Although the general ad market has appeared to turnaround, helping newspapers publishers arrest the declines of the past few years, The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) can’t seem to catch much of a break. The Sacrmento, CA.-based company, whose newspapers are inextricably tied to the extremely challenged real estate and jobs environments of California and Florida, and thus saw its profits dry up despite continued cost cutting as revenues continued to fall. On the plus side, digital was up by a reasonably healthy 5.1 percent.
Thanks to the shrinking of print revenues, coupled with the trends of higher online ad spending, McClatchy’s digital ad sales now make up 17.8 percent of total ad revenues compared to 15.8 percent of total ad revenues in Q4. Meanwhile, for the full year, digital revenues were up 2.4 percent and were stll too small to balance out the wider declines.
So far, this year hasn’t gotten off to a good start either.
Advertising revenues in January fell 10 percent compared to the same month last year, with all major categories down. Both national and retail advertising declined more than in Q4, while classified advertising was down 7.2 percent, about equal to December’s rate of decline.

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