McClatchy Profits Fall Amid Industrywide Declines

By now, investors ought to be used to The McClatchy Company’s consistent drift of revenue and net income declines since it returned to profitability at the end of 2009.

But the downward drift in profits has lately afflicted its newspaper publisher brethren, as Gannett , A.H. Belo, Washington Post Company and the New York Times Co. have all seen profits shrink this year (in the NYTCo’s case, it swung to a loss last week). The latest Q2 numbers raises a number of questions for newspapers: are the profits wrung from the major waves of cost-cutting over the years finally being exhausted? Is more cost-cutting on the way? Are digital gains getting close to offsetting print losses? So far, the answers all seem pretty bleak.

For McClatchy, the publisher of its hometown Sacramento Bee and The Miami Herald, Q2 reflected more of the same of the recent quarters: