2005 Annual Report - Newspaper Ownership

Revenues, earnings and profit margins are generally not available for private newspaper companies. But they are among the biggest chain owners in the industry - by circulation, four of the top 12, 9 of the top 20. The largest (with circulation rank) are¹¹:

*Advance (4). The company, controlled by the Newhouse family, operates 26 dailies, including The Star-Ledger of Newark, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland and The Oregonian of Portland. Advance has a reputation for relatively generous news spending and markedly improving most of its properties over the last 20 years. Business-side operations are relatively informal, relying more on periodic visits from headquarters than rigid budgeting. A separate Newhouse company publishes The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

*Hearst (7). Has 12 dailies, and some big-city presence - the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. Drove under its competitors in those three cities and is hanging on in Seattle (where its Post-Intelligencer is enmeshed in a legal fight with its joint-operating partner, The Seattle Times). Also a successful operator of magazines.

*MediaNews Group (8). A large empire built of 45 papers over a period of 30 years by William Dean Singleton. Runs many distressed franchises no one else wanted, with bare-bones staffs. Singleton has compared himself to a surgeon who takes radical steps with very sick patients. He was a surprising proponent of news investment during his recent tenure as president of the Newspaper Association of America (2002-2003), and has a stated ambition to build the flagship Denver Post into a great regional paper. Because of its volume of semi-public debt, MediaNews reports most results as a public company would.

*Cox Newspapers (11): Atlanta-based, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the flagship among its 17 papers. Others include the Austin American-Statesman, The Palm Beach Post and the Dayton Daily News. Like Advance, has a reputation for above-average news investment and quality.

*Freedom Communications (13): Consists of The Orange County Register and 27 smaller papers. As discussed above, the company was up for auction in 2003, but the upshot was that members of the Hays family who wanted to continue, with the backing of investment bankers, bought out family members who were dissatisfied and had pushed for a sale.

*Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (14): Based in Alabama and owned by the state employees' pension fund, the company owns 96 small newspapers.

*Daily News, New York (18): A one-newspaper company but a big one, it is owned by Mort Zuckerman and also owns U.S. News & World Report.

*Morris Communications (19): A chain of 27 mid-sized and small papers, mostly in the South, known for tight operations and high profit margins. Reports financial results. Its Savannah Morning News is credited with having greatly improved in recent years, and the company is a relatively active explorer of advanced online applications.

*Copley Press (20): Consists of The San Diego Union-Tribune and eight smaller papers.