It’s bad enough running businesses that create and publish the news — try being a company that distributes newspapers and magazines to a shrinking readership. After months of slow decline for Dawson Holdings, the company now announces its wholesale news distribution business Dawson News has been put into voluntary administration due to a loss of business to rival distributors including Smith News and John Menzies.
At the same time, Dawson has successfully sold the remains of its collapsed news distribution business to Menzies — for £500,000 (release) — while Smith says it’s paying £1.5 million for the rest (release). The contracts were going to be phased in gradually but now take effect immediately.
In terms of the economics of the written word, the collapse and sell-off of one of the UK’s big three print distributors shows unequivocally how much the print market has shrunk during the recession and before it. Longstanding relationships have been torn up as publishers shop for better deals — in a normal year Dawson could count on Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI), Associated Newspapers and several others to renew their contracts, but this hasn’t been a normal year.
Dawson stresses, however, that its other three businesses — which distribute papers to airlines, distribute books to schools, and carry out marketing functions — are trading well and are turning a profit. The company is also diversifying beyond print with a catalogue of 30,000 ebooks on its own digital platform.

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