Posted on 01/16/2009 11:08:17 AM PST by LdSentinal
Welcome to the poorhouse.
This past Monday, AJC staffers were informed about the sudden “retirement” of their boss, publisher John Mellott. Perhaps the first question that popped into everyone’s mind was, Who retires at 51?
On Wednesday, during the newspaper’s quarterly staff meeting, employees got to meet the new publisher, one Doug Franklin, who has years of experience as a veteran newspaper executive. (Mellott, by contrast, had previously run another Cox subsidiary, Dent Wizard.)
They were told that the bottom had fallen out of the embattled paper’s revenues sometime around October, which served to confirm the widely held suspicion that Mellott had been pushed out.
Franklin also told the assembled crowd that the AJC is currently losing about $1 million every week.
From what I understand, that little news flash got everybody’s attention.
These are tough times to be in this business and the AJC isn’t alone in its predicament. Hearst announced last June that the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the chain’s most storied and most respected papers, was losing $1 million a week and counting. Earlier this month, Hearst said it would close down another major daily, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, unless it could find a buyer in the next two months.
Given the size of the fiscal crisis facing the AJC and other big-city papers, it seems unlikely that another round of staff cuts would stem the flow of red ink. The only move big enough to make a real difference at this point would be to do away with home delivery or stop publishing a print edition on money-losing days. Last month, the Detroit Free Press announced it would discontinue home delivery except on Thursday, Friday and Sunday.
It’s been rumored for months that Cox executives are looking at eliminating at least the Monday print edition. AJC honchos have previously told staff they are evaluating daily revenue figures, but a newspaper spokesperson told me that cutting back on print days isn’t under consideration at this time.
Cox put most of its newspaper chain — more than a dozen dailies and two dozen weeklies — up for sale over the summer. None have been sold yet. Also last year, the company laid off 300 employees at the Palm Beach Post, one of its three flagship papers, including about half of the newsroom. The guy who pulled the trigger? That’d be one Doug Franklin, who was then that paper’s publisher.
What’s next for the AJC? I’m not convinced that anyone — even Cox Newspapers capo di tutti capi Jay Smith — has the answer to that question. The situation puts me in mind of the scene in Citizen Kane in which someone complains that Kane’s newspaper is losing money. Kane’s answer: “You’re right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in … 60 years”
The AJC is owned by a private trust, but ultimately controlled by family scion Anne Cox Chambers, a charter member of Forbes‘ “Richest People in America.” The story goes that Cox bean-counters are afraid to suggest to the company matriarch that they want to shit-can her hometown paper, the one her daddy bought back in ‘39. But even with a reported $13 billion in assets, how long will Cox Chambers, who’s pushing 90, want to float the family newspaper in its present form?
A million dollars just ain’t what it used to be....
heh.....................heheheheheheheheheheheheh.
Well AJC toilet paper is just a lot cheaper to buy.
have they tried Kaopectate?
Die...die....die..
If they try harder, they can lose more.
Maybe if the newspapers tried real reporting without bias,treating the rotten DEmocrats as bad as they now treat rotten Republicans?
Naw,journalists have too longed been groomed by the socialists.
Given that this is my ‘hometown’ newspaper, I should be concerned to some extent, but I’m not. I quit reading the Urinal-Constipation back around the turn of the century when I finally had enough of the lefty/lib bias.
Newspapers still involved in objective journalism, neutral politics, I will read. But I don’t need another propaganda rag, even if it does originate in my home town.
Just hold on a bit longer AJC, your bailout is on the way along with the rest of the liberal media.
Did they think that printing propaganda was cheap?
Let me have the paper, I can reduce its monthly losses to as little as $500,000 a week with my by paying me only $500,000.... .Hey if I’m wrong I’ll consider my first 3 months a severance package and no hard feelings.
An alumna of Finch College and a generous financial supporter of the Democratic Party, she was President Jimmy Carter's pick as United States Ambassador to Belgium from 1977 to 1981.
Open Secrets link:
Major (D) contributor (no surprise)
Newspaper death couldn’t happen to a more deserving scion...
I'm nearly convinced that before the end of the Dalai Bama’s term in office - there will be financial collapse leading to a civil revolt not unlike a civil war against the “Government” and their favored “constituents.
Nor is journalism.
Evolve or die!
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