The Blogfather

Does anybody want to buy a newspaper?

     In another chapter of the "newspaper as dinosaur" saga, the New York Times Business Page  reports today that the Knight Ridder newspaper company, the nation's second largest chain, will have difficulty finding a buyer;

     There is a venerable Wall Street joke featuring an investor who, having accumulated a large position in an illiquid stock, decides it is time to get out. "Yes, sir," replies the broker when he is told to sell. "To whom?"
     The current situation of Knight Ridder, the owner of newspapers including The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald, brings back that joke, albeit painfully. The investor is a hitherto successful money manager named Bruce S. Sherman, whose Private Capital Management invests money for wealthy individuals and institutions... He is the largest owner of seven of those companies, with 15 percent of The New York Times Company, publisher of this newspaper; 26 percent of Belo, publisher of The Dallas Morning News and The Providence Journal; and 38 percent of McClatchy, whose papers include The Sacramento Bee and The Star Tribune of Minneapolis...
     Knight Ridder's plight also reflects the fact that Wall Street is not always nice to those who do what the Street demands. Analysts called for aggressive cost cuts and Knight Ridder complied, in some cases angering employees and creating public controversies over whether news coverage would suffer. Investors responded by sending the stock to a three-year low last month.
     Anyone want to buy a newspaper? Mr. Sherman certainly hopes so.

     But Knight Ridder's problems are simply today's headline. The collapse is industry-wide as these two stories in today Editor & Publisher trade magazine report;

•  Memphis 'Commercial Appeal' Latest Paper to Offer Buyouts
  E.W. Scripps' Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., is the latest newspaper to offer buyouts to employees in an effort to cut costs. President and Publisher Joe Pepe said the paper would offer a package to about 170 of the paper's 800 employees, although no target has been set.
• Black, 3 Others Charged in Fraud Indictment
  Press lord Conrad Black and three other executives were charged in a federal fraud indictment Thursday involving the $2.1 billion sale of several hundred Canadian newspapers and the abuse of corporate perquisites at newspaper publishing company Hollinger International Inc.

Read the previous column on the Knight Ridder debacle "The Mating Sounds of Dinosaurs"  here.

Postscript: The chain was sold in March, 2006, to McClatchy, the only bidder.