The Motley Fool is reporting today that Lee Enterprises, publisher of the Billings Gazette, as a member of the “specialist media,” “will be better positioned than their generalist peers to survive and even thrive in the new media landscape.”
This could be good news for investors, the Motley Fool’s audience, but it remains to be seen whether readers of Lee Enterprise-owned newspapers and the people who work for them will see any benefits if Lee does outperform its “generalist peers.”
So, how does Lee Enterprises qualify as a “specialist” media company anyway? Quoth the Fool: “Lee Enterprises is a publisher specializing in community newspapers that are focused on mid-sized to small markets. Community newspapers belong to a specialized category with unique characteristics.”
The article then goes on to recount all those aspects of Lee that once made it such a mighty though small newspaper chain: Little or no competition, its winning focus on local news and a huge market share.
But as I said, this “analysis” seems to be aimed only at investors. No mention of Lee’s $800 million debt, which is likely to devour whatever profits any of its member newspapers make for many, many years to come.
And even the Motley Fool acknowledges that “success” in the media world is somewhat questionable: “According to its internal estimates, Lee Enterprises’ cumulative top line decline between 2007 and 2012 of 33% is among the lowest of its listed newspaper peers.”
