'Most Brutal Week Ever' for Newspapers?

From New York Post:

Rough times

This week may be the newspaper business' most brutal ever.

E.W. Scripps yesterday said it is closing the Rocky Mountain News today after a fruitless search to find a buyer ended at the end of January.

The Denver-based paper was Colorado's first newspaper and the state's oldest continually published daily. Scripps bought it in 1926. Last year, the paper lost $16 million, according to Scripps.

But that figure is nothing compared with what's happening in San Francisco, where the San Francisco Chronicle lost $50 million in 2008 and is on target to lose even more this year.

Hearst, which bought the Chronicle in 2000, said earlier this week that unless it can wring out major savings, it, too, will shut down the paper.

The company said it will immediately seek discussions with two major unions, Northern California Media Workers Guild Local 39521 and International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 853, which represent the majority of workers at the Chronicle.

On top of that, Hearst said it was cutting 75 newsroom jobs at the San Antonio Express.

It's enough to suspect that Steve Swartz, the newly appointed president of Hearst Newspaper Group, might be wondering what he's got himself into with his new job.

Swartz, along with Frank A. Bennack Jr., Hearst's vice chairman and CEO, said in a joint statement, "Survival is the outcome we all want to achieve."

Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper chain and owner of USA Today, which has been slashing hundreds of jobs and cutting back on work weeks, said this week it will cut its dividend by 90 percent to a meager 4 cents a share.

The drama started over the weekend when New Haven Register owner Journal Register and the Philadelphia Newspaper Group, owner of Philadelphia's two dailies, the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer, each filed for Chapter 11.

Philly p.r. man Brian Tierney, with backing from in vestors, purchased the papers for $562 million in mid-2006, but has run into trouble ever since.

PNG and Journal Regis ter join two other news paper groups now functioning under Chapter 11: Sam Zell's Tribune Co., which owns The Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which filed in December and January, respectively. keith.kelly@nypost.com