen so low that the companies have become candidates for transactions that could convert them to private ownership.
The companies could do it themselves, do it in partnership with private-equity funds — or potentially face unwanted takeovers from investors attracted by the bargain prices of their stock.
A public
Categories: Media blogs
Just $3.6B: Total value of 10 news stocks
In a historic rout, newspaper shares have lost nearly $4 billion in value in the first 10 trading days of July, an amount greater than the combined market capitalization of all but the three largest publicly held publishing companies.
The $3.9 billion plunge in the value of newspaper stocks since the first of this month – a period marked by successive new lows in the prices of several issues –
Categories: Media blogs
Online ad rates slid 14% since January
The average online advertising rate dropped 14.2% in the first six months of the year, according to a new industry survey.
Demonstrating that even interactive advertising is not immune to the deterioration of the economy, PubMatic, a company which helps publishers optimize their revenues, reports that the average rate for 1,000 ad impressions fell to 36 cents in June from 42 cents in January.
Categories: Media blogs
5 newspaper stocks hit new lows - again
The shares of five newspaper publishers plunged to new lows in early trading today, including the shares of GateHouse Media, which fell to $1 per share, threatening its ability to remain listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Tumbling to new lows alongside GHS were Gannett (GCI at $16.43 per share), McClatchy (MNI, $4.58), News Corp. (NWS, $13.95) and New York Times Co. (NYT, $12.61). The
Categories: Media blogs
Shorts socked newspaper stocks
Investor bets against Lee Enterprises and McClatchy were more than twice as big last month as those against the shares of Fannie Mae, one of the mortgage giants whose perceived instability jolted the financial markets.
The wagers placed against a stock, which are known as short sales, give new insight into the long-running selloff that drove seven newspaper stocks to record lows in a single day
Categories: Media blogs
7 newspaper stocks hit record lows in 1 day
The shares of seven publicly held newspaper companies today plunged to the lowest point in modern history in perhaps the worst single trading day ever for the industry.
McClatchy (MNI), Lee Enterprises (LEE), and GateHouse Media (GHS) hit all-time lows when their shares skidded respectively to $4.85, $3.11 and $1.55 in the opening hours of trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Also hitting
Categories: Media blogs
Tribune gets a ‘payday loan’
Sparing few efforts to raise cash to service its daunting $12.6 billion in debt, the Tribune Co. has taken a highly unusual step for a media company: Borrowing against its future ad revenues.
While it is commonplace and legitimate for companies in many industries to borrow against the value of invoices that customers have yet to pay, most media companies never needed to do this, because their
Categories: Media blogs
Cuts nip traditional news-staff ratio
Upcoming cuts at a pair of Tribunes show how publishers are nibbling away at the long-held standard for the minimum number of journalists deemed necessary to staff a newsroom.
The unwritten but widely honored rule of thumb in the industry always has been that a newspaper should employ one journalist for every 1,000 in daily circulation.
But plans announced today to lighten the Chicago Tribune
Categories: Media blogs
Newspaper malaise chills M&A
If this is a bad time to be the in the newspaper business, it is a worse time to be trying to sell a publishing company.
News Corp. conceded the weakness of the M&A market for newspapers last week, when it abandoned its efforts to sell the Ottaway division that it acquired when it bought Dow Jones last year. Ottaway operates eight dailies and 15 weeklies in seven states from New York to Oregon.
Categories: Media blogs
What ails sales? One ad vet's view
In this guest commentary, advertising sales veteran Janet DeGeorge says "change" is a "dirty word" at most newspapers. She is the president of Classified Executive Training & Consulting.
By Janet DeGeorge
Newspaper advertising revenue is down because most advertising departments have not changed the way they do business in 50 years. Well, probably 100 years.
They have not changed the
Categories: Media blogs
Deeper staff cuts likely at newspapers
Tens of thousands of additional jobs may have to be eliminated at newspapers because the staff reductions that have taken place to date have not kept pace with the accelerating erosion of advertising.
Even though 48.7% of the 102,120 jobs eliminated in the newspaper industry since 1990 were lost in the last three years, publishers since 2006 have failed to reduce headcount as aggressively as
Categories: Media blogs
Newspaper shares slid $23B in 6 months
The value of 11 newspaper companies traded on the public market since 2005 dove a combined $23.7 billion in the first half of this year, falling almost as much in six months as they had in the three prior years put together.
Wall Street’s intensifying repudiation of the industry means that the companies in the group have lost a cumulative $49.7 billion in market capitalization in 3½ years,
Categories: Media blogs
S.J. Merc staff gutted by 62.5%
The lightning-round layoffs due to cut the newsroom of the San Jose Mercury News by another nine employees by tomorrow night means the staff will have been pared by fully 62.5% from its peak strength in 2000.
The newspaper was perhaps the primary beneficiary of the Internet Bubble, when aggressive competition for dot-comers pumped its want-ad revenues to stratospheric – and, as it proved –
Categories: Media blogs
Little ado over Orlando's redo
Fewer than 0.05% of the readers of the Orlando Sentinel are fussed about the bold redesign of their newspaper, according to statistics provided by management three days after the debut of the new look.
The response could mean any of the following:
:: 99.95% of the readers like the colorful overhaul, which would be great news for the newspaper.
:: 99.95% of the readers didn’t notice, which not
Categories: Media blogs
How close to default is your paper?
The newspaper industry shuddered last week when Bloomberg News warned that several publishers are in danger of default. And some are. But there are many degrees of defaultness and not all publishers are in equal danger of going down the drain.
So, I have created not only the word “defaultness” but also a simple tool called the “Default-O-Matic” to help you see at a glance the degree of financial
Categories: Media blogs
The case for a JOA in Miami
As odd a couple as they might be, Gary Pruitt and Sam Zell may want to buddy up to figure out how to reduce expenses to make the most of the sagging revenues at their struggling newspapers in south Florida.
If they can modify their loan covenants, appease federal antitrust-regulators and navigate the myriad other details associated with an undertaking of this sort, the heavily leveraged owners
Categories: Media blogs
Shared presses will squeeze deadlines
Plans to print two McClatchy titles in the plants of neighboring newspapers almost certainly will force earlier deadlines in the newsrooms of all four papers, which could compromise the quality of their coverage.
In a development likely to become increasingly commonplace among publishers eager to reduce operating costs, MNI and privately held Pioneer Newspapers announced plans to shift the
Categories: Media blogs
Copyright 2008 Steve Yelvington
Recent comments
2 days 23 hours ago
3 days 1 hour ago
6 days 31 min ago
6 days 4 hours ago
6 days 12 hours ago
6 days 21 hours ago
1 week 3 days ago
1 week 6 days ago
2 weeks 56 min ago
2 weeks 17 hours ago