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22 Responses to “Lee Enterprises and Quality Journalism”
At the Post-Dispatch, we’re going through our second downsizing in two years. The first trimmed the newsroom staff by about 12 percent, although a few positions were later replaced. The round underway now will cut the newroom by at least 10 percent.
Thank heavens they’re doing it through buyouts, not layoffs.
I’m very afraid that the quality of our newspaper will suffer because of this. There was a noticeable negative effect after the previous downsizing.
Does anyone out there have any suggestions for maintaining quality with fewer news people? What has your experience been? Should we put editors back on the street as reporters? Would that damage morale? Our copy editing staff is being hit fairly hard. Are there tricks for moving copy with fewer people?
Yes, welcome to the downsize. Ours in Bloomington began when Pulitzer arrived, not when it left. It’s painful.
This is crucial: Does management understand simple math? I mean, addition and subtraction. If it comes to terms with reality and says, Here’s what we’ve got, gang, then you can sort of hunker down and, theoretically, produce better work on the stories that matter most — but with less volume. Unfortunately, we for the entire decade in Bloomington operated under more with less and a management delusion that it’d all be just as good. Unless your losses consist of terrible, lazy people, the notion is mathematically ridiculous.
Finally, we have an editor who appears locked into getting the most out of what we have, doing our best and calling it a day without counting bylines.
When will all the Lee news hounds realize that Lee is not about high caliber journalism. After all, we “are” talking Davenport here– The
Lee-Way subscribes to their high pressure sales approach that needs something to push advertisers dollars into- You know, creatively and rapidly. Oh- Buy the way, how is that working Wall Street!
Things could get better=Word has it that Lee in considering selling more enterprises to pay down the heavy $1.5 billion debt with rising intrest they encountered when they paid too much for Pulitzer. Nice job CEO with a bonus and $8 excuse me $6 million in stock options. You actually bought and paid for the inflated bottom line revenue figure. Little did you know that $28,000 ads were being sold for #3,000 ea. for a one year committment and remnant space was always available for whatever the market would bare. IDEA-Maybe the 1/2 ownership in Tuson or Milwaukee can go next. Oh by the way, when you sell the property Ms.Lee the revenue it gererates goes with it! FYI
I think that revenue thing happened when Lee sold two “non-core” printing businesses last year. One north I believe in Milwaukee and the other in the North West. Mary decision was to say no, no, when asked at convention. Hey she’s got more to loose than we do. They all see to that. Now I see more Lee buyouts going on I would take one. If those people in St. Louis didn’t have a Union those buyouts would all be layoffs. People there are getting 2 weeks pay for every 6 months they worked at the paper 52 weeks max that’s $64K for some plus their medical insurance huge for life and their pension what’s that like they were 65 years old all in the contract and they have their own 401K not the Lee 401k pension plan. How great is that. Wish we had the union I got this Leewatch.org address from–really cool–like I can say it like it is and nothing happens. Bad Boy Bad Boy Whatcha gonna do?
What’s with the Lee stock going down?
Check it out at CNNMONEY and search Lee for interesting financial statements about our company. I wonder how our priorities as developed are being looked at. How about placing– nurturing employee achievements first. Probably would be an unachievable goal for current management to show respect to all employees. Proven fact- employers that focus on how their employees are treated by management, experience more productivity, cooperation and self-motivation which translates into meeting goals and increased profitability for the company. Econ. 101
Since Lee took over our property from Pulitzer, we have lost our pension plan and seen our health benefits changed to a plan that’s more expensive for employees. Our 401(k) plans were moved to a less-profitable manager and employees this summer were encouraged to take up to six weeks off (without pay) or switch to 32-hour work weeks (forgoing pay for that fifth day) for six weeks. Many fear layoffs are next. There’s upset over the “hyper local” focus, which seems fit for a small town but not a large city. The copy desk feels vulnerable/expendable and there’s been a noticeable decline in journalism, both in the kinds of stories we cover and how well we cover them. And what’s with those hokey Lee propaganda videos we’re forced to watch?
