Again this month, as the death watch winds down for Seattle's Post Intelligencer, the owner of Tacoma's News Tribune and Olympia's Olympian newspapers announced another round of layoffs and cost-cutting is underway. McClatchy corporate headquarters in Sacramento said it will play to stockholders by slashing 1,600 jobs in search of $30 million is savings. And there will be salary reductions for many employees who do not lose their jobs, including those in the executive suite.
A recent article in the trade journal Advertising Age quoted veteran publishing analyst John Morton saying, "Not a lot of newspapers are operating at a loss." In fact, publicly-owned papers (McClatchy's TNT and daily O are such) averaged an operating profit of 10.8% in the first three quarters of 2008, he said. While not the margin that they used to have when they were monopolies, it's not nothing either.
And AA claimed that McClatchy's underlying newspaper portfolio just delivered a 21.5% operating profit margin. While never giving specifics, TNT Publisher David Zeeck has often told local audiences -- and written in his column -- that the Tacoma newspaper continues to operate profitably.
Newspaper ownerships groups, on the other hand, many of which like McClatchy grabbed huge gobs of debt to finance their growth, are finding it very challenging just to meet their debt service from components' operating profits, much less show a return to shareholders.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Small business, big opportunity
A couple weeks ago, I participated in a panel discussion with a few students at University of Puget Sound. The table in the Career Support office was populated by two representatives from The Boeing Co., one each from Paccar, Weyerhaeuser, Russell Investments and Microsoft -- and me, a small business owner for some 24 years.
Around 10 students passed up a warm, sunny Friday afternoon to ask questions about their futures. As in, where can they find work that will help them pay off their student loans -- eventually.
Despite large-scale corporate layoffs and down-sizings as reported in the daily news, every one of these otherwise-bright young persons seemed intent on grabbing the gold ring that they believed could be found within a huge employer. They showed no interest in small business, where so many more career opportunities – and personal control over one's life – can be found.
I am sorry for their loss.
Around 10 students passed up a warm, sunny Friday afternoon to ask questions about their futures. As in, where can they find work that will help them pay off their student loans -- eventually.
Despite large-scale corporate layoffs and down-sizings as reported in the daily news, every one of these otherwise-bright young persons seemed intent on grabbing the gold ring that they believed could be found within a huge employer. They showed no interest in small business, where so many more career opportunities – and personal control over one's life – can be found.
I am sorry for their loss.
Monday, March 9, 2009
A conversation about business and media
My public/business life has involved "communications" for almost 50 years up to this point. And one would think that longevity itself (indicative of my age) should disqualify me from starting a blog. At least, I believed that to be true, until persuaded otherwise by younger members of our Business Examiner team. (Cajoled into submission might be a more accurate description of what occurred.)
Like many others of my generation, I was a newspaper carrier, lugging copies of Billings Gazette around my hometown in eastern Montana before dawn, through 4-foot snow drifts and minus-30 degree temperatures. It seemed much more reasonable (to say nothing of a whole lot warmer) to move indoors as the anonymous programming operator at KGCX Radio 1480 AM in that same community while I was still in high school.
Four years (and three more radio stations) spent at WSU provided the credential to share the messages of the United States Air Force to some of its own members, as well as to the general public. That globe-trotting adventure was but a prelude to a decade in my first civilian career as a television news journeyman.
It was in a small farm area of south-central Idaho, where I was leading a team of 4 other journalists in producing some 20 local news reports each week at the only television station in the market, that I experienced the gratification of providing useful, interesting information to neighbors who valued that service.
Subsequent opportunities to learn from and telecast to communities on the Oregon Coast, in the Biggest Little City in the World, and near the shores of Lake Whatcom eventually brought me (and our then-growing family) to Tacoma. Five moves in six years were enough to convince me that the "bright lights" life of a TV news nomad would not sustain us long-term.
The opportunity to study business at Pacific Lutheran University in the evenings with the GI Bill covering tuition seemed a promising way to qualify for "a real job" along with a graduate degree that might someday come in handy. I imagined that my future might be found in Corporate America -- perhaps Weyerhaeuser or Boeing would be the Promised Land. At least, it seemed so in the mid-1980s.
Instead, I stumbled across the concept of creating a media resource to serve exclusively local business owners and operators. Without intending to do so, I was infected with the entrepreneurial bug in 1985 and have been carrying it now for going on 24 years.
Blog or not, I am not convinced that anyone cares about the foregoing chronicle. But it is, apparently, the kind of rambling rhetoric that clogs up the Internet nowadays. And your team of Business Examiner professional journalists -- and business content providers -- are striving to deliver what you want in whatever format your desire.
