WaPo Earnings Down 77 Percent

It’s a little awkward when a newspaper’s critical eye has to turn toward its own debacles. The Washington Post reported its company’s own quarterly earnings were down 77 percent from last year—a huge, if not unsurprising, slump in an increasingly dismal print industry. The Post Co. posted a fourth-quarter net income of $18.8 million on revenue of $1.16 billion, well off from its net income of $82.9 million on revenue of $1.13 billion in late 2007. Its newspaper’s $192.7 million loss for 2008 mainly came from 231 early-retirement packages taken by employees.