I have great sympathy for any management that has to appease Wall Street. But I do worry that our current strategy is to trade short-term financial gain (pleasing the Street next year) for long-term pain.
At the Post-Dispatch, we’ve just finished our second round of buyouts, which reduced newsroom staff by a bit more than 10 percent. This follows a similar cut two years ago.
These buyouts have noticeably reduced the quality of the paper. Meanwhile, we’ve removed the TV book from Sunday papers sold at the newsstand and raised the weekday newsstand price to 75 cents.
The upshot is that we are giving readers a worse product, while charging more for it. That’s not a wise tactic in an industry that is having difficulty keeping its customers.
We’ve been more successful than most papers at stemming a circulation decline. But I fear that our recent moves will cause more readers to abandon us.
The staff cuts and price hike ought to increase revenue over the short term. But ad revenue is strongly linked to print circulation. A further decline in circulation will cost us more over the long run. On-line ads sell in a more competitive environment and will never make up for print ad losses.
I’d suggest that a smarter strategy would be to invest in product quality and hold the line on the newsstand price in order to maintain circulation and advertising market share. That would mean accepting some profit margin compression over the short term in order to maintain revenue over the long run.
I’m just guessing here, but I suspect that our managers may see the wisdom of this strategy, but despair of ever being able to gain acceptance of it on Wall Street. There, the focus is always on the next quarter’s earnings.
I recently discussed the Lee prayer card with one of my college business professors. After reading the card he said, “this is intresting. Every business wants to generate money rapidly.” He went on to say, “if money becomes the primary focus of a business, and is projected as a policy to its employees, the workplace focus as to job proformance can become blured and eventually flawed”.
“As an example, absent will be some business fundmentals, such as product develompment, quality control, customer relations and job discription guidlines, making it difficult at best to achieve such a loosely stated goal. This can adversly distract an entire organization from top to bottom from CEO to you name it.”
I thought this was a unique observation based solely on the piece of paper I handed him. He kept the card for a business develompment
class discussion and said “this could be the best example of how to distract the focus of an entire business organization”. Good luck!
I agree with your professor. Over the long run, the best business strategy is to focus on serving the customer. In our case, that means serving the reader with a fine newspaper, and serving the advertiser with access to intelligent people who actively read our newspaper every day.
A focus on product quality will, in the long run, attract readers and advertisers and provide the most return for our shareholders.
But in the current environment, that requires a leap of faith. It means investing up front in providing strong news and feature coverage in the belief that the revenue reward will be there down the road.
We must also invest in an ad sales team that will hang around long enough to develop relationships with customers in order to best serve their needs. Under-paying ad staffs — or demoralizing them through arbitrary decisions — leads to high turnover. That undermines revenue and works against the interest of everyone, including our shareholders and executives.
I was surprised to see my newspaper hold a job fair to attract sales people. A successful sales enterprise should have a reputation as such, and shouldn’t have to beat the bushes for recruits.
Executives should listen more closely to the sales people on the front lines. We’ll be a more successful company if they do.
Over many years, newspapers grew from a single sheet of paper containing small town happenings to a multi section medium of local, national, international/world news. Obviously advertising revenue allowed much of this growth to occur and when corporate ownership (Lee)gained
control of this media their slicker focus on revenue growth distracted them from maintaining the business of the core product and the institution they so eagerly sought to profit from.
In our market we have seen a conflict in a Lee Corporate Executive who stated that “Lee is “not” going to save their way, but “sell” their way out of the current downward revenue cycle”. As we know, business immaturity reverted to the easier soultion of saving rather than selling, requiring far less insight and imagination. The resulting revenue slip is alarming, but more alarming is the absence of notice, given the dwindling core product and institution needed to succeed.
It is difficult to forsee where this will end. With the elimination so many necessary resources, a successful outcome is hard to invision with a continuation of enefficient tactics.
Like worrier, I two agree that a quality product will grow readership.
Unlike worrier, I do not agree that is takes a leap of faith.
Many profitable products have been developed by bright, front line employees resposible for developing new concepts. The seemingly “grab-bag” notion of hefty compensation to maintain, cut and conserve resources, is a trade-off for the quality that increases porfits.
