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Singleton Empire on brink of collapse?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Tucsondriver, Apr 6, 2008.

  1. Tucsondriver

    Tucsondriver Member

    Rumors abound that Lean Dean's on the brink of financial ruin. I don't fully understand terms like ``highly leveraged'' and ``junk bond status'' that have been bandied about on blogs and elsewhere describing El Dino's severe financial woes. :)

    To those who've followed Lean Dean's career, this should be no surprise. According to CJR's ``The Evolution of Dean Singleton'' Lean Dean ran his first venture into the ground, and was soon hospitalized with depression. :'(
    [http://cjrarchives.org/issues/2003/2/dean-sherman.asp].

    Another credible source, followthemedia.com, questions whether the sketchy 2006 Knight Ridder/McClatchy deal was a major miscalculation. :mad:
    (http://www.followthemedia.com/bigbusiness/leandean03102007.htm.prn?PHPSESSID=119ec009ac1e8129dd6e24e42c392d97).

    Something about this story - Singleton going full circle, with the forces that led him to his first demise, contriuting to what some now think is an imminent collapse - seems almost Shakesperian...

    Anyone have any thoughts on what a full blown Lean Dean meltdown would mean? Would the papers just close? Would debtors take them over, and if so, would they be more benevolent? ???
     
  2. lono

    lono Active Member

    Just ask folks who worked for Ingersoll only to have them morph into JRC. That did not end well, either.
     
  3. Football_Bat

    Football_Bat Well-Known Member

    "Highly leveraged" is business-speak for being in debt up to your eyeballs.
     
  4. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    Junk bonds - Your creditors figure their chances of getting paid off are about as good as if they had sunk their money into lotto tickets.
     
  5. Tucsondriver

    Tucsondriver Member

    Not good... I get it... Any thoughts on who stands to gain/lose when Singleton Empire falls?
     
  6. lono

    lono Active Member

    Humanity.
     
  7. Piotr Rasputin

    Piotr Rasputin New Member

    Singleton's employees will lose the most, short-term.

    Humanity and the industry itself can only be better in the long run without his involvement.
     
  8. Tucsondriver

    Tucsondriver Member

    As much as many of us would like to see Singleton fall - and in the most cataclysmic sense possible - there are many good scribes who do excellent work with the little they have and serve their communities well, in spite of their wretched owner, so I don't see humanity benefiting unless the papers get taken over by a more enlightened company. Am I dreamin?
     
  9. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    If Singleton falls, I'll have three words for him: Sic semper tyrannis.
     
  10. lono

    lono Active Member

    I have said this before and I think it bears repeating.

    Working for slave wages in impossible conditions for a mean-spirited asshole is a horrible way to waste your life.

    It's like being an abusive marriage - you can't fully appreciative how f-ed up and dysfunctional it was until you've been away from it for some period of months or even years.

    There is life after Singleton, just as there is life after JRC. In the long run, people are better off elsewhere, even if it involves some wrenching short-term pain.
     
  11. rpmmutant

    rpmmutant Member

    Th
    This was brought up after Black Friday, when Hanes and Moss talked to the newsroom about the layoffs. At what point does Singleton give up and stop running a newspaper group. When his earnings dip to $70 million? $50 million? $30 million? We were of course told there is not cut-off point.
    Thing is, Singleton, by our estimation, has to maintain a 10 percent profit margin just to make payments on his public outstanding loans. Lord knows what he owes privately and what kind of margin he has to maintain to pay back those loans. That's why he has a junk-bond status. Anyone lending him any more money cannot realistically expect to be repaid.
    At the rate he is "losing" money, which is the wrong word, because he is still running a company that makes $270 million a year, and that's just in LANG, he is losing 20 percent of his earnings from the previous year. If that number continues at its current rate, his earnings will drop to near $50 million in the next three years, if my math is correct. That's a scary number, and probably means Singleton has to resort to bankruptcy, unless he can find an investor to bail him out. Last I checked, newspapers are not very good nor popular investments.
    The other thing he could do is go public, and try to raise some capital that way, but then he would be at the mercy of shareholders who really don't care about quality of journalism, just profit margins.
     
  12. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    Sounds like Singleton.
     
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