The Cellar - Goodbye, daily newspapers in Detroit

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Sun-Times Media Group files for bankruptcy

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(AP:NEW YORK) The Sun-Times Media Group, owner of the Chicago Sun-Times and dozens of suburban newspapers, says it has filed for bankruptcy, making it the fifth newspaper publisher in recent months to seek protection from creditors.

The company said it filed for Chapter 11 protection in a Delaware court Tuesday. It will continue to operate its newspapers and online properties.

It retained Rothschild Inc. to help with a possible sale of assets.

"We firmly believe that filing for Chapter 11 protection and exploring the potential sale of assets or new investment in the company offers us the best opportunity to protect our respected media properties for the long-term," Jeremy Halbreich, the company's interim chief executive, said in a statement.

This is another big hit for the industry. Interesting that they filed in a Delaware court.

This week, the Washington Post dropped some content from their print edition. Moved stuff around within the paper, dropped an entire section (Business), and moved a bunch of stuff to the web. It's maybe 10 pages thinner now.

Sucks. They had already slimmed down a year or two ago. It's becoming a shell of its former self.

This guy I'm dating keeps comparing the local newspaper (The Oregonian, admittedly one of the worst in the country) to his hometown newspaper (whatever it is in Milwaukee, WI) and I kind of just want to ask him if he's been home, lately. Papers are suffering. Content gets dropped. That, sadly, is life right now.

Also I love my home town and sometimes I want to punch out the pretentious fuckers who move here and then won't stop complaining about how wherever they came from is WAY BETTER.

Damn Tiki, I would think Portland would be a pretty cool place to live.

Arianna Huffington, along with other donars and organizations, is creating a fund for investigative journalism. I think that's great, because I was kinda worried about losing that aspect of journalism that newspapers supply. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2...tive-team.html

Most of the people who move here, but the few who don't are really vocal about it!

I laid the smackdown on him, he knows not to do it anymore.

AP cuts newspaper rates, moves to protect web news

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Associated Press unveiled rate cuts on Monday to help member newspapers reeling from declining advertising revenue and said it would sue websites that use its members' articles without permission.

Changes announced by the AP at its annual meeting in San Diego include $35 million in rate assessment reductions for 2010 on top of $30 million it already instituted for 2009.

The 163-year-old newswire service also will allow member newspapers to cancel their membership with one year's notice instead of two, while offering a discount to papers that stay on a two-year cancellation notice.

Jim Kennedy, AP's vice president of strategic planning, said in a telephone interview that AP would have to reduce its costs to compensate for the rate cuts. That includes not filling vacant jobs and possibly buyouts.

Dean Singleton, AP chairman and chief executive of Denver-based publisher MediaNews Group, said, "We feel it is critical to help our members during these extremely difficult times, and these numbers show our deep commitment to doing that."

U.S. newspapers are buying out or laying off workers to stay in business. Some, including EW Scripps Co's Rocky Mountain News and Hearst Corp's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, have closed in recent weeks. The New York Times Co has said it might close the money-losing Boston Globe.

The AP, a nonprofit cooperative formed by its member newspapers, said revenue from U.S. papers would fall by about a third between 2008 and 2010.

In 2007, 25 percent of its $710 million in revenue came from U.S. newspapers.

Seventeen percent of its revenue comes from digital sales, such as the Internet and mobile devices, Kennedy said, adding that the number could grow to more than 20 percent in 2010. Most newspaper publishers get about 10 percent of their revenue online, and the other 90 percent in print.

The AP also threatened to "pursue legal and legislative actions" against websites that do not properly license news content. It said it would develop a system to track its members' and its own news distributed online to determine whether it is being legally used.

"We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories," Singleton said.

Times co. threatens to shut down Globe

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By Robert Gavin and Robert Weisman, Globe Staff

The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut the Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions swiftly agree to $20 million in concessions, union leaders said.

