Looks like the 10:45 EDT mutual fund effort to shore up the losers of the major fishwraps didn't work today.
Spy = S&P 500 index
Posted on 04/13/2006 6:53:16 AM PDT by abb
McClatchy 1Q Profit Falls 14 Percent As Automotive, National Advertising Declines
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. said Thursday its first-quarter earnings fell 14 percent, as automotive and national advertising declined and the company began expensing stock options.
Earnings fell to $27.7 million, or 59 cents per share, down from $32.3 million, or 69 cents per share. Revenue edged up less than 1 percent to $282 million from $280.9 million.
Without stock-option expensing, McClatchy said it would have earned 62 cents per share. Analysts were looking for earnings of 67 cents per share -- after stock-option costs -- on revenue of $285.8 million, according to Thomson Financial.
"We faced our toughest comparison in quarter-over-quarter advertising revenue growth," Chief Executive Gary Pruitt said in a statement.
Looking to the second quarter, Pruitt said the company doesn't see any change in the sluggish automotive advertising category, and national advertising "remains upredictable." Real estate advertising, however, is expected to stay solid.
You may be correct. But this is definitely progress and good news for us, and I'll take any I can get....
I only get the Sunday paper. Our Gannett paper started sending us the Thursday paper free. I imagine the grocery stores forced that since their ads are in our Thursday paper. Anyhow, I was sitting on the patio in the spring sunshine sipping my coffee and reading the local news and thinking how pleasant it was, and how I missed having a morning paper.
SLAP! Back to reality, when I turned to the editorial page and there were THREE Washington Post columns, including one that (get this) suggested that Bush follow John F. Kennedy's example in the Cuban Missile Crisis and "think outside the box" like Kennedy did when he REMOVED THE MISSILES FROM TURKEY. I will NEVER take that paper daily again, and as soon as there is another place to get the Sunday ads, I will drop the Sunday issue, too.
Marple, you may can get the weekly ads emailed to you. Here in North Louisiana, you can get the big grocery chains (Brookshires, Super One, Kroger) to send them.
"Sooner or later they are going to have to go looking for more readers. Since they have all of the liberals, they will (if they want to stay in business) have to start providing better quality news and commentary, or start focussing more on local, non-political news. Either one is ok with me. I imagine most of them will stay in business, but their days of being the arbiters of public opinion are fast ending."
Too many of their elite leaders live an arrogant mythical land. Their corporate culture for decades has been one of lying to their readers, overcharging their advertisers based on cooked paid circulation numbers and a Semi God like feeling that Americans need them to mold our opinions and tell us how to vote. For this reason, the Tribune/La Slimes, NY Slimes, Washington Compost and other so called nation newspapers will continue to lose readers who buy their trash, and their ad revenues will plummet.
What will save them for awhile will be the income from their internet businesses and other businesses which don't focus on news. We see this obliquely mentioned in these quarterly excuses for earnings.
The local newspapers which shift to local news may survive. However, when their editorial page is filled with left wing venom, and their so called comic pages are filled with Doonesburry and similiar trash. They will find themselve faced with customers like you. Customers, ready to drop them.
With the internet, satellite radio news/commentary and cable tv, we really don't need the expensive and out of date fishwraps with old news. As you noted, your husband tries to read to you, something you saw on Free Republic days before. Also, the interaction of the news on FR and the Blogs is often more important than the news.
"Sooner or later they are going to have to go looking for more readers."
The newspaper industry has spent the past 30+ years agonizing over how they can get more readers, but nothing they've done has stopped the long, slow, steady slide. Producing content that doesn't insult conservative readers would help, but at this point it's probably too late for them to mend fences with potential conservative readers. Most of us gave up on them a long time ago. Of course they're so arrogant in their belief system they would never try it anyway.
The real problems they face are: 1. The ever-increasing array of leisure time activity options; 2. Less overall interest in current affairs among the public regardless of whether the coverage is biased or not, and 3. They are using a 19th century model to communicate information in the 21st century, and 4. They are having a hard time adapting to the changing composition and demands of their traditional advertising base. They can overcome #3 by accelerating their transition to the Internet. #1 is an irreversable trend and #2 might be overcome in the long run, but I don't see it changing any time soon. There is probably a solution to #4, but it will take more proactive and innovative thinking than the industry has shown themselves capable of in the past.
Looks like the 10:45 EDT mutual fund effort to shore up the losers of the major fishwraps didn't work today.
Spy = S&P 500 index
Can't wait for the day they start pi#$ing red ink...
"Can't wait for the day they start pi#$ing red ink..."
They would probably be doing that if the big investors, mutual funds and retirement funds weren't buying shares to hold up the value.
However, as Liz and I know, the more money elite liberal rats pour into one of their dying entities, the better off we are down the time line. If the elite liberals and retirement funds keep investing in big time losers like these fish wraps, they end up losing big time on down the road.
I just can't sit still at all the good news you bring us. LOL.
"I just can't sit still at all the good news you bring us. LOL."
You know me. I love today's news even more when we look at the negative impact that news will have on the rats long term.
This was one of my fav's from a month ago. Maybe we should all email Herb and tell him to buy now...
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?column=Herb+Greenberg&dist=newsfinder&siteid=mktw&guid=%7BCE6CDEF0%2D55E9%2D48E6%2DAC46%2DA26E3D39A210%7D
March 13, 2006
SAN DIEGO (MarketWatch) -- On a personal basis, Knight-Ridder's $4.5 billion to McClatchy is bittersweet.
As a native of Miami, I was raised on the Miami Herald, considered the flagship of what was then known as Knight Newspapers. I went to the University of Miami on a scholarship from the Herald, where I interned during college.
My first job after graduation was at the Boca Raton News, then Knight-Ridder's (KRI) smallest newspaper -- yet, at that time, probably its most innovative daily.
I later worked at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the headquarters of Ridder Newspapers before its 1974 merger with Knight. I even used my Knight-Ridder stock, bought at a discount while at the Pioneer Press as part of the employee-stock-purchase program, to pay for my honeymoon. Now, as part of the McClatchy (MNI) deal, the Pioneer Press is likely to be sold to avoid antitrust issues, since McClatchy owns the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
St. Paul won't be the only one to go: Among the dozen Knight-Ridder papers on the chopping block: the San Jose Mercury and Philadelphia Inquirer; in their heydays, both were considered to be among the best U.S. newspapers. That was before Knight-Ridder went on a cost-cutting spree in which it excised muscle as well as fat.
The good news, from a journalist's standpoint, is that the remaining Knight-Ridder papers are going to a chain known for good journalism.
The bad news: that it had to come to this.
But that's the reality of newspaper publishing circa 2006. A year ago I wrote that I'd love nothing more than to invest in a mutual fund that owns nothing but down-and-out publishing stocks -- just as I did with biotech several years ago when it was like the plague. Newspaper stocks were so hated they appeared to be the ultimate contrarian play.
Now I'm thinking I'm lucky no such fund existed. (Yet another case of being saved from myself.)
Despite their strong cash flows and brands, newspapers, in reality, have continued to struggle to expand revenue. No need to hash over all of the obvious reasons, but let's just say that when my daughter recently looked to rent an apartment in downtown San Diego, her first stop wasn't the San Diego Union Tribune's classifieds; she headed straight to Craig's List, where she found a condo unit being rented out (not surprisingly) by someone around her age. Granted, even before the Internet became renters' primary source, niche publications had eaten away at that market for years.
Still, it's no wonder that the stocks of chains I mentioned in that year-ago column, including the likes of Tribune (TRB
TRB) , are sharply lower than they were then. Knight-Ridder, in fact, is only back to year-ago levels because of takeover talk.
Even the deal price of $67.25 is just a point or two above where Knight-Ridder was at the time. While that marks a roughly 30% premium over Knight-Ridder's October 2005 trough, before its shareholders started agitating for a transaction, news of the deal has done little to jumpstart other newspaper stocks.
That's perhaps the most troubling part of the story: No matter what happens in this space, short of rising revenues, investors want to treat newspapers -- cash flow or no cash flow -- as yesterday's news.
The only bright spot, for now, for media-stock believers is that I have been known to throw in the towel at exactly the wrong time, which means my newfound pessimism on the group may be the best sign yet that the bottom has finally arrived.
MNI down over $2 now... guffaw, guffaw...
You brighten every FReeper's day with all this good news.
Heheheh. Well, I am going back to work in the garden. I will check on this thread this evening.
Looks like the stock market maybe thinning out some of the weeds in the leftwing fishwrap market.
Hmmmm. I didn't see a word of this mentioned in the Modesto Bee this morning.
I'm sure it will be there tomorrow - Front Page below the fold. /sarc
All the more reason I get the real news here on FReeRepublic. Thanks Jim! (did they cover this in the FResno Bee?) :)
The al Sacto Bee, al Modesto Bee and al Fresno Bees are prime examples of lying spinning left wing fish wraps.
We can still remember those heart warming stories about the al Fuqra thugs in the Clovis area written by the al Fresno Bee back in 2001.
Today's loss in stock value has be a real kick in the groin, shins, butttocks and chest for those lying, er working for one of the Bees.
If the 5% loss holds up, if my math is correct, today's market cap loss will be about 115 million $'s.
Ernest, please do the math for me at the end of the day. The market cap value was 2.3 billion at the beginning of the day.
I will smile all the way to lunch with my trophy bride.!:)
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