Victoria, B.C.-based Black Press, which owns the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, lost $1.5 million in the three months ending September 30, 2011, but hasn’t slowed down its acquisition of smaller newspapers in the Pacific Northwest.
Although Black Press is privately held and does not publicly report its sales and profits, overall performance can be extrapolated from disclosures by Torstar Corporporation, which owns approximately a 20% share of the company, which are included in Torstar’s earnings.
According to Torstar’s latest earnings report, made public today, Black Press results “slightly up” compared to last year.
Torstar is also not currently recording its share of Black Press’s results due to a notional accounting negative carrying value. Torstar’s share of Black Press’s net income would have been a loss of $0.3 million in the third quarter of 2011 compared with a loss of $0.7 million in the third quarter of 2010. Year to date, Torstar’s share of Black Press’s net income would have been $1.2 million compared with a loss of $2.3 million in 2010. The 2010 loss included a $3.1 million impairment loss related to a customer-related intangible asset and goodwill related to a printing operation. Excluding the impairment loss in 2010, results were up slightly year over year.
Although still losing money overall, Black Press continued its string of acquisitions with the purchase this week of several community newspapers in Washington state, including Peninsula Daily News, described as “the largest source of news and advertising on the North Olympic Peninsula,” and Olympic View Publishing Company, publisher of the Sequim Gazette and several smaller publications.
[Peninsula Daily News] began in 1916 and publishes Sunday through Friday, covering Clallam and Jefferson counties with offices in Port Angeles, Sequim and Port Townsend, and produces a free weekly publication, Sequim This Week, which serves more than 11,000 households in the Sequim-Dungeness Valley.
Its website, www.peninsuladailynews.com, is the largest and most heavily used news and advertising website on the North Olympic Peninsula, averaging 1.2 million page views a month.
Black Press will print the newspapers in a centralized plant in Everett, leading to layoffs of 20 pressroom and mailroom employees at PDN.
Black Press is now the largest publisher of community newspapers in Washington, with 46 publications and a total circulation of 732,700, according to the company.
Discover more from i L i n d
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
What is really sad is that such newspaper consolidation might be futile. It’s a bit like consolidating pyramid building. Even personal computers are antiques. How many homes and businesses in ten years time will still have personal computers? (Homes and businesses might have servers to backup data from mobile devises, and the “cloud” will serve as tertiary backup, but that won’t quite be the same as a PC even if it looks like one.)
Black Press is taking a bold gamble, and fortune favors the bold. Their strategy of centralization and mass layoffs might seem smart and hardnosed in earlier period of time, but it is predicated on other players selling out to them cheaply because the writing is on the wall (or rather, on the Internet).
More troubling is the thought that a non-American company owns so many American media outlets that can influence issues…In Honolulu the Star-Advertiser doesn’t depict the Israeli-Palestinian issue in its truth. Israel’s atrocities are just not reported.
Only $1.5 mil spread over 46 newspapers, while in the midst of acquisitions? That’s not bad these days. PDN just reported that the SA lost only 57 subscribers this year, despite the pay wall.
I’ve trimmed this thread to get rid of the increasingly personal attacks and counter attacks.
We’re trying for a higher level of dialog here.
Please feel free to argue your point and provide evidence or perspective aimed at convincing others, but do respect those you’re responding to.
Otherwise, I’ll have to use my editor’s prerogative.
I’m very pleased that you edited down the first comment that triggered my intentional rough response, Ian. I actually would have preferred that resolution in the first place and I would have stayed away.
However, I totally understand that editing every potentially offensive remark would require you to hire a staff the size of the SA! You did the right thing in this case. Unfortunately, I have no doubt that attacks and counterattacks will continue, especially in 2012.