Q1 revenue fell 67 percent — to just $9 million, down from $27 million last year. Worse, the newspaper chain badly undershot analysts’ expectations, earning just 11 cents a share compared to a concensus target of around 27 cents per share.
And cue the scary music:
McClatchy will continue its aggressive cost-cutting efforts, including a reduction of payroll through attrition. The Sacramento Bee has made buyout offers to about 10 newsroom employees and shuttered three bureaus last quarter.
And here’s a very in-depth E&P profile of McClatchy in the Carolinas. Lotsa happy talk about sharing talent and resources among all the company’s papers. But it closes with this quote from an N&O exec:
“When we were thinking about who our competition was, we realized it really wasn’t Charlotte. The nature of media today, our real competition is everything else that is out there — WRAL.com, the local business journal and its Web site, the local sports Web sites. That is our real competition.”
Absolutely. And guess who isn’t going away?
