By: Mark Fitzgerald These days it sometimes seems what the newspaper industry needs most is a nice, big dose of Zoloft, Prozac, or some other prescription antidepressant.
With paid circulation falling, newsprint prices rising, revenues lines mostly horizontal, and Wall Street all but digging their graves, the gloom at some of the nation's biggest newspapers is palpable.
"This newspaper bashing, it's nothing new, but in the last year and a half with Knight Ridder (under pressure to sell) and Wall Street just hammering away how the newspaper industry sucks, it's really increased -- and it's just not right," broker John Cribb said Wednesday evening from Cribb & Associates' offices in Bozeman, Montana.
Away from the big cities, newspapers in small- and mid-sized markets are delighted with how things are going at their papers, he says. They're making money, they love the business, and they expect it to do so well in the future they want their kids to be in newspapers, too.
Cribb sees this kind of publisher all the time, and got fed up enough with the bashing to retain the research firm Critical Data Inc. to conduct a survey of small- and mid-market newspaper executives. The firm got responses from 45 newspapers.
What they've come back with is a portrait of a remarkably contented lot:
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