McClatchy Declares Bankruptcy
Posted on Friday, February 28, 2020 at 4:48 PM
In the news: A major newspaper publisher has filed for bankruptcy.
What does this mean for its newsrooms?
On February 13, the
Associated Press reported that newspaper publishing giant McClatchy Co.
was filing for bankruptcy. According to the AP, it’s business as usual
for the publisher’s 30 newspaper titles as it reorganizes. Tali Arbel
and Michelle Chapman write: “The company hopes to emerge from bankruptcy
protection in a few months as a private company, with majority ownership
by a hedge fund that’s currently McClatchy’s largest shareholder and
debtholder, Chatham Asset Management.” This is a significant shift for
the company: “That would end 163 years of family control,” Arbel and
Chapman say.
McClatchy’s bankruptcy filing reflects industry-wide
issues with audience and ad revenue. (As the AP article notes, Facebook
and Google win the lion’s share of online ad revenue.” Although
McClatchy gained digital subscribers in 2019, revenue fell 12.1%, report
Arbel and Chapman. Read more here.
Also
Notable
Honing Paywall Strategy
This month,
several magazines have erected paywalls, including Fortune, the New
Republic, and Women’s Wear Daily. Beth Braverman of
Foliomag.com discusses the various paywall routes each publisher is
taking -- Fortune, for instance, will continue offering free
content while also locking a lot of its content behind three different
paywall tiers. Elsewhere, Braverman reports, the New Republic has
launched a metered paywall and Women’s Wear Daily is
putting up a dynamic paywall. Read more here.
Publishers
Moving On from Third-Party Cookies
Publishers are being
forced to recalibrate ad strategy as Google phases out third-party
cookies over the next two years. “The limited shelf life of third-party
identifiers means that publishers are getting more direct requests for
access to their audience data,” says Lucinda Southern of Digiday.com.
“Gaining user consent post-General Data Protection Regulation means that
data-led buys across the open marketplace are harder to do,” she adds.
Read more about this shift toward “first-party data strategies” here.
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