As an example, this month, a Lee publisher recieved an additional 60,000 shares of Lee stock options for a vastly deminished year over year product. How can this rampant business practice accommodate the development of any product.
LEE STOCK IN MYSTERY FREEFALL TODAY
By Mark Fitzgerald
Editor & Publisher Jan. 3,2008 4:10 PM ET
CHICAGO Lee Enterprises stock slid dramatically on sharply higher trading volume for no readily apparent reason Thursday.
At the 4 P.M. EST. Lee (NYSE-LEE) closed at $11.78, down $2.69 or 18.59%. It set a new low in its 52-week tading range, which had been $13.60 to $35.65.
Lee made no announcements during the day, and there were no other apparent market-moving events. An analyst who follows Lee closely said the big fallout and huge volume were a mystery.
Lee’s trading volume for the day was 2,196,601-more than four times its three-month average volume of 486,152.
In Lee’s last public communication on New Year’s Eve, Chairmnan and CEO Mary Junck wrote in her annual letter to shareholders that the Street was not properly valuing the stock of Lee, which she said had outperformed industry peers.
Like many newspaper companies, Lee stock was hammered by Wall Street in the past year. In calendar 2007, its stock lost 52.8% of its value.
****************************end************************************** HOW CAN THE BOARD ACCOUNT FOR THIS????
WHY IS THERE NO STATEMENT FROM THEM?????
HOW DID THEY CAUSE THIS TO HAPPEN?????????????
My Uncle once told me the story about a dairy farmer.
After careful review the farmer discovered these annual expenses
to maintain 500 cows was:
50% for maintenance and purchase of farm equipment
15% for energy.
30% for feed and the remaining 5% was profit for himself.
Being of the greedy type he devised a plan to increase the amount of profit for himself. By trimming his herd to 400 head he reasoned that he could eliminate 1/5 or 20% of the total annual expenses and increase his profit to 25%.
At the end of the next year he discovered that the milk he sold did not generate enough revenue to produce same profit before he cut 100 cows.
Less cows produced less product resulting in less revenue.
The next year he decided to feed the 400 remaining cows less, which would allow him to eliminate milking equipment, tractors and milk trucks. Again the same results.
Next year with so many people buying milk he is going to rase prices.
Surely that has to work, they can’t stop buying milk!
I think Lee stock has finally fallen low enough to make it a buy. So, I bought some. It has a dividend yield of 6.9 percent and a PE of 6. (The S&P 500 has a PE of about 17 and a dividend yield of about 2 percent.)
The newspaper industry is going to hell, but it won’t get there any time soon. In the meantime, I see good cash flow and a dividend that doesn’t seem to be in any danger. Meanwhile, Lee is promising to buy back stock, although all such promises should be taken with some doubt.
It seems to me that much bad news, including the possibility of recession, has already been discounted after the recent plunge in the stock price.
Good luck with your Lee stock purchase. I believe your PE and dividend yield is slipping downward from wherever you came into the market. Today Lee reported 1st quarter (4thquarter) profits down some 17 percent. Of course the fall was expected in Iowa because of one less
day, one less Sunday and a World Series in St. Louis last year.
As reported, Iowa knew these things would occur and drive revenue down but management obviously neglected to have a revenue sales goal and a plan in place to reach it, which would account for the losses.
You must have the wisdom to know the difference between that which you can and cannot control.
Has anyone heard who is going to win the “Terry Hughes Award,” the journalism award given out by the St. Louis Newspaper Guild in honor of Terry Hughes? I heard that there was a lot of nominations submitted this year and I also heard that a group of past award winners went over to the local for a meeting. However, I haven’t heard if they had announced anything yet. Anybody know what’s up?
More information about the Terry Hughes Award, taken from the St. Louis Newspaper Guild website. www.stlouisguild.org
Terry Hughes was 36 when she died of breast cancer on July 22, 1991. A columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, her writing was clear, witty and descriptive, with a flair for portraying society’s underdogs. Some of her columns chronicled the bouts with canceer that she and others faced. One column was credited with helping persuade the Missouri Legislature to approve a bill forcing insurers to pay for mammograms.
