By: E&P Staff In an article for Monday's New York Times, Richard Perez Pena poses the question: Newspapers are now good bargains, why don't more people want to buy them?
He mentions, first the Chicago Sun-Times, long on the market, then adds: "This is no isolated case. While all publicly traded newspaper companies have seen their share prices fall in the last year ? drops of 50 to 70 percent are commonplace ? some have tumbled so far that any number of bargain hunters could snap up a controlling interest, despite the credit squeeze. But they haven?t.
"When it took over Dow Jones & Company in December, News Corporation said it intended to sell Dow?s Ottaway chain of small papers. But it shelved the idea for lack of interest.
"The market capitalization of the Journal Register Company, publisher of the New Haven Register and hundreds of smaller papers, fell below $1 million last week, down more than 99 percent since the start of 2007. In the same period, GateHouse Media, another publisher of hundreds of small papers, has dropped almost 98 percent, to a market value under $26 million. The Sun-Times Media Group is down 91 percent, to less than $34 million."
The full article is at www.nytimes.com.
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