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The plummeting value of major metropolitan newspapers from an insider’s perspective

July 6, 2015 by jimmycsays

Writing about another redesign and reorganization at The Star (see previous post) prompted me to think, once again, about how far The Star and most other major U.S. dailies have fallen in quality and monetary value.

…In 1977, a little-known company called Capital Cites, which owned TV and radio stations and some relatively small newspapers, bought the employee-owned Kansas City Star for $125 million.

Twenty years (and two more KC Star ownership changes later) the Knight Ridder newspaper chain bought The Star, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and two smaller papers for $1.65 billion — the largest ever sale of one or more newspapers.

At that time, considering that The Star was the premier part of the package, The Star probably was worth more than $500 million.

Today, The Star has a market value of less than a tenth of that.

I can understand if you’re thinking, “Where’s the support for that statement?”

Example No. 1: Two years ago a Boston businessman named John Henry, who owns the Boston Red Sox, among other enterprises, bought The Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette for $71 million. That’s The Boston Globe that The New York Times had paid $1.8 billion for in 1993.

Example No. 2: In 2012, a group of Philadelphia investors bought The Philadelphia Inquirer and its sister paper, the Philadelphia Daily News, for $56.7 million. Six years earlier, the papers had sold for $605 million.

Such declines in value are astonishing — almost incomprehensible to those of us who spent careers in the newspaper business.

But that’s the way it has gone for almost all major metropolitan dailies since the Internet established unequivocal and relentless dominance over print the last 10 years.

About the only newspapers that are worth anything close to what they were a decade ago are The New York Times, which had deep enough pockets to lose a lot of money while adjusting to the new newspaper landscape, and the Wall Street Journal, which has long had a prosperous niche.

**

I have written several times about McClatchy’s spectacular overpayment of $4.5 billion for 32 Knight Ridder newspapers, including The Star, in 2006.

At the time, that purchase looked like a big gamble. Today it looks like the worst newspaper purchase of all time. McClatchy assumed $2 billion in debt and has lurched around with a debt of at least $1 billion ever since.

I understand why McClatchy bought the Knight Ridder papers: McClatchy was an ambitious company that had been successful with mostly minor-league papers, like the Sacramento Bee, and they wanted to break into the majors…So, company officials convinced themselves that they could. Gary Pruitt, then-McClatchy CEO, said:

“Opportunities like this come along once in a company’s lifetime. These papers are a natural fit for us.”

At the time of the purchase, shares of McClatchy stock were selling for more than $50 a share. I know because I bought, as best I can recall, $10,000 worth, or 200 shares. At the time, I convinced myself that McClatchy knew what it was doing, and I mistakenly placed my confidence in the future of the newspaper business.

Very soon the value of McClatchy shares began plummeting, and they fell to less than a dollar each. (I sold at eight, thank God.)

The deal was a colossal miscalculation by McClatchy.

In December 2006, six months after closing on the Knight Ridder deal, McClatchy unexpectedly announced plans to sell the Minneapolis Star Tribune — its largest paper before the Knight Ridder purchase. The sale price was $622 million, less than half the $1.7 billion McClatchy had paid for the paper in 1998.

Pruitt explained the sale like this:

“It (The Star Tribune) was a drag on the bottom line and we felt we would do better without it. We could also pay down debt and be more flexible to make digital investments…”

With good reason, reporters and other employees at The Star Tribune were alarmed. Nick Coleman, a metro columnist, was quoted as saying, “At a fire sale people get discounted, so we’re very concerned, worried and anxious.”

**

Earlier in that fateful year of 2006, Gary Pruitt had come into the newsroom a couple of months before the Knight Ridder deal closed and told reporters and other editorial employees McClatchy expected the newspaper to grow and that he did not foresee any buyouts or layoffs.

I remember the gathering very well because I had been hoping for a buyout under Knight Ridder, and I still had outside hopes McClatchy would offer some buyouts. When Pruitt dashed those hopes that day, I realized there wasn’t going to be any golden parachute for me, not even a gentle letdown. I was on my own.

I had just turned 60 and still had plenty of time to do something else in life. And even though I was betting stock money on the future of print journalism, the future looked hazy.

In May 2006, I told my supervisor I was retiring, and June 30 was my last day.

I was one lucky duck. Within two years, good friends and longtime, dedicated Star employees were being shown the door…Boy, was I wrong about McClatchy and the future of the newspaper business.

**

Below is a graphic from the Pew Research Center showing the sharp decline in the value of several major U.S. dailies.

newspaper values

 

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Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

7 Responses

  1. on July 6, 2015 at 5:44 am Don Hoffmann

    A powerful column, Jim. And such a sad one. When the news is coming at least a day earlier from the Internet and TV, The Star has become so thin both in size and content that on days like this morning the syndicated advice columnists are the most interesting thing in the paper. That means about one minute at the breakfast table.


  2. on July 6, 2015 at 6:37 am Laura Hockaday

    Jim:
    Yes, very sad, but good to hear from Don Hoffmann, such a valued asset to the old Kansas City Star.

    And Gary Pruitt is now head of the AP and living in a multi-million dollar condo in Tribeca in New York–at least the last I read.

    Laura


    • on July 6, 2015 at 7:17 am jimmycsays

      Thanks, Don and Laura. I have always contended that the day we lost Don (of his own accord) as our architecture critic was the day The Star began going downhill. It just wasn’t complete after that; there was no one to hold Kansas City developers and redevelopers accountable for building aesthetics and no one to show Kansas Citians what was uplifting and inspirational — and on the other hand what was misdirected — in our structural environment.

      No one else could have done that job like he did, but Jim Hale and — was it Davies who was editor at the time? — should have had the gumption to hire another architecture critic.


  3. on July 6, 2015 at 7:42 am webward

    Jim, I’m a recent reader of your blog and am enjoying exploring your Archives. Today’s post reminds me of an off-hand comment I made several years ago at an SNA convention in Florida that metro dailies were “Dead Trees Walking!” Sad to say that my flip remark is now reality.


    • on July 6, 2015 at 1:16 pm jimmycsays

      Thanks for the comment, webward…What does SNA stand for?


      • on July 6, 2015 at 1:30 pm webward

        Suburban Newspapers of America (SNA) at the time, re-branded a few years ago as the Local Media Association, now has about 2,400 members across the media spectrum.


  4. on July 6, 2015 at 9:22 am Laura Hockaday

    Jim:
    You are right. No one could match Don Hoffmann as architecture critic. His leaving was disastrous for The Star and for Kansas City. He has been missed ever since.
    Laura



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