One of the many readers who wrote to the newspaper after her death described her work this way: “Her columns were full of real life stories that touched us all and even changed our way of thinking or even our lives.”
The St. Louis Newspaper Guild has established a writing award in the name of Ms. Hughes. The award is intended to honor a journalist whose writing shows the talent that she displayed.
Any journalist in the metropolitan St. Louis area who has written for a daily or weekly newspaper or for a magazine is eligible.
Single articles of extraordinary merit will be considered. Preference will be given to entries of between three and ten articles that display the writer’s range of talent.
Articles must have been published in 2007. There are no formal applications. Anyone may submit a nomination by sending cipies of articles to:
The Terry Hughes Award Committee
St. Louis Newspaper Guild
1015 Locust Street
Suite 1040
St. Louis, Mo. 63101
The deadline for applications is January 10, 2008. The award will be presented at the Newspaper Guild’s Annual Dinner on January 25, 2008
Does Lee know we have the Terry Hughes award in St. Louis. What are their feelings about an award without money attached to it. I know the Lee spirit award and $5,000 checks for special employees inside Lee have been given out mainly to movitate and compensate for the low pay at papers outside St. Louis. The Terry Hughes is truly a worthy honor for the recipient. Lee must be scratching their heads as to why people would concieve of working for honor as opposed to the demeaning, self serving Lee Corporate handouts at papers outside St. Louis where the best of the best in diminshing.
Congrats to Concerned for selling his stock when he did. Lee stock has been a dismal performer. But I still think it’s a reasonable buy at the current price.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Lee Enterprises and Quality Journalism, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
August 30th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
At the Post-Dispatch, we’re going through our second downsizing in two years. The first trimmed the newsroom staff by about 12 percent, although a few positions were later replaced. The round underway now will cut the newroom by at least 10 percent.
Thank heavens they’re doing it through buyouts, not layoffs.
I’m very afraid that the quality of our newspaper will suffer because of this. There was a noticeable negative effect after the previous downsizing.
Does anyone out there have any suggestions for maintaining quality with fewer news people? What has your experience been? Should we put editors back on the street as reporters? Would that damage morale? Our copy editing staff is being hit fairly hard. Are there tricks for moving copy with fewer people?
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Yes, welcome to the downsize. Ours in Bloomington began when Pulitzer arrived, not when it left. It’s painful.
This is crucial: Does management understand simple math? I mean, addition and subtraction. If it comes to terms with reality and says, Here’s what we’ve got, gang, then you can sort of hunker down and, theoretically, produce better work on the stories that matter most — but with less volume. Unfortunately, we for the entire decade in Bloomington operated under more with less and a management delusion that it’d all be just as good. Unless your losses consist of terrible, lazy people, the notion is mathematically ridiculous.
Finally, we have an editor who appears locked into getting the most out of what we have, doing our best and calling it a day without counting bylines.
September 6th, 2007 at 11:04 am
When will all the Lee news hounds realize that Lee is not about high caliber journalism. After all, we “are” talking Davenport here– The
Lee-Way subscribes to their high pressure sales approach that needs something to push advertisers dollars into- You know, creatively and rapidly. Oh- Buy the way, how is that working Wall Street!
September 7th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Things could get better=Word has it that Lee in considering selling more enterprises to pay down the heavy $1.5 billion debt with rising intrest they encountered when they paid too much for Pulitzer. Nice job CEO with a bonus and $8 excuse me $6 million in stock options. You actually bought and paid for the inflated bottom line revenue figure. Little did you know that $28,000 ads were being sold for #3,000 ea. for a one year committment and remnant space was always available for whatever the market would bare. IDEA-Maybe the 1/2 ownership in Tuson or Milwaukee can go next. Oh by the way, when you sell the property Ms.Lee the revenue it gererates goes with it! FYI
September 12th, 2007 at 8:57 am
I think that revenue thing happened when Lee sold two “non-core” printing businesses last year. One north I believe in Milwaukee and the other in the North West. Mary decision was to say no, no, when asked at convention. Hey she’s got more to loose than we do. They all see to that. Now I see more Lee buyouts going on I would take one. If those people in St. Louis didn’t have a Union those buyouts would all be layoffs. People there are getting 2 weeks pay for every 6 months they worked at the paper 52 weeks max that’s $64K for some plus their medical insurance huge for life and their pension what’s that like they were 65 years old all in the contract and they have their own 401K not the Lee 401k pension plan. How great is that. Wish we had the union I got this Leewatch.org address from–really cool–like I can say it like it is and nothing happens. Bad Boy Bad Boy Whatcha gonna do?
