Sometimes I wonder if I’m being too critical of the Uptown paper of record’s corporate parent. But then I stumble on stuff which has an even less kind take on MNI’s moves and its future.
First, this Valleywag rundown of five ways the newspaper botched the Web starring — yep — McClatchy and Knight Ridder. Starting with Viewtron in 1983, a nearly forgotten KR “videotext” service, through New Century Networks, a mid-90s spectactular flop which cost KR and others millions, to Real Cities, the property MNI just sold-off for what we suspected was and Vallegywag describes as an “embarrassingly low” number, it is painfully obvious that the company has not a clue what to do in a non-print space.
Better still, Valleywag makes exactly the same point we made with regard to MNI holding on to Cars.com and related online properties as if they are worth something. As we pointed out recently, Facebook and as yet unborn social networking sites are going to blow up any old notion of “classified” ads. McClatchy should sell these things now while they can still get some value out of them, or continue to write that value down every quarter. Easy call there.
We can also pop over to The Street.com to watch MNI taken apart some more over its 08 performance and — more importantly — the way the business press has covered those tanking revenues. Simply put, MNI has gotten away with spinning modest growth in online ads as somehow significant when in fact the rate of growth is utterly unacceptable. Plus The Street picks up and amplifies the point we made last year about McClatchy depending on election-year ads while adding the point that the Beijing Olympics should’ve also given a big boost to ads this quarter. Has not happened.
As a result, 09 may be even worse than 08, making a 2010 of any kind a very open question for this company.
