McClatchy to sell the SLO Tribune building

March 25, 2017

By KAREN VELIE

McClatchy, running in the red for years, is planning to sell The Tribune building on Higuera Street this year, according to a presentation McClatchy made on Feb. 28 to JP Morgan.

In 2015, McClatchy incurred a loss of $300.2 million. Though still in the red, by cutting expenses and selling real estate, McClatchy reduced its losses to $34.2 million in 2016, according to McClatchy’s financial reports.

Last year, McClatchy was able to reduce operating expenses by 6.8 percent. In addition, McClatchy sold a covered garage in Sacramento and a building in Wichita, Kansas.

While McClatchy has cut back on staff and the amount of news it covers, advertising revenues have fallen.

In 2016, advertising revenues were down 10.8 percent compared to 2015. In addition, daily circulation dropped 9.3 percent and distribution of the Sunday paper was down 10.5 percent.

On the upside, online views increased by 26.8 percent.

The publishing company concluded 2016 with approximately $868 million in outstanding debt.


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A relative gave me a copy of the tribune last week i took it home , read it and found nothing of any value in it . I did notice that the county spends alot of money on adds , could possibly add up to millions a year , is the county supporting the tribune ?? Is this why they dont report the actual worthy news ? I would like to see an honest sum of the amount the county spends with the tribune , for say the last 10 -20 years . A small line add can cost 300-400 a month, slo county has a whole page at times , items such as bids being excepted etc. etc .


I don’t even really see the point of McClatchy newspapers- they basically just regurgitate the same articles all over the country, and hardly have any investigative reporting, or real reporting, especially on the local level.


Also, never talk about Fluoride poising us, so that’s another thing.


Throw in their latest incident of attempting to capitalize on Matthew Franks legacy and you can really see why they are failing.


I am glad that I live in rural America and will not need to paper train a dog. Fido would usually drop his opinion on the front page. This too will be a forgotten past.


The deserve what they get. If one was to look up news papers in other states you’d often see the exact same online front page design and BS opinions portrayed as “news” . That’s the McNasty way. Their loosing readers here in Liberal left land and they cant figure out why 99% Red, gun toting, Trump embracing conservative states dont buy in to their news paper?