That is the commitment that caused us to expand from our Tacoma origins to the state capital region in 1989. We first coined the phrase "South Sound" that December and the regional geographic designator certainly seems to have taken hold. Few of us really understood how a facsimile machine worked, when they arrived on the business scene in the mid-1990s. But it wasn't too many years later that BE began to use the new technology to share daily local business news with our subscribers each weekday afternoon.
Later, this mystery World Wide Web and its related electronic messaging came upon the landscape. We followed you (OK, we were leading many others) into the e-mail world with BE Daily going by request to the early adopters. We also posted on our Web site local articles and other content we had written for and delivered by the ink-on-paper tabloid business journal.
It wasn't too many years later that we secured our dozen years of archived content for viewing by BE subscribers only. Perhaps, if the mainstream media publishers had followed a similar practice, they wouldn't be in such a struggle for survival today.
A return to my broadcast roots five years ago created the monthly “South Sound Business Report,” a program focused on the local business scene that lights up cable TV channels (and CW-11 KSTW) each month.
It is this whole menu of content directed exclusively to you – the South Sound business community – that was cited by judges, when earlier this month they named Business Examiner the “Small Business Journalist of the Year” for Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and Washington.
All of us on the BE team are proud, humbled and, yes, challenged by this recognition to continue what we do for you. And to expand our services, as in this blog.
Please let us know whether it has any value in your world.
Like many others of my generation, I was a newspaper carrier, lugging copies of Billings Gazette around my hometown in eastern Montana before dawn, through 4-foot snow drifts and minus-30 degree temperatures. It seemed much more reasonable (to say nothing of a whole lot warmer) to move indoors as the anonymous programming operator at KGCX Radio 1480 AM in that same community while I was still in high school.
Four years (and three more radio stations) spent at WSU provided the credential to share the messages of the United States Air Force to some of its own members, as well as to the general public. That globe-trotting adventure was but a prelude to a decade in my first civilian career as a television news journeyman.
It was in a small farm area of south-central Idaho, where I was leading a team of 4 other journalists in producing some 20 local news reports each week at the only television station in the market, that I experienced the gratification of providing useful, interesting information to neighbors who valued that service.
Subsequent opportunities to learn from and telecast to communities on the Oregon Coast, in the Biggest Little City in the World, and near the shores of Lake Whatcom eventually brought me (and our then-growing family) to Tacoma. Five moves in six years were enough to convince me that the "bright lights" life of a TV news nomad would not sustain us long-term.
The opportunity to study business at Pacific Lutheran University in the evenings with the GI Bill covering tuition seemed a promising way to qualify for "a real job" along with a graduate degree that might someday come in handy. I imagined that my future might be found in Corporate America -- perhaps Weyerhaeuser or Boeing would be the Promised Land. At least, it seemed so in the mid-1980s.
Instead, I stumbled across the concept of creating a media resource to serve exclusively local business owners and operators. Without intending to do so, I was infected with the entrepreneurial bug in 1985 and have been carrying it now for going on 24 years.
Blog or not, I am not convinced that anyone cares about the foregoing chronicle. But it is, apparently, the kind of rambling rhetoric that clogs up the Internet nowadays. And your team of Business Examiner professional journalists -- and business content providers -- are striving to deliver what you want in whatever format your desire.
That is the commitment that caused us to expand from our Tacoma origins to the state capital region in 1989. We first coined the phrase "South Sound" that December and the regional geographic designator certainly seems to have taken hold. Few of us really understood how a facsimile machine worked, when they arrived on the business scene in the mid-1990s. But it wasn't too many years later that BE began to use the new technology to share daily local business news with our subscribers each weekday afternoon.
Later, this mystery World Wide Web and its related electronic messaging came upon the landscape. We followed you (OK, we were leading many others) into the e-mail world with BE Daily going by request to the early adopters. We also posted on our Web site local articles and other content we had written for and delivered by the ink-on-paper tabloid business journal.
It wasn't too many years later that we secured our dozen years of archived content for viewing by BE subscribers only. Perhaps, if the mainstream media publishers had followed a similar practice, they wouldn't be in such a struggle for survival today.
A return to my broadcast roots five years ago created the monthly “South Sound Business Report,” a program focused on the local business scene that lights up cable TV channels (and CW-11 KSTW) each month.
It is this whole menu of content directed exclusively to you – the South Sound business community – that was cited by judges, when earlier this month they named Business Examiner the “Small Business Journalist of the Year” for Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and Washington.
All of us on the BE team are proud, humbled and, yes, challenged by this recognition to continue what we do for you. And to expand our services, as in this blog.
Please let us know whether it has any value in your world.
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