President Charlotte Hall today canceled the convention that was scheduled in Chicago for April. She did the right thing.
Her announcement comes as newspaper fans everywhere today mourn the passing of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. E.W. Scripps pulled the plug on The Rocky just ahead of its 150th birthday. Denver is lessened by its demise. Hearst Corp. has threatened to close the San Francisco Chronicle, which has been published since 1865, if it does not get cost savings from the paper’s unions. The New York-based media combine claims the Chron lost $50M in '08, and '09's loss to date surpasses last year's rate.
The Chron is the nation’s No. 12 newspaper. It has a weekday circulation of 340K. Frank Bennack, CEO of Hearst, said cuts are needed due to the “sea change newspapers everywhere are undergoing and these dire economic times.”
Meanwhile in the “City of Brotherly Love,” PR man Brian Tierney has put the fate of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News in the hands of a bankruptcy court. He led an investment group the took the papers off the hands of McClatchy Co., a publicly held newspaper chain with a stock trading at 50 cents a share. It would take four McClatchy shares to buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal.
Hall knew that turnout in Chicago was going to be lousy. More importantly, the image of editors partying in the Windy City would have been bad form. Editors are needed in their newsrooms to figure out survival plans in the digital age. They will be closely monitoring the success of Long Island’s Newsday, which plans to start charging for its online offerings. Good luck to that Cablevision property.
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