SORRY STATE

McClatchy, One of the Nation’s Biggest Newspaper Publishers, Files for Bankruptcy

The company’s 30 newspapers—including the Miami Herald and Charlotte Observer—won’t be immediately affected.

McClatchy—one of America’s biggest newspaper publishers and owner of the Miami Herald, Charlotte Observer, and Kansas City Star—filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday. The Washington Post reports the company’s 30 newspapers will keep rolling out during the Chapter 11 bankruptcy-protection process, which will allow it to forward a plan to eliminate 60 percent of the company’s $700 million in debt. If the courts approve the plan, control of the publisher will be handed to the company’s largest creditor, the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management. The publisher has been plagued by financial problems ever since a $4.5 billion takeover by rival Knight-Ridder in 2006, worsened by the decline of print newspaper sales. “The problem is that as of 2015, Google and Facebook make up about 75 percent of the digital ad dollar in U.S. markets,” said Penny Abernathy, the Knight Chair of journalism at the University of North Carolina. “That’s not enough to sustain the newsrooms McClatchy inherited from Knight-Ridder.”