 These days your local newsstand isn't the only one selling The New York Times, The Washington Post or USA Today. Investors have also been unloading the biggest names in the newspaper business, driving down shares of the group by about 10 percent this year amid worries about harsh circulation and advertising declines in the age of new media.
| That's alright, though. Keep peddling the same old tired product. The public's sure to come around, eventually... |
| ... watching Newsday execs get indicted for padding circulation prolly didn't help calm invester nerves ... |
Next week, top executives from the country's leading publishers will try to win back investors during two days of presentations at the Newspaper Association of America's Mid-Year Media Review. But convincing Wall Street that newspaper companies are being treated too harshly -- their stocks have underperformed the broader market by about 9 percent this year -- will be no easy pitch, experts say. Peter Appert, a media analyst with Goldman Sachs, wrote in a recent report that investors will likely "come away from next week's meetings with a more cautious view of the near-term industry outlook" than they have now.
| I think Rantburg shows that you can publish interesting and timely stories and still get your politix in — that's what the yellow, green, mauve, blue, and plaid comments are for. If you let the politix drive the story, rather than interpreting it, people are going to blow you off. I'm a great believer in Just the Facts, Ma'am, and I'm of the opinion that newspapers were a lot better when they had reporters, rather than journalists. Maybe that's just me and my antiquated outlook, but maybe it's just me and the stockholders, too. And the readership, that's been going elsewhere. |
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