Friday, November 28, 2008

Value of Seattle Times, half-owned by McClatchy, drops 98 percent in 4 years

The Seattle Times Company, publisher of the Seattle Times, has lost 98% of its value in the past four years.
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In 2004, newspaper broker Dirks, Van Essen & Murray put the value of the company at $900 million. Two years later McClatchy purchased a 49.5% share of the paper from Knight Ridder, which valued the paper at $240 million. McClatchy has regularly written down the value of the company since and in a federal filing dated Nov. 7, it valued its 49.5% stake in the company at a measly $7.9 million.

Raising the newsstand price doesn't seem to help -- the Times raised its price from 50 cents to 75 cents in September.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gary Pruitt, McClatchy's chairman and chief executive, told shareholders in May he was open to selling the Times Co. stake if he could find a buyer.

Who would want to buy a minority stake in something slip sliding away.
The Seattle Times could have at least tried to be a ‘purple’ paper, but they did not. The old ‘fling electronic dung and screech’ journalism has taken them to the low they enjoy today.

Anonymous said...

Hearst is the likeliest buyer since it owns the Seattle P-I, which the Times prints and sells ads for.

Kevin Gregory said...

Why would anybody buy the Seattle Times now, when the value is dropping?

The smart move would be to wait til the price falls lower.

Anonymous said...

Damn, I just knew the live sex shows and animal sex farms would work. - Gary Pruitt