Posted on 12/06/2008 4:08:36 AM PST by abb
The McClatchy Company, burdened by debt and a steep slide in newspaper advertising, wants to sell one of its most-prized properties, The Miami Herald, according to people briefed on the company’s plans.
McClatchy, the nation’s third-largest newspaper chain, has approached potential buyers for The Herald, said these people, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue. But they said they knew of no serious offers for the paper, reflecting the evaporation of major investors’ interest in buying newspapers.
The company refused to discuss the matter. Elaine Lintecum, the treasurer, said, “We do not comment on market rumors.”
The Herald is one of the largest of McClatchy’s 30 daily papers, with daily circulation of 210,000, and arguably the most prestigious, having won 19 Pulitzer Prizes. But it is not clear what kind of bids it might fetch, if any; with newspaper profits shrinking fast, the economy contracting and credit tight, many newspapers have been on the block for months without selling.
The people briefed on the company’s plans say The Herald generates a very slim operating margin and that the most attractive part of any deal could be its prime waterfront real estate. But the Florida real estate market is in deep recession — one of the reasons for the struggles of the paper, which used to benefit from heavy real estate advertising.
The bid to sell The Herald continues the fallout from McClatchy’s $4.5 billion purchase in 2006 of Knight Ridder, the newspaper chain that had owned the Miami paper. Largely as a result of that deal the company has about $2 billion in debt, payments on which eat up much of its cash flow.
snip
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
And the Chandler clan.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/21/business/fi-zell21
Zell closes deal for The Times
hope the new owner converts it into a toilet paper factory.
Not that it isn’t that already...just maybe they’ll make softer paper.
hope the new owner converts it into a toilet paper factory.
Not that it isn’t that already...just maybe they’ll make softer paper.
oops
I know he’s not really of “the MSM”, but nonetheless....
.....Bill Ziff (RIP) had the foresight to dump his consumer pubs (Car & Driver) in the 80’s - and immediately turn to computer pubs.
Then he sold the computer pubs 10 years later, just as the WWW was becoming known and the death of print predictable.
The man had tremendous foresight, and the McClatchy family should have followed his example. The idea of investing in print right up to 2006 shows staggering incompetence.
Oddly enough one of the McClatchy boys worked at a Ziff computer pub when Bill Ziff was still around.
I’m 51. I grew up loving the papers, and like a good Nazi thought that because I read the liberal, leftist rags, and read many of them, I was informed.
A rainy Sunday, get fresh donuts and an arm of newspapers was a delight.
Now? Every now and then I buy a paper. I’d say for every one I now buy, I used to buy twenty.
I’m starting to go weeks with out buying a paper. I went to start a fire the other day, and couldn’t find any newspaper in the house. First time ever.
Further, the convenience store has some tables where you can get a paper and coffee and sit. It’s all old guys, and me. You never, ever see anyone under 35 buying a paper.
So, the newspapers ran off conservatives and supported idiot leftist education thinking, so they have also produced generations of non readers.
They’re dead.
Well, we know for a fact that newspapers hold a lot of shi....
I don’t read the WSJ much anymore because I don’t trust their news bias. Can’t tell anymore whether a story is true or slanted left.
IMHO Bloomberg (believe it or not) is still OK, IBD is solid, Financial Times is Brit but not too bad, Times Of India’s Economic Times.
Far Eastern Economic Review (affiliated with WSJ) has sadly but fully ingested Euro anti-Americanism and has also gone down the tubes, check their current lead editorial at www.feer.com to see how their take on India’s terror response, morphs into a juvenile anti-Bush screed. Disgusting and childish.
“Really, isnt there a rich conservative that can buy it up and transform the tabloid to an actual newspaper?”
exactly my thoughts! This is the Perfect opportunity to take back the minds of those who have been brainwashed for so long .. and to start to take back our country!
Where are the conservative billionairs when you need them?
It would have to be a rich, stupid conservative.
Why can’t a conservative buy this and go back to real journalism. We don’t have much hope if it is all libs. Fox News, Rush, Hannity, etc. shows that conservatives can turn a profit.
http://www.observer.com/2008/media/job-cuts-looming-abc-news-0
ABC News Contemplates Job Cuts in the New Year
>>>>A rainy Sunday, get fresh donuts and an arm of newspapers was a delight.<<<<<
You whippersnapper!
At 52, I sometimes think back to Sundays and (get this) buying The Boston Globe, the NYT (!!?!?), and bagels and cream cheese from Rosenfeld’s in Newton Center, Mass.
I wasn’t a leftie, just innocent and apolitical and thought I was buying reliable newspapers (more often I’d buy the Boston Herald, mainly for Howie Carr who really is its central pillar, and today’s HL Mencken).
Anyway long ago left Boston and now I’d be happy enough to read the Washington Times in print, but every time I think of that I remember the ink all over my hands and who needs that. After the Wash Times I can’t really think of a single big city newspaper that I’d want to read, period.
I had the Wash Post daily home delivery 7 or 8 years ago, but their editorializing in news articles was totally unacceptable and I finally dumped it.
Sad. In my teens I had a Post paper route, and also the Washington Evening Star. The Post and the Baltimore Sun (which has also gone stridently leftie) were daily home staples for my entire childhood and teens.
Yeah, and don’t try to elbow me at the coffee cup station. I get snarly.
Sullivan’s Donuts. The honey glaze was so thick you could chip a tooth. They had a way of cooking such that the outside was crunchy, soaked in glaze, and the inside fluffy. The donuts were so heavy, still warm that they would, eventually, melt through the bottom of the wax paper bag. So, of course I would sit in my car, with fresh black coffee, heater on, eating still warm, fresh glazed donuts and read the paper.
When I drive by the good old donut shops I give the sit a look, just in case like some Twilight Zone episode, they come back.
Can’t get good donuts either now. Krispy Kreme, Duncan, bad bad bad.
I’d say I’m down to the New York Post for edge and snark, and WSJ for reading jones, and IBD.
If I’m driving anywhere I’ll pick up the local just to get some color.
We sound like the old geezers we used to make fun of.
Bad donuts, bad newspapers, and bad bagels.
But truly, they *are* all bad!
Screw this, I’m moving to Tahiti!
I’ll laugh my ass off if it is bought by Rupert Murdoch and turned into a fair and balanced newspaper instead of a shill for the leftwingnuts in the newsroom!!
http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2008/12/08/story14.html
Union: McClatchy looking to axe pensions at Modesto Bee
Great idea...but we just have just about lost the WSJ so I am not sure if that works.
What about a Freeper press.?
Maybe Rush will buy the NYT?
Pray for W and Our Troops
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