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Filed under: Industry, Gannett Co (GCI)

The newspaper business had been bad and getting worse. Ad revenue at some large chains with properties in the hard-hit economies of Florida and California are seeing their classified businesses drop by over 30% compared with last year. A number of newspaper chain stocks are down well over 50% since the middle of 2007.

Big Banks are dying, WaMu (NYSE:WM) hit $6.05 and BofA (NYSE:BAC) hit $29.34 today. It’s one thing for Crocs Inc (NASDAQ:CROX) to hit $9.03, but our U.S. financial institutions?  Good Lord.

Other 52-week lows include (via 247WallSt.com):

AMBAC (ABK) Sells off to $2.02 after downgrades. The 52-week high was $89.33.

MBIA (MBI) Also hit by downgrades and drops to $4.78 from 52-week high of $68.98.

Wachovia (WB) Flamed. Down to $18.22 from 52-week high of $54.54.

Gatehouse (GHS) Newspapers still hit hard. Falls to $3.50 from 52-week high of $19.64.

Filed under: Earnings reports, Bad news, Gannett Co (GCI), Economic data

Apparently Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com, hates newspapers. His new social network aims to cut in on the last bastion of sure profit that the newspapers had - obituaries. The site is Tributes.com, and it's a place to memorialize people online. Taylor told Wired:

"I've watched and built a career on migrating the whole newspaper to the web, and the obituary section is the laggard category."

Seen this movie before. Many times, in fact: McClatchy underperformed the street's low expectations for Q1; it says the ad market is lousy, and points hopefully at the propspect of boom in digital revenues. But it won't be enough. Details are all here. Hate to read? Here they are in picture form: