Morton's newspaper forum displaced by industry's review p. 88

By: George Garneau

A 20-YEAR-OLD CONFERENCE at which newspaper company executives briefed investors may be going the way of the 25? newspaper.
The Morton Newspaper Forum, a regular stop for executives of the nation's public newspaper corporations since 1973, has been canceled this year ? and may never return ? because the companies are starting their own Mid-Year Media Review.
The forum, sponsored by analyst John Morton and Lynch, Jones & Ryan Inc., used to convene for two days immediately after the annual convention of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, now the Newspaper Association of America, in late April or early May. Media executives discussed the state of their businesses and fielded questions from the people who broker and buy their stock.
"I'm going to miss it," analyst Peter Appert of Alex. Brown & Sons Inc. in New York said, referring to the forum. "For me, it was a very useful event. It was an opportunity to see all the newspaper companies."
This year, in an effort to reach a broader range of investors, 14 companies whose wealth or reputation derives largely from newspapers are putting on their own conference June 13-14 at the New York Palace Hotel.
"To a certain extent, investors think of newspapers as part of the larger media industry," said Susan Watson of Gannett Co. Inc.'s investor relations department. "It's not called a newspaper conference because we all think of ourselves as media companies now."
She said the new conference was the brainchild of the companies' investor relations departments, which wanted better timing, location and participation. Company executives make dozens of such presentations a year and want to expose their companies to the largest audience of potential investors possible.
The midyear review is scheduled at a better time for the companies, all the major public newspaper companies except Tribune Co., which had a scheduling conflict. A June gathering allows more time for executives, who last reported to analysts at another annual rite, the Paine Webber Media Conference in December, to formulate a picture of emerging financial trends. And it does not conflict with shareholder meetings, quarterly earnings reports or school vacations.
The New York City site lets stock buyers and sellers reach the meeting by taxi instead of flying to the publishers' convention, which this year is in San Francisco.
Organizers wanted the audience not to be limited either by registration fees, often of more than $1,000 a person, or because a sponsoring brokerage decided to exclude a competitor.
At the new review, registration fees of $250 a person go directly to the nonprofit Newspaper Association of America Foundation. The media companies, rather than attendees, are footing the bill for the meeting rooms and food.
Morton said canceling his forum will hurt financially because it made money.
"We'd rather they hadn't done it but they did," he said, explaining that it made no sense to continue when the companies were planning their meeting two months later.