WaPo Pulp Posts Loss

The parent company, Washington Post Co., posted a $45m profit for the quarter balanced against a $13M loss for the newspaper. –

The Washington Post Co. reported a