Executives from the Times Co. and Globe made the demands Thursday morning in an approximately 90- minute meeting with leaders of the newspaper's 13 unions, union officials said. The possible concessions include pay cuts, the end of pension contributions by the company and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees now enjoyed by some veteran employees, said Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's biggest union, which represents more than 700 editorial, advertising and business office employees.

The concessions will be negotiated individually with each of the unions, said Totten and Ralph Giallanella, secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters Local 259, which represents about 200 drivers who deliver the newspaper.

"We all know the newspaper industry is going through great transition and loss," said Giallanella. "The ad revenues have fallen off the cliff. Just based on everything that's going on around the country, they're serious."

Catherine Mathis, a Times Co. spokeswoman, declined to comment. Globe publisher P. Steven Ainsley also declined to comment.

Earlier this week, the Globe newsroom completed cutting the equivalent of 50 full-time jobs. But the deteriorating economy has made the paper's financial outlook much worse. Management told union leaders Thursday that the Globe will lose $85 million in 2009, unless serious cutbacks are made, according to a Globe employee briefed on the discussions. Last year the paper lost an estimated $50 million, the employee said.

NYT Co. 1Q losses worsen as ad sales plunge 27%

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The New York Times Co. fell into a deeper financial hole during the first quarter as the newspaper publisher's advertising revenue plunged 27 percent in an industrywide slump that is reshaping the print media. Its shares dived after the results were released Tuesday.
The owner of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and 15 other daily newspapers lost $74.5 million, or 52 cents per share, in the opening three months of the year. That compared with a loss of $335,000 at the same time last year, which was break-even on a per-share basis.

The results in the most recent quarter included charges totaling 18 cents per share to cover the costs of jettisoning employees and other one-time accounting measures.

Even with those charges stripped out, the loss was much worse than analysts expected. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had predicted the New York-based company would lose 4 cents per share.

Revenue for the period dropped 19 percent to $609 million -- about $22 million below the average analyst estimate.

Chief Executive Janet Robinson painted a bleak picture for the spring too, predicting ad revenue will fall in the 20 percent to 30 percent range in the current quarter. The company is being hurt most by lower spending on real estate, automotive, help-wanted and movie ads.

How long before they start begging for money?

How long before they close the doors and turn off the presses?

Maybe someday the newspapers will wake up, and realize they're losing readers because we can get more objective news on the web, instead of one sided crap they've been getting away with for years.

The papers aren't losing readers so much as they are losing advertisers.

Craigslist is free, so nobody buys classifieds, and the economy is so bad right now, the big companies aren't advertising like they used to.

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Architectural Digest has lost 47% of its ad pages this year.
Publications which are losing nearly half of their ad pages are almost certainly not going to make it for another year no matter what subjects they cover. Conde Nast has already closed or cut back several of its other magazines.

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Originally Posted by spudcon

Maybe someday the newspapers will wake up, and realize they're losing readers because we can get more objective news on the web, instead of one sided crap they've been getting away with for years.

Seriously, dude? You don't think the fact that the content on the web is free has anything to do with readers' preferences?

Sadly, many people do prefer a hardcopy rather than having to logon to a newspaper's site to view their dose of news

Judge approves Tribune bonus payments

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WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — The Tribune Co. can pay more than $13 million in bonuses to almost 700 employees for their work last year, a federal bankruptcy judge ruled Tuesday.

But the judge denied authorization for the Tribune to make more than $2 million in severance payments to more than 60 employees laid off shortly before the Chicago-based company filed for bankruptcy protection.

Judge Kevin Carey authorized the bonus payments after Tribune chief financial officer Chandler Bigelow III testified that the bonuses are critical to keeping key managers motivated as Tribune tries to adjust to a tough economic climate for media companies.

"We need to motivate and incentivize the key people who will implement change," Bigelow said. "These are really good people we're talking about. They're the best and the brightest of the company."

These are true bonus', NOT retention payments.

Where did we hear that type of praise before?