September 17th, 2007 at 11:37 am
What’s with the Lee stock going down?
Check it out at CNNMONEY and search Lee for interesting financial statements about our company. I wonder how our priorities as developed are being looked at. How about placing– nurturing employee achievements first. Probably would be an unachievable goal for current management to show respect to all employees. Proven fact- employers that focus on how their employees are treated by management, experience more productivity, cooperation and self-motivation which translates into meeting goals and increased profitability for the company. Econ. 101
November 12th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Since Lee took over our property from Pulitzer, we have lost our pension plan and seen our health benefits changed to a plan that’s more expensive for employees. Our 401(k) plans were moved to a less-profitable manager and employees this summer were encouraged to take up to six weeks off (without pay) or switch to 32-hour work weeks (forgoing pay for that fifth day) for six weeks. Many fear layoffs are next. There’s upset over the “hyper local” focus, which seems fit for a small town but not a large city. The copy desk feels vulnerable/expendable and there’s been a noticeable decline in journalism, both in the kinds of stories we cover and how well we cover them. And what’s with those hokey Lee propaganda videos we’re forced to watch?
November 23rd, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I have great sympathy for any management that has to appease Wall Street. But I do worry that our current strategy is to trade short-term financial gain (pleasing the Street next year) for long-term pain.
At the Post-Dispatch, we’ve just finished our second round of buyouts, which reduced newsroom staff by a bit more than 10 percent. This follows a similar cut two years ago.
These buyouts have noticeably reduced the quality of the paper. Meanwhile, we’ve removed the TV book from Sunday papers sold at the newsstand and raised the weekday newsstand price to 75 cents.
The upshot is that we are giving readers a worse product, while charging more for it. That’s not a wise tactic in an industry that is having difficulty keeping its customers.
We’ve been more successful than most papers at stemming a circulation decline. But I fear that our recent moves will cause more readers to abandon us.
The staff cuts and price hike ought to increase revenue over the short term. But ad revenue is strongly linked to print circulation. A further decline in circulation will cost us more over the long run. On-line ads sell in a more competitive environment and will never make up for print ad losses.
I’d suggest that a smarter strategy would be to invest in product quality and hold the line on the newsstand price in order to maintain circulation and advertising market share. That would mean accepting some profit margin compression over the short term in order to maintain revenue over the long run.
I’m just guessing here, but I suspect that our managers may see the wisdom of this strategy, but despair of ever being able to gain acceptance of it on Wall Street. There, the focus is always on the next quarter’s earnings.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Very intersting
I recently discussed the Lee prayer card with one of my college business professors. After reading the card he said, “this is intresting. Every business wants to generate money rapidly.” He went on to say, “if money becomes the primary focus of a business, and is projected as a policy to its employees, the workplace focus as to job proformance can become blured and eventually flawed”.
“As an example, absent will be some business fundmentals, such as product develompment, quality control, customer relations and job discription guidlines, making it difficult at best to achieve such a loosely stated goal. This can adversly distract an entire organization from top to bottom from CEO to you name it.”
I thought this was a unique observation based solely on the piece of paper I handed him. He kept the card for a business develompment
class discussion and said “this could be the best example of how to distract the focus of an entire business organization”. Good luck!
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:53 pm
I agree with your professor. Over the long run, the best business strategy is to focus on serving the customer. In our case, that means serving the reader with a fine newspaper, and serving the advertiser with access to intelligent people who actively read our newspaper every day.
