Posted on 06/24/2006 9:05:22 AM PDT by LouAvul
Snip........
Knight Ridder's demise may foreshadow more sobering times ahead for newspapers if advertising continues its shift to the Internet, intensifying pressure on publishers to cut costs to satisfy investors who continue to demand higher profits despite the industry's eroding revenue and readership.
Those tensions buried San Jose-based Knight Ridder, which spent much of the past decade fruitlessly trying to please Wall Street. Knight Ridder's papers have a combined daily circulation of 8.1 million, down from 8.5 million five years ago.
The relentless pursuit of more profit became an uphill battle as the company tried to offset its diminishing revenue by eliminating 3,500 jobs, or 16 percent of its work force, over the past five years.
The purge weakened Knight Ridder's newsrooms when it should have been bulking up to cope with the online revolution, said Jay Harris, who quit as the Mercury News' publisher in 2001 because he didn't want to make deep cuts at the Silicon Valley paper.
Shareholders weren't placated because management still couldn't deliver on its promise to bring the company's profits in line with the rest of the industry.
Last year, Knight Ridder's operating profit margin stood at 16.4 percent compared to the industry average of 19.2 percent, according to industry analyst John Morton.
And it was backpedaling faster than its peers. In 2004, it posted an operating profit margin of 19.4 percent compared to 20.5 percent for the industry, Morton said.
Investors took out their frustrations on Knight Ridder's stock, which plunged from a high of $80 in 2004 to a low of $52.42 last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at modbee.com ...
especially since more Americans are calling for "truth" in journalism, something the leftist media have ignored.
~snicker
Ah, singing the capitalism blues, are we? If only the GOVERNMENT ran all the newspapers on tax-payer money! Like NPR! Oh, how happy and glad we'd all be.
Pinging the Dinosaur Media DeathWatch list with actual sounds of dying dinosaurs!! Happy weekend!!
One only wishes that the antique media would "sober" up and provide us with a product that was more balanced and truthful.
Hello, New York Times!!!!! Are you paying any attention????? Keep up the good work! You're running your industry right into the ground (where it belongs).
Gee! They wouldn't have any of these problems if they had readership!! But it's too complicated for the communists at Knight-Ridder to understand that likely readers/subscribers want hard, accurate news...not propaganda.
Poor little America-hating, communist "journalists". Maybe they should come up with some more bogus awards like the Pulitzer to make themselves feel better about being bit on the butt by reality!
Damn stockholders! If it weren't for them, we'd be.....
Nevermind.
Unfortunately one man's "enlightening" story is another's propaganda.
Their profit margin is much higher than the oil companies.
The "Mainstream Newsmedia"'s decision to become a propaganda machine instead of a source of truth and information will be remembered as one of the stupidest decisions in history.
I have spent most of my life in the company of the smug self-righteousness of the self-annointed "new left." 1968 was a watershed year.
Before that, I remember figures like FDR and Truman, who put our country on the wrong path but at least had some stature. Even Stalin had stature. Since then, it has been all Woodstock all the time. They really are little creeps.
Yeah, isn't NPR a hoot! Tune in at the top of any hour 24/7 and you'll hear a "newscast" with the following "stories":
1. US losing the war in Iraq.
2. The Bush administration is supressing the legtimate aspirations of (fill in the blank): minorities, women, poor people, the homeless, hurricane victims.
3. The US economy stinks; and it's Bush's fault.
4. Gays are a deprived minority thanks to Bush.
I'm not kidding. That's standard NPR fare.
And that's the true face of liberalism: raving egomania covering a raging inferiority complex. It's the yearning for a class system like in good old Europe; the desire to be a member of the nobility. If you manifest a "natural" refinement inexplicably germane to your nature, not taught by family, not encouraged by popular culture, the surely, there must be something inherently superior about you. You "should" be one of the nobles, and you can smooth your ruffled feathers about your lowly lot in life every time you can dredge up some enjoyment out of a sonata, or attentively listen to some long, grim news story on the evils of the actions perpetrated by those more in tune with popular culture. Liberals consider themselves the ultimate outsiders even when they control the universities and mainstream media.
Of course, even when they are wealthy and valued, it's never enough. Their egos are bottomless pits. Last night I went to opening night at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and got to see Carlos Santana inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame. But first I had to listen to Edward James Olmos give the most hagiographic, worshipful, ego-stroking, idolizing, Man-just-get-a-room introduction I've ever heard in my life. You'd have thought Santana was Jesus, with a magic guitar that cures cancer and dices carrots all at once. And Carlos ate it up. Then, after a spiel about how the White House needs to learn not to drop bombs on people because music will bring everyone together, Santana, the orchestra, and some Broadway singer launched into a song about how one day there will be world peace, oh yes there will, oh yes there will, oh yes there will.
By this time I was just laughing my head off and my liberal friend was even looking a little embarrassed for Carlos. But this is liberalism: until the entire world does exactly what you say, that ego will not be satisfied. It's the crown or nothing.
When I first lived in San Jose 20 years ago, I read the SJ Mercury News. When I moved back to the Bay Area a couple of years ago I picked it up occasionally. I was surprised at how shoddy it had become.
Of course now, I never read a newspaper.
Interesting article from the Modesto Bee, though, considering that they are part of the McClatchy group which is buying Knight-Ridder. You wouldn't know that from reading the article.
Yes. You have it about right. The world is full of liberal arts graduates who are waiting tables and working in bookstores waiting for their genius to be discovered. And while they are waiting with their noses turned in the air, you can sometimes overhear them discussing their superiority and their customers' faults.
Listen in some time to the over educated, underemployed twenty and even thirty-somethings seemingly in complete bafflement at how the rest of the world cannot appreciate their brilliance.
It's another reason why I don't do concerts anymore. The crowds there are largely as you have presented: self-absored, liberal, and without a clue about how the world works.
Well written...
The story credited Michael Liedtke as an AP business writer. It doesn't say if he's based in Modesto or not. I'm going to google and see if any other newspapers picked it up...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.