Anyone who knows me know that I am an avid fan of the St. Louis Cardinals. And one of the best ways for any Cardinal fan to keep up with the news from Busch Stadium is the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Now comes word that this historic daily paper is in serious trouble.
This from an article that appeared at Real Clear Markets:
The once mighty St. Louis Post-Dispatch, flagship of Joseph Pulitzer’s publishing fleet, announced in a small online posting December 17 a warning from its company’s accountant that it may no longer be, by the year’s end, a “going concern.” The value of stock in the Post-Dispatch’s publisher, Lee Enterprises, Inc., has dropped by about 97 percent since the beginning of the year. The company has lost more than 65 percent of its market value during the past 30 days alone. Lee Enterprises publishes more than 50 daily newspapers and more than 300 weekly newspapers and specialty publications.
If we've been paying attention at all we know that daily newspapers are in trouble all across the land and there are a variety of reasons for it - cable TV, the internet, biased coverage, opinion and propaganda instead of factual reporting, and skimpy stories to name a few.
I have always loved newspapers and I actually worked for a small town weekly for a while. I am sorry to see the newspaper industry in trouble, though a little bit of the trouble is brought on themselves. No outside pressures force a paper to be biased or sloppy, for example. But there are some legitimate market concerns that the papers haven't solved yet and may never do so.
I hope, as a fan of papers and the Cardinals, the Post Dispatch can hang on.
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