Far from Dead: The Case for 3 Newspaper Stocks

The digital age has not been kind to the newspaper
industry. Not too long ago owning a newspaper was a lucrative
enterprise synonymous with large circulation numbers, huge profit
margins, and historically high stock prices.<!--more-->The newspaper industry,
the second oldest mass media enterprise in the United States with more
than 3 centuries of existence, had no outside competition because its
structure was practically a monopoly and its core business highly
localized.

This was before the newspaper business model was mercilessly
dismantled by the web and its three-headed monster: Craigslist, Google,
and the culture of free content. With the accelerated growth of the
internet via the web browser in 1996, newspaper profit margins began to
shrink at faster rates than ever before. Suddenly, news audiences and
advertisers had a new platform and the desirability for print
newspapers declined. The story is a familiar one but there are a lot of
myths.