The Medium, The Message

Douglas Page, “an experienced media executive” writing for Newspapers & Technology, calls “BS” on newspaper publishers’ spin about revenues and profits.

“For a trade that prides itself on uncovering graft and crime and finding truth and justice, the pronouncements made by leading executives at publicly held newspaper companies — as well as some of the reporting covering those projections — are disturbing. They spin reality in a way that might make even the most ardent Party member blush,” Page writes.

Page uses as one example the Associated Press reports about McClatchy’s 2nd quarter profits, quoting CEO Gary Pruitt, who said: “We continue to restructure and permanently reduce expenses to better align our costs with our revenues.”

“In other words,” says Page, “some McClatchy employees took one for the team so it could make a profit — and someone’s next!

“The doozy, however, was the way McClatchy reported its online revenues:

‘Our digital advertising is down 2.9 percent in the second quarter of 2009, hurt particularly by declining employment advertising,’ Pruitt said. ‘Excluding employment advertising … our online advertising grew 24.7 percent in the second quarter of this year.’

“Can you really exclude an integral part of your revenue stream just so you look good?”

Newspaper executives are now preparing their 2010 budgets and glossing over how this year’s cutbacks will adversely affect the hoped-for recovery next year, Page says.

“(T)he true story is that the remaining employees’ workload, especially those on the sales side, will grow exponentially. They’ll be expected to hit their departed colleagues’ revenue targets.

“Tragically, they’re being positioned to fail. And with that will come — can you guess it? — more cuts.”