From the Denver Post:
The plan, approved by judge Kevin J. Carey of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, reduces the company's debt from $930 million to $165 million and paves the way for the company to emerge from Chapter 11 six weeks after filing.
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15 comments:
The Daily News lost five million the last two years...oh my!
Oh God. Here we go again with the Daily News bashing. So petty. And so naive of the other papers in the chain to believe that they haven't lost a significant amount of money as well.
Until someone shows me otherwise the good old valley news and greensheet, dba, the daily news leads the pack in losses. But, way to be a good cheerleader...one, two, three, we lost less...not!
enough with the daily news bashing. the lang sisters also lost money. the whole company had to file. duh.
it's going to be fine. stop the bashing.
You people are on medication. The SGVN newspapers did not lose money and others were in the black too. What financials are you looking at? Are are you just praying at night. No need to defend the Daily News...it is what it is, and for the last couple of years it has been very red? Get your heads out of the sand.
It would make sense for the Daily News to show the largest losses since it's the largest paper in the chain. It's representative of the newspaper's size. The Redlands paper, for example, would show a smaller financial loss because it's smaller in size. But these spin masters at the other papers distort these facts and use it to continue the petty bashing and to blame one newspaper for the decaying of all LANG newspapers. The bottom line is that all the newspapers in the chain have lost money. And if the SGV paper has magically defied the downward trend affecting all newspapers across the country with losses, bet the NYT would love to talk to you and learn your secrets of success. Ha ha ha.
Hey genius, SGVN did not lose money, it made money. No one is blaming the great daily news for medianews or lang's troubles...that list is way to long to discuss. The facts are the daily news lost money and more than others in langland. I don't work for lang and could care less if they all made or lost money. Don't lie about results you can get the facts on. Since it appears you are employeed by the daily news, the facts there and within the lang group shouldn't be that hard for you to find. A newsroom of forty some folks and still bleeding red. Hey, maybe you should let the ad reps know it is ok to sell something.
But I thought Uncle Dean said all of his papers made money except for St. Paul.
3:57 if that is true...it's b/c the little sgv newspapers make money off the DN. symbiotic relationship. otherwise they would lose ever more. the suits have stated that fact. a well known fact. the ad folks are able to sell national ads and sell it as a package and DN has the big name. the franchise player in the group. this is a fact. otherwise they couldn't sell the national ads. no one has heard or cares about little redlands or san gabe etc. ask anyone out of the area. also, the little papers have little overhead etc too.
9:02. National ads in lang have been a joke for years. sgvn was profitable on the shoulders of local retail, legal, and classified. Even with the no so brilliant move to yahoo jobs legal and local still carry the day. The myth that national played at the smaller papers is and was a joke. I wager the cost passed on to the smaller newspapers was far greater than the margin. If you ever made a call back east or to a large national account, and you feel the dn is a big name...wow.
So how much money did the SGVN rake in this last quarter? That number hasn't shown up in this discussion. How has it possibly bucked the downward spiral of the newspaper business happening nationwide?
You all are confusing debt with profitability. MN couldn't service their debt while many of the papers made a fair margin on their own operations. All but DN were profitable. However, not profitable enough to service the debt. Now the debt is gone.
343 is correct. The financial situation is about debt service. Mng, under whatever appellation, generates revenues in excess of operating expense (positive margin). But the proceeds are inadequate to meet payments to bond holders holding the debt. Hence the reorganization. Speculation about which local unit did/not run in the black, and when, is colorful but irrelevant to the moment. The company business model was always - and openly - about super lean local operations supporting bond payments of a highly leveraged company. This was chancy during past better times, and apparently unsustainable during the current economic transition. What the newsroom experienced were the effects of lean operation, and, no argument, it was little fun. But the entire industry experienced the same transition, just differently and at different speeds, with the net result much the same for all firms, regardless of differences in business model. It is unhelpful to view the decline of newspapers as a personal event, avoidable but allowed or orchestrated by villains.
Sorry, I disagree with some of your statement. The decline of newspapers was and is occuring. The pace of change and how one newspaper can maximize profits, put out a good product, take care of readers and advertisers is open for debate.
No doubt, MNG borrowed way to much and business dried up. Part of the lack of business comes from within their ranks.
Creativity innovation and leadership are lacking here. They are not alone, but, this appears to be a sore spot with readers and posters of this blog.
The different speeds of transition mentioned above is correct. I am of the opinion much more revenue should have and can be brought in by a wiser group of managers and forward thinkers.
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