A focus on product quality will, in the long run, attract readers and advertisers and provide the most return for our shareholders.
But in the current environment, that requires a leap of faith. It means investing up front in providing strong news and feature coverage in the belief that the revenue reward will be there down the road.
We must also invest in an ad sales team that will hang around long enough to develop relationships with customers in order to best serve their needs. Under-paying ad staffs — or demoralizing them through arbitrary decisions — leads to high turnover. That undermines revenue and works against the interest of everyone, including our shareholders and executives.
I was surprised to see my newspaper hold a job fair to attract sales people. A successful sales enterprise should have a reputation as such, and shouldn’t have to beat the bushes for recruits.
Executives should listen more closely to the sales people on the front lines. We’ll be a more successful company if they do.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Over many years, newspapers grew from a single sheet of paper containing small town happenings to a multi section medium of local, national, international/world news. Obviously advertising revenue allowed much of this growth to occur and when corporate ownership (Lee)gained
control of this media their slicker focus on revenue growth distracted them from maintaining the business of the core product and the institution they so eagerly sought to profit from.
In our market we have seen a conflict in a Lee Corporate Executive who stated that “Lee is “not” going to save their way, but “sell” their way out of the current downward revenue cycle”. As we know, business immaturity reverted to the easier soultion of saving rather than selling, requiring far less insight and imagination. The resulting revenue slip is alarming, but more alarming is the absence of notice, given the dwindling core product and institution needed to succeed.
It is difficult to forsee where this will end. With the elimination so many necessary resources, a successful outcome is hard to invision with a continuation of enefficient tactics.
December 17th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Like worrier, I two agree that a quality product will grow readership.
Unlike worrier, I do not agree that is takes a leap of faith.
Many profitable products have been developed by bright, front line employees resposible for developing new concepts. The seemingly “grab-bag” notion of hefty compensation to maintain, cut and conserve resources, is a trade-off for the quality that increases porfits.
As an example, this month, a Lee publisher recieved an additional 60,000 shares of Lee stock options for a vastly deminished year over year product. How can this rampant business practice accommodate the development of any product.
What is the real objective?
CONCERNED
January 4th, 2008 at 11:00 am
LEE STOCK IN MYSTERY FREEFALL TODAY
By Mark Fitzgerald
Editor & Publisher Jan. 3,2008 4:10 PM ET
CHICAGO Lee Enterprises stock slid dramatically on sharply higher trading volume for no readily apparent reason Thursday.
At the 4 P.M. EST. Lee (NYSE-LEE) closed at $11.78, down $2.69 or 18.59%. It set a new low in its 52-week tading range, which had been $13.60 to $35.65.
Lee made no announcements during the day, and there were no other apparent market-moving events. An analyst who follows Lee closely said the big fallout and huge volume were a mystery.
Lee’s trading volume for the day was 2,196,601-more than four times its three-month average volume of 486,152.
In Lee’s last public communication on New Year’s Eve, Chairmnan and CEO Mary Junck wrote in her annual letter to shareholders that the Street was not properly valuing the stock of Lee, which she said had outperformed industry peers.
Like many newspaper companies, Lee stock was hammered by Wall Street in the past year. In calendar 2007, its stock lost 52.8% of its value.
****************************end************************************** HOW CAN THE BOARD ACCOUNT FOR THIS????
WHY IS THERE NO STATEMENT FROM THEM?????
HOW DID THEY CAUSE THIS TO HAPPEN?????????????
January 17th, 2008 at 11:13 am
IS LEE BEING RUN BY DAIRY FARMERS.
My Uncle once told me the story about a dairy farmer.
After careful review the farmer discovered these annual expenses
to maintain 500 cows was:
50% for maintenance and purchase of farm equipment
15% for energy.
30% for feed and the remaining 5% was profit for himself.
Being of the greedy type he devised a plan to increase the amount of profit for himself. By trimming his herd to 400 head he reasoned that he could eliminate 1/5 or 20% of the total annual expenses and increase his profit to 25%.
