Rise in newspaper stocks not necessarily a sign things are better

Profits and stock prices are up at newspaper companies such as Gannett, owner of the Springfield News-Leader, and McClatchy, owner of the Kansas City Star, but that does not necessarily mean prosperity is right around the corner.

Alan D. Mutter, formerly an editor with the San Francisco Chronicle and Chicago Sun-Times, notes on his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, that much of the profits posted by the newspaper companies come from one-time efforts such as firings, eliminating days of the week of publication, and debt restructuring:

As much as these measures helped bolster profits, they are one-time expediencies that cannot be repeated if sales continue to fall in the future at anything like the rate they have been dropping in recent years.

It is impossible to fire an employee who already has been fired, to eliminate a weekend supplement that already has been discontinued or to idle a press line that already has been scrapped. That’s not to mention such unrepeatable maneuvers as eliminating print production on certain days of the week, migrating to web-only publication or shutting a paper altogether.