Wounded
low platelets
Zack says: Take your blood pressure medicine and then read ... THIS:
Staff cuts are a disgrace to journalism
Profit-driven media companies trimming muscle, not fat, are bad news for democracy, readers and business
BY TODD GITLIN AND OLIVIER SYLVAIN
December 12, 2005
Everyone trying to lose weight should know that the trick is to cut fat and not muscle. This is not a lesson media companies have learned.
Last month, Private Capital Management, a $32-billion money management firm, issued a sell-or-be-gone ultimatum to the board of Knight Ridder, the second largest newspaper proprietor in the land. And Knight Ridder has just received preliminary takeover bids.
The prospective sale presages bad news for readers and reporters, and likely in the long run, for business, too. PCM is Knight Ridder's largest stockholder, with 19 percent of the shares. Knight Ridder owns 32 daily newspapers totaling a circulation of 8.5 million on weekdays and 11 million on Sunday. Its five largest holdings are big names in journalism: The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Jose Mercury News, The Kansas City Star, The Miami Herald and Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Knight Ridder's news service alone has 42 correspondents, several of whom have been responsible for outstanding coverage of the much-hyped weapons of mass destruction issue in Iraq.
Newspaper companies are setting sliding goals and then defining themselves as business failures. When he became chairman and chief executive of Knight Ridder in 1995, Tony Ridder declared that the chain's profits of 8 percent weren't up to snuff - that the company should be able to make 15 percent. Ten years later, Knight Ridder makes upwards of 20 percent, but that's no longer enough for Wall Street, with the stock price sliding. The chain's biggest stockholder is restless. It has no soft spot for newspapers. It has a soft spot for more - not more news or stronger, more comprehensive news, but more profit next quarter and next year.