At the end of the next year he discovered that the milk he sold did not generate enough revenue to produce same profit before he cut 100 cows.
Less cows produced less product resulting in less revenue.
The next year he decided to feed the 400 remaining cows less, which would allow him to eliminate milking equipment, tractors and milk trucks. Again the same results.
Next year with so many people buying milk he is going to rase prices.
Surely that has to work, they can’t stop buying milk!
January 19th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
I think Lee stock has finally fallen low enough to make it a buy. So, I bought some. It has a dividend yield of 6.9 percent and a PE of 6. (The S&P 500 has a PE of about 17 and a dividend yield of about 2 percent.)
The newspaper industry is going to hell, but it won’t get there any time soon. In the meantime, I see good cash flow and a dividend that doesn’t seem to be in any danger. Meanwhile, Lee is promising to buy back stock, although all such promises should be taken with some doubt.
It seems to me that much bad news, including the possibility of recession, has already been discounted after the recent plunge in the stock price.
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:26 am
Worried-
Good luck with your Lee stock purchase. I believe your PE and dividend yield is slipping downward from wherever you came into the market. Today Lee reported 1st quarter (4thquarter) profits down some 17 percent. Of course the fall was expected in Iowa because of one less
day, one less Sunday and a World Series in St. Louis last year.
As reported, Iowa knew these things would occur and drive revenue down but management obviously neglected to have a revenue sales goal and a plan in place to reach it, which would account for the losses.
You must have the wisdom to know the difference between that which you can and cannot control.
I sold my stock at $ 33.23 a share.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Has anyone heard who is going to win the “Terry Hughes Award,” the journalism award given out by the St. Louis Newspaper Guild in honor of Terry Hughes? I heard that there was a lot of nominations submitted this year and I also heard that a group of past award winners went over to the local for a meeting. However, I haven’t heard if they had announced anything yet. Anybody know what’s up?
January 23rd, 2008 at 7:45 pm
The Terry Hughes Award winner has been picked. The prize will be awarded at the St. Louis Guild’s annual dinner meeting on Friday.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
More information about the Terry Hughes Award, taken from the St. Louis Newspaper Guild website. www.stlouisguild.org
Terry Hughes was 36 when she died of breast cancer on July 22, 1991. A columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, her writing was clear, witty and descriptive, with a flair for portraying society’s underdogs. Some of her columns chronicled the bouts with canceer that she and others faced. One column was credited with helping persuade the Missouri Legislature to approve a bill forcing insurers to pay for mammograms.
One of the many readers who wrote to the newspaper after her death described her work this way: “Her columns were full of real life stories that touched us all and even changed our way of thinking or even our lives.”
The St. Louis Newspaper Guild has established a writing award in the name of Ms. Hughes. The award is intended to honor a journalist whose writing shows the talent that she displayed.
Any journalist in the metropolitan St. Louis area who has written for a daily or weekly newspaper or for a magazine is eligible.
Single articles of extraordinary merit will be considered. Preference will be given to entries of between three and ten articles that display the writer’s range of talent.
Articles must have been published in 2007. There are no formal applications. Anyone may submit a nomination by sending cipies of articles to:
The Terry Hughes Award Committee
St. Louis Newspaper Guild
1015 Locust Street
Suite 1040
St. Louis, Mo. 63101
The deadline for applications is January 10, 2008. The award will be presented at the Newspaper Guild’s Annual Dinner on January 25, 2008
January 25th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Does Lee know we have the Terry Hughes award in St. Louis. What are their feelings about an award without money attached to it. I know the Lee spirit award and $5,000 checks for special employees inside Lee have been given out mainly to movitate and compensate for the low pay at papers outside St. Louis. The Terry Hughes is truly a worthy honor for the recipient. Lee must be scratching their heads as to why people would concieve of working for honor as opposed to the demeaning, self serving Lee Corporate handouts at papers outside St. Louis where the best of the best in diminshing.
January 25th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Congrats to Concerned for selling his stock when he did. Lee stock has been a dismal performer. But I still think it’s a reasonable buy at the current price.
March 17th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Lee Enterprises and Quality Journalism, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.