Mother Jones takes a look at newspaper chains: “It’s not the Internet that’s killing newspapers. It’s the equity-chasing investors and their friends at the FCC who have put outsize profits before a free press. An exclusive look at our shrinking media universe.”
One interesting paragraph that caught my eye for some reason:
“Newspaper chains routinely generate profit levels that most companies would kill for. ExxonMobil topped the Fortune 500 list for 2005, reporting 11 percent profit margins, while the average profit for the entire list was 5.9 percent. That year, the top 13 publicly traded newspaper companies enjoyed average profit margins of 20 percent; the 3 most financially successful chains, Gannett, McClatchy, and E.W. Scripps, earned around 25 percent margins. The Tribune Co.’s newspaper division earned 20 percent, as did the beleaguered Los Angeles Times. And this during a year that analysts lamented as “the industry’s worst” since the 2001 recession.”
(MotherJones article).