Newspaper Economics, Part 2
Posted by DickH on 10 Aug 2008 at 11:01 am | Tagged as: Technology
Two weeks ago I wrote that the summertime-nastiness of the Lowell Sun would hasten the paper’s demise. It’s obvious that I hit a nerve because Sun executives have spent the past 14 days obsessing over that opinion in the paper (last Saturday), on the radio (just yesterday) and in conversations with anyone who will listen. Why would the upper-echelon of a major regional newspaper get so rattled by a single comment on a blog that’s read by 500 people per day? Could it be that we’ve stumbled onto the truth?
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Although MediaNews Group is a privately held corporation, it had always filed financial disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That all changed on April 4, 2008, when MediaNews Group filed a Form 8-K with the Securities Exchange Commission, announcing that it had “ended its obligation to file reports under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 on a voluntary basis.”
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Then in mid-June, Standard & Poor’s lowered the corporate credit rating of MediaNews Group Inc to CCC which Editor and Publisher said was “deep in junk bond territory and just four notches above a default rating.”
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At about the same time, Bloomberg.com reported “. . . MediaNews may end up in default as ad sales evaporate.”
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Just this Friday, MediaNews Group sold a Connecticut daily and seven weekly papers to the Hearst chain. The Connecticut Post has Dean Singleton (owner of MediaNews Group) saying that he sold the Connecticut papers to “shore up MediaNews Group’s balance sheet.”
Draw your own conclusions.
Check the bylines. People leave and aren’t replaced. Maybe someday they’ll start running it like a newspaper rather than a petty fiefdom; some did have hopes that journalism would finally be taken seriously after Kenny was removed as publisher and given that face-saving title (chairman of what????)
I’m beginning to read some non-recognizable names in the management of the paper also. Before you know it, the entire paper will be transformed. They’ll report news, not make it. Delivery will be timely, never a skip and the website will be lightning fast. There’ll be no more conflicts of interest with local politicians and no hidden agendas. A man with a white beard and a red suit will come flying out of the North Pole pulled by a team of reindeer…
Two things, first Dick I believe you give the paper more credit than it is due with this quote…”a major regional newspaper”. With a circulation of under 50K I wouldn’t call it a major anything.
Second, I posted this on LiL a while back when I stumbled upon it. The Columbia Journalism Review has opened its website to fired/downsized journalists to allow them to give their views on the state of the newspaper business. The first item posted was by a former employee of Dean Stapleton, MediaNews and owner of not only the Lowell Sun but the Denver Post. It will give most folks a clearer picture into the future of Lowell’s once great newspaper. (Lowell isn’t even on the masthead any longer!)
http://www.cjr.org/parting_thoughts/parting_thoughts_jim_spencer.php
My prediction is that if the Sun survives it will be in a watered down version of the Sun and Sentinel-Enterprise. That is actually already happening with more and more stories from Nashoba Valley turning up in the Sun than ever before!
First of all it is Dean SINGLETON, and the reason for the Nashoba stories in the Sun is that the Sun covers all the way out to Devens including Ayer, Shirley, Groton, etc. There aer two editions the metro (Lowell, Dracut, Chelmsford, Billerica, etc) and the Suburban (Littleton, Westford, Groton, Ayer, etc) Sometimes stories run in both editions.
All newspapers are in a financial slump, it is not just the Sun. If you think you can do it better, start your own paper. They are doing what they can with what they’ve got. It is no longer a family-owned one paper operation, they are subject to the needs of the entire company, and if you read about MediaNews Group, you’ll find that the papers in this part of the country are not bleeding money, it is the papers thety own in California.
The real question is how is the Lowell Sun doing financially? Who cares how the rest of the papers in the Media News Group family are doing. I know it affects the funding for the Lowell paper, but once they’ve cut to the bone here in Lowell, they’re not going to further damage a financially sound paper to keep a failing one on life support.
Worst case scenario is the Sun gets sold. But it will be here for a mighty long time.
“They are doing what they can with what they’ve got.”
You mean, agenda-driving for cash-strapped editors? Is there a book to accomplish that somewhere?
Everyone forgets that this started with newspaper consolidation and them going public, and the reporting to stockholders, who can’t be satisfied with “pretty profitable” but want “insane increasing profits.” Newspapers can still, and are still, making profits here and there. Just not enough for the stock to keep going up.
You want to save our media? Stop allowing this insane amount of consolidation, where newspapers stop being responsive to the needs of the community and start being responsive to the corporate bottom line. It’s not like newspapers were heaven a hundred years ago but as long as you were paying your reporters, and making a tidy profit, owners could go with the flow (and the economy). Not so much, now.
Groton….Dean SINGLETON is so involved in our community that I forgot his last name! Maybe the Sun now has two edition…prior to it being sold to MediaNews it had many more editions than that and each edition catered to the news of the communities served with differnt stories.
The Deven’s focus only came into being after MediaNews bought the Fitchburg Sentinel and Emptyprise and then moved the printing plant out there. Since when it what is happening in Dracut/Lowell/Tewksbury of interest in Fitchburg, Harvard and Ayer and visa versa?
And since I’m on a roll, would someone in the know please explain why the Sun…the local paper of record…still hasn’t done a story on a Westford couple that pursuing a class action lawsuit over their foreclosure?
It was on The Boston Globe last Tuesday, you’d think someone over at the museum would have read the Globe by now or is that too much to ask of that crack newsteam????? Westford is too far away??? The story won’t impact anyone in the area????
http://www.boston.com/business/personalfinance/articles/2008/08/05/suit_blames_loan_servicer_for_pending_foreclosure/