Moving Day For La Socialista?
With revenues declining, reporters getting laid off and pages being scaled back, it’s safe to say that things are in a downward spiral over at La Socialista, once the granddaddy of South Carolina newspapers.
In fact, sources are telling FITS that the paper’s end is not only “nigh” … it could be a lot “nigher” than anybody thought.
And yes, some of our sources actually talk like that …
Anyway, since we brought you the latest bad news from McClatchy (La Socialista’s parent company), things have only gotten worse for these diehard leftists.
October revenues for the company were down by 17.8% from last year, with a precipitous 20.4% decline in advertising revenues from a year ago – and guess what, La Socialista apparently isn’t helping.
“(McClatchy) has less than six months to jettison the dead weight,” said a source familiar with the company’s issues. “It has made a series of poor decisions concerning recent proposals to purchase troubled assets like The State, but its executives are fast approaching the point of no return.”
Ha! La Socialista is a “troubled asset” … now that’s just funny.
Of course, one of our McClatchy friends disputes that analysis, saying that a recent deal for La Socialista was rejected because it did not provide sufficient up-front cash and was structured “too much like a lease.”
Either way, it’s clear by now that South Carolina’s largest newspaper (well, now its second-largest) is going under.
And frankly, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.
Instead of doing its job, La Socialista has planted its lips squarely on the buttocks of our state’s failed status quo for years now, serving as a fawning bureaucratic apologist when it should have been acting as a public watchdog.
The paper has unapologetically pushed a big government, anti-free market agenda at every turn, employing all manner of double standards, conflicts of interest and blackmail-style advertising tactics.
It’s only fitting that the free market is now shoveling dirt on its grave.
La Socialista not only deserves to die … its headquarters should be razed to the ground and the earth salted on top of it.
Well, except for the sports staff, of course … who should all come work for us here at FITS!
Comments
By Gen. Longstreet on November 25th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Yes, yes. Raze it then salt the earth for good measure — just like the Romans did to Carthage. And just like we should do with the infernal Peach Orchard and the Wheatfield. Hood, McLaw — strike the tent!
By Regulus@binarymoon on November 25th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I’m not sure about your assertion that The State is on the ropes. While McClatchy and other newspaper companies are indeed struggling, operations such as The State are almost certainly still making a decent profit. The problem for the folks who run The State is that it’s not enough to keep their corporate masters happy.
For many years, I understand The State earned between 15-20 percent profit annually. Yes, the advent of the Internet has cut sharply into the paper’s profit margin, but I’d be greatly surprised if the paper was actually losing money. Remember, even with increased competition for readers from television and sites such as FITS News, they’re still the only game in town in terms of local print journalism, and advertisers know that.
That doesn’t mean that McClatchy wouldn’t sell The State and other newspapers to try and placate Wall Street, but for many public newspaper companies, franchises such as The State and The Myrtle Beach Sun News – both of which essentially hold monopolies in their markets – are still lucrative operations.
By Not Sayin', Just Sayin' on November 25th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
La Socialista has already gotten rid of its masthead. Can the rest be far behind?
By baker on November 26th, 2008 at 12:14 am
I’d say the recent series about DHEC was anything but a defense of the status quo or bureaucrats.
By the way, are daily papers in this region with more conservative editorial pages doing better financially, or is this just a trend with the the print media, generally?