Headlines about the newspaper industry
of late have been filled with nothing but gloom and doom: Internet sites like Craigslist are peddling classified ads for free, obliterating a key source of newspapers’ revenue. Sales of help-wanted ads are collapsing like a house cards. Newspapers are offering buyouts to scores of journalists.
In one of the most extreme examples, the owners of The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., told newsroom employees that if enough didn’t accept their buyout offers, the paper would be sold.
But what about the daily newspaper in the Daily Report’s hometown, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution? The AJC, as the paper is known by locals, isn’t for sale, but most of the other papers owned by its parent company are. Cox Enterprises, the company controlled by Anne Cox Chambers and the children of her late sister, Barbara Cox Anthony, last week said it would auction off more than 20 of its smaller papers.
In a story in Monday's edition of the Daily Report, I report on what corporate lawyers, newspaper industry observers and Wall Street stock analysts believe are the chances that the Cox family might one day put the AJC up for sale. You can read about it here.