Last week the Charlotte Observer’s parent company, McClatchy, announced it will stop printing Saturday editions at all of its papers next year. The California-based company, which also owns the Raleigh News & Observer and the Rock Hill Herald, is about $700 million in debt.
The IRS has declined the company’s request to defer making payments to its pension plan. That’s raised the question of a possible bankruptcy.
Tony Mecia: So when you say, "Well, what does it mean for the Observer?" I mean, it's sort of hard to know. No company wants to be in bankruptcy. There are a lot of things that are unpredictable about being in bankruptcy, but it's not necessarily a bad thing for the operation of the Observer and the other newspapers if they can shed some of that debt and come up with a plan that makes them viable going forward.
Terry: The Observer, like a lot of papers, has struggled in recent years. You asked a few current and former leaders in Charlotte media what they thought the future of news coverage in the city looks like. What were some of the responses you got?
Mecia: Yeah, I would say the most overwhelming response I got is one that -- and this is nothing new, really, or surprising -- but printed papers have not been succeeding for a while. And that the trend line is much more toward digital publications, towards online publication. I mean, you see the Observer moving this direction as well. You see other news organizations that are in other media moving that direction. And so what I'm hearing is that the future is maybe instead of having a newspaper be the main center of media in a city, that you're going to have a lot of smaller media. That each are a little more niche, that have their own area that they look into and that provide very different things to their readers or consumers.