McClatchy layoffs?

That's an interesting point about Cox and its long history with Atlanta and Dayton. Not sure how long it is with Palm Beach, but I can't believe Cox is making any money in South Florida these days.

 

Cox bought the Miami News in 1923 and Palm Beach in 1969. Cox is a private company so I can't check but I suspect that the newspapers don't carry any debt and that helps the bottom line.

 

Used to love reading the Miami News when I lived down there.

We got their TV writer when the paper folded.

 

Speaking of Cox: A friend of mine in Austin tells me more layoffs are in the works on the production side.

 

I don't know why I did this but I went through McClatchy's 2007 (before the crash) and 2016 financial reports. Thecompany breaks out papers by circulation. Their chain wide daily circulation is down 44% and Sunday 32%. Revenues are down 57%. McClatchy had a corporate strategy of buy newspapers in high growth markets and owns papers in Raleigh, Charlotte and Fort Worth that have boomed. They have generally avoided, especially among their larger papers, buying in slow growing, rust belt markets. So their experiences are probably no worse than the industry average.

 

So we're talking layoffs. To well connected suits on here, are we looking at a November bloodletting? Unprecedented firings/layoffs or not? Give us a reasonable peek into the immediate future of the 3 major chains.

 

Frederick, I am bad at prognostications but New Media, a.k.a Gatehouse, Lee, McClatchy, Tronc and Gannett saw revenues declines from 5.4% to 10.2% so layoffs will continue.

 

If if revenues decline X percent, understand that the expenses will decline by Y percent. Profit = Y - X

 

This guy gets it, DanOregon ...

 

I am surprised that more papers have not merged. It used to be that any decent sized town could support a newspaper. But business is down about 50% the last ten years. So I would think papers in adjoining townns would be merging. For example I would think the economics for Akron and Canton, which are 20 miles apart to combine newspapers would be strong. But it has not happened that much.

 

Lancey explain this further please. Those 4 companies are separate. So combined they saw 10 percent declines or each? this seems like a huge dropoff.

 

All I can say is we're in the fourth quarter, and the layoffs usually come the last month of the current year and during the first quarter of the following year. I'm sensing a few jobs will get cut at my shop.