Yet Another Newspaper Chain To Go Bankrupt

The rest of the economy might be slowly recovering from the great global economic cataclysm, but the death march of daily print journalism continues. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal—one of the few daily papers that successfully managed the rise of the Internet–reported that Dean Singleton, once a brash corporate raider who gobbled up the LA Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram and others, is downsizing his ambitions just a tad.  Affiliated Media, Inc, the parent company that owns Singleton's MediaNews Group, Inc., plans to file for bankruptcy protection, citing insurmountable debt. 

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The looming bankruptcy filing follows similar declarations by a string of companies that own daily newspapers, most notably (in these here parts, at least) the LA Times and the Orange County Register. Singleton himself will apparently remain at the helm of MediaNews thanks to some kind of stock option he exercised. Just a few years ago, it seemed as if Singleton's business model–buying papers, firing all the staff, making them re-interview for their own jobs for less pay in vastly downsized newsrooms–was the biggest threat to print journalism. Ah, the good old days…
You can read the WSJ story here and find links to some analysis over at LAObserved.

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