McClatchy preparing to go private?

The McClatchy family appears to be getting ready to take its company private again.The signal that something may be afoot is contained in a brief document filed at 5:01 p.m. yesterday at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Friday night filing states chief executive Gary Pruitt resigned Wednesday as one of the four directors of the family trusts that collectively control 41% of MNI’s stock

Palin daughter pregnancy was valid news

Although the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter by rights should not have been news, the media had no choice but to report on it after the matter was injected into the maelstrom of the presidential campaignMy friend and former colleague Don Wycliff makes the case for why the press should have respected the privacy of the 17-year-old girl and ignored the fact the unwed high school student is

Newspaper sales headed below $40B

Newspaper advertising sales this year are on track to fall some $5.5 billion to less than $40 billion, which would make for the lowest volume since 1996.Based on the record $3 billion drop in sales in the first six months of this year, it appears that the industry’s combined print and online revenues will come in at $39.9 billion.The last time annual sales were below $40 billion was in 1996, when

Newspaper sales fall record $3B in 6 mos.

Total newspaper advertising revenues fell by $3 billion in the first six months of this year to $18.8 billion, the lowest level in a dozen years, according to data published today by the Newspaper Association of America.The record 14% sales plunge featured the first-ever drop in online sales. Interactive revenues slipped by 2.3% in the second quarter of this year to $776.6 million. For the entire

Free papers are fizzling, too

The global market for free newspapers is in a slump, too, according one authoritative industry analyst.After expanding explosively for a dozen years, the total circulation of free dailies around the world grew at an “all-time low” of 5% in the first eight months of this year, says Piet Bakker, a professor at Hogeschool Utrecht in the Netherlands.Piet, who blogs at Newspaper Innovation, says the

The high price of skinflint journalism

The idea of splitting news coverage among the three principal newspapers in south Florida is journalistically and commercially dangerous.As discussed previously here, it is clear why the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel and Palm Beach Post want to collaborate on “basic” local coverage, whatever that is. They want to save money by generating more content with fewer people. While this may seem like a

The true cost of the buyouts

A mind-numbing number of dedicated newspaper people have seen their careers brought to abrupt and premature halts as the result of the industry’s relentless budget cutting.But the true loss of these fine people to a newspaper – and their communities – typically isn’t conveyed in the rote announcements that most papers dutifully print when many of their most senior staffers are ushered out the