Posted on 09/14/2007 3:45:34 PM PDT by abb
How's USA Today celebrating it's 25th anniversary this weekend? With shares of parent company Gannett at their lowest closing level in 10 years.
They aren't partying alone. Joining the festivities are shares of the New York Times Co. and McClatchy, both of which finished the week at their lowest levels since the Clinton administration.
Nothing particularly new is moving the stocks--it's just the same old, same old. Monthly advertising numbers for July and August showed further declines, giving investors another excuse to lose shares they weren't terribly excited to hold in the first place.
"Investors are just dumping these stocks because they're out of favor,'' said Edward Atorino, a media analyst at Benchmark in New York.
Shares of Gannett fell 26 cents Friday to close at $44.74, their lowest finish since May 2, 1997, when they closed at a split-adjusted $43.88. The Times' shares dropped 44 cents to finish at $19.80, their lowest close since Feb. 5, 1997, when they ended at a split-adjusted $19.50. McClatchy's shares slipped 4 cents to close at $21.80, their lowest finish since Sept. 27, 1996, when they closed at a split-adjusted $21.50.
Elsewhere, shares of Journal Register rose 16 cents to close Friday at $3.25, after bottoming out at an all-time closing low of $2.54 on Aug. 14. The company's shares began trading publicly on May 1, 1997 at $14.
The latest batch of data came from the Times Co., which on Wednesday released August numbers that weren't uniformly awful. The company's New England Media Group, which includes The Boston Globe and the Worchester Telegram & Gazette, saw ad revenue sink 9% from a year earlier.
But the New York Times Media Group, which includes the company's flagship paper and the International Herald Tribune, eked out a 0.2% gain, thanks to gains in some national advertising categories and online ads, which made up for continued weakness in classified advertising.
The most recent advertising data from Gannett , McClatchy and Journal Register reflected poor performances in July. Total ad revenue fell 6.1% at Gannett, 9.4% at McClatchy and 7.7% at Journal Register (through the five weeks ended Aug. 5).
Not all newspaper stocks have tanked during the past 10 years. Shares of the Washington Post Co. closed Friday at $771.51, down 55 cents, while shares of E.W. Scripps finished at $42.37, up 55 cents. Both companies' shares have more than doubled in value during the past decade. Then again, both make most of their money from non-publishing businesses--the Post from its Kaplan education subsidiary, Scripps from its cable network business.
Benchmark's Atorino sees some signs of improvement, or at least slowing declines, in retail, entertainment and travel advertising. But classified ads, particularly real estate and automotive ads, "are just falling off a cliff and haven't hit bottom yet," he said.
The sell-off in newspaper stocks is "getting a little overdone, but frankly, at this time it's hard to get optimistic,'' Atorino said.
"There was a land of Publishers and Editors called the Newspaper Business... Here in this pretty world Journalism took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Reporters and their Enablers, of Anonymous Sources and of Stringers... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization Gone With the Wind..."
With apologies to Margaret Mitchell...
ping
"You're living is a desert! Move to where the food is!"
It's such an easy fix, all they have to do is be fair and present the daily national, and international news in an unbiased way and leave the editorializing to the editorial page.
Probably wouldn't hurt to actually employ more than a token conservative columnist
How people like Paul Klugman remain as an NYT's employee is really beyond any reasonable comprehension.
LOL. I can’t think about it now. I’ll think about it tomorrow.
“Benchmark’s Atorino sees some signs of improvement, or at least slowing declines, in retail, entertainment and travel advertising. But classified ads, particularly real estate and automotive ads, “are just falling off a cliff and haven’t hit bottom yet,” he said.
The sell-off in newspaper stocks is “getting a little overdone, but frankly, at this time it’s hard to get optimistic,’’ Atorino said.”
Run a drug check on this guy or a sanity test.
How's USA Today celebrating it's 25th anniversary this weekend? With shares of parent company Gannett at their lowest closing level in 10 years.
What a great sarcastic lede!
... here are the top five papers in America by circulation, according the newspaper industry's Audit Bureau of Circulation(ABC):
- USA Today -- 2,278,022
- Wall Street Journal – 2,062,312
- New York Times -- 1,120,420
- Los Angeles Times – 815,723
- New York Post – 724,748
I hate to be a downer here at the birthday bash, but ...
While the USA Today story is overwhelmingly positive, it's also a case study in fuzzy math and the newspaper industry's measurement system. You see, USA Today doesn't get bought by 2.3 million people -- at least not in the traditional sense of the word "bought." Instead, they carpet the hallways of America's hotels, making "The Nation's Newspaper" more like The Nation's Doormat.
According to data acquired by this writer from the ABC, 1,174,632 USA Todays are provided to the lodgers of America during the week, compared to 84,918 Wall Street Journals and a relatively modest 43, 209 New York Times. Yes, USA Today works out financial agreements with the hotels and are entirely upfront with advertisers … but it still casts the numbers in a different light. (And yes, observant readers, that also means that USA Today has a higher hotel circulation than the overall number for the New York Times. There's your "win a bar bet" fact for the weekend.)
There's nothing against the rules about what the paper is doing -- the hotels and inns of America aren't quite Barry Bonds' "cream" and "clear" here -- but there is a bit more to the USA Today success story than at first glance.
Often, the price for the USA Today is added into the room price. A few places allow you to decline it and save $.50 or so as day.
I travel fairly frequently for work. I am going to go the extra distance to assure my dollars don’t go for the stupid USA Today.
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