{"id":4077,"date":"2011-04-15T09:53:33","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T13:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=4077"},"modified":"2011-04-17T18:36:22","modified_gmt":"2011-04-17T22:36:22","slug":"morning-read-post-star-parent-company-struggling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/04\/15\/morning-read-post-star-parent-company-struggling\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Read: Post-Star parent company struggling"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the region’s most important daily newspapers, the Glens Falls Post Star, is owned by Lee Enterprises, a national company that operates hundreds of dailies and weeklies around the country.<\/p>\n

Lee Enterprises is scrambling to avert a major financial crisis.<\/p>\n

This month, the company sold roughly $1 billion dollars worth of junk-status bonds, according to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, in order to push back a tide of red ink.<\/p>\n

Lee, weighed down by about $1 billion of debt, has long been high on the list of potential bankruptcies. But thanks to the roaring market for debt of risky companies, Lee is preparing to sell junk bonds that would enable it to pay off its obligations and give it a new shot at survival.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A regional blogger, MOFYC, is running a guest-essay<\/a> this week looking at Lee’s travails, possible impacts on the Post-Star, and the struggles of traditional newspapers in general.<\/p>\n

In the broadest possible terms what the Post-Star figures illustrate is a general decline in print circulation on the order of 23% since about the time Lee’s stock price started sliding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Post-Star managing editor Ken Tingley, meanwhile, has described his paper’s future in hopeful terms<\/a>, citing a rapid shift to on-line audiences and on-line revenue.<\/p>\n

These days, poststar.com<\/a> is flourishing and growing at explosive rates. In March, we had more page views and unique visitors than ever before.<\/p>\n

The unique visitors were close to a half-million for the month, page views were well over 5 million.<\/p>\n

Friday morning, when I was reading our report on the Warren County tourism committee’s meeting, I saw that their Web visits had improved to 480,000 for the year or what we now do in one month.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But it remains unclear how traditional journalism will work in the future.\u00a0 Who will pay for it?\u00a0 How?\u00a0 What will be lost if institutions such as the Post-Star can’t field big, professional teams of reporters and editors?<\/p>\n

My view on this is pretty black-and-white.\u00a0 I think newspapers are one of the pillars of modern democracy, and I don’t think anyone knows what civic life will look like without them.<\/p>\n

Bloggers and civic journalists can fill a lot of gaps, and help to open the dialogue to more voices and more points of view.\u00a0 (Public radio helps too…)<\/p>\n

But newspapers are still the bread-and-butter and the shoe leather that keep our communities informed.<\/p>\n

As always, your comments welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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