Tribune Company: Aggressive, Indeed

The Tribune company’s eclipsing of Knight-Ridder as company-of-concern for journalists deploring excess profit pressures proceeds briskly. See memos from Newsday, Baltimore Sun, and L.A. Times editors. The NY Times story pinpoints the surprising element of this otherwise predictable story — that the L.A. Times would see cutbacks right in the wake of its five-Pulitzer win. 

Note this graf: “Thus far this year, the cash-flow margins of Tribune’s publishing division, estimated at 25.9 percent, are below those of the publishing divisions of many of Tribune’s competitors, including Gannett (estimated at 32 percent); E. W. Scripps (31.3 percent); Lee (27.4 percent) and Journal Register (27.3 percent), according to figures compiled by Banc of America Securities.”

That list is hardly the company we’re accustomed to seeing the L.A. Times placed in. But then, the company we’d normally see it in -– The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal -– all have in common one thing that ended for the L.A. Times (and Newsday and the Sun) when Times Mirror sold to Tribune in 2000: two-tiered stock structures, with continued family control of an important share of the stock. Such companies have their problems. But they also have a way of weighing advertising shortfalls such as those the L.A. Times has experienced against journalism such as it has been producing — and arriving at a different meaning of “a reasonable return.”

As the Trib’s president, Jack Fuller, put it in a press release: “[Some] advertising categories are not meeting the aggressive plans we had for the year.” Thus, despite a 3.2 percent increase in revenue this quarter over last year for Tribune, the Baltimore Sun is having to take a 10 percent newshole cut.

I keep waiting for someone to decide it isn’t the newshole that’s the problem. It’s those aggressive plans.