Running a newspaper is tough business nowadays. Media General, Inc., whose newspapers include The Daily Progress and Richmond Times-Dispatch, knows something about it. All it’s hearing from Wall Street is sell, sell, and sell.
Harbinger Capital Partners, an activist hedge fund with seats on the Media General board, cut its stakes in the Richmond-based communications company due to a 5.8 percent revenue decrease last month led by declines in classified ad sales.
Harbinger, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, said it sold 300,770 shares between November 12 and yesterday (putting Media General out of about 17 percent of outstanding stock.)
Yesterday, shares closed at $2.17 after dipping as low as $1.36. When the market closed today, Media General shares settled at $2.23, down from its $2.88 opening. Shares traded on very heavy volume, nearly three times the daily average.
For Daily Progress employees, the sound of falling stock prices is all too familiar. It was only in July that the local daily laid off 25 employees after it shut down its in-house printing operations.
So, the question remains. Is it long before the Daily Progress becomes a two-page newsletter?
In July, The Daily Progress moved its printing operations from Rio Road to the Richmond-Times Dispatch’s Hanover County press center.
