Newspapers routinely cover the financial troubles of airlines, car makers and sporting-goods stores. What they don’t often cover is the bankruptcies of newspapers. That’s because newspapers rarely go bankrupt.
That’s about to change. Across the United States, newspaper revenues are declining, along with circulation. As the American economy totters on the edge of recession, those declines are becoming precipitous and more pronounced than elsewhere. The Newspaper Association of America reports that classified newspaper advertising shrank by 16.5 per cent in 2007.
Read the whole thing. And here’s a possible explanation for the tanking . . . .
Plus this:
Virtually announcing to the world that the New York Times Company is in the process destroying shareholder value, investment bank Lehman Brothers is telling investors that its 12 month price target for a share of New York Times Company stock is $8 a share, down 46 percent from $15.06 at the time the report was published.
Ouch.