Thomson Reuters is. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-01/thomson-re...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/business/media/buyouts-wal...
Submitted yesterday, didn't go anywhere: https://news.ycombinator.co/item?id=12834583
I've been picking up newspapers and magazines and been quietly horrified at how thin they are. I'm no fan of advertising, but I know it's how they pay the bills, and there are no ads there.
The Chicago Tribune is trying to keep their "news hole" at no more than 50%, and AFAICT, are failing. Even with the Cubs at the World Series (and the Trib pimping that for all its worth), the sports section has virtually no advertising. Most noticeable is the lack of classic retail: beer, wine, alcohol, automobiles, consumer electronics (a periodic Fry's ad excepted), clothing (with a few exceptions), etc. Some home services (windows, siding, etc.), and occasional furniture. But overall, terrifically thin.
Time Magazine as of September was similarly famished-looking.
Reminds me of running into a friend you'd not seen for a while, with a fatal disease. It's a visual shock.
The parent mentions it, but here's the brief from their outlet: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-thomsonreuters-results-idU...
Which does though raise the question of how it is newswires (Reuters, UPI, AP) are succeeding where direct media outlets aren't. Or is it just that the pain is there but less than (in T/R's case) the finance/risk arm?
I worked on some of the legal products, and customers were much more sensitive to completeness and accuracy of information they could obtain than the average person with a newspaper. Even with "free" news products people would also pay for alerts.
I'm aware of the Trib Tower sale. Its progress dominated the Trib's business pages for about six months.
They're not doing well but I wouldn't use the term abysmal. Print media is still declining but a lot of publishers are offsetting much of that loss with online revenue.
From 2013, but I'm not finding anything more recent:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/this-is-...
"In 2012, newspapers lost $16 in print ads for every $1 earned in digital ads." A trend that's getting worse -- it had been 10:1 in 2011, according to Pew Research.
Similarly, also 2013:
http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2013/newspapers-stabilizing-b...
And 2014: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/04/28/decline_of_ne...
The latter shows a plot of ads revenues from 1950 forward, showing it falling of a cliff in 2005. Online hasn't made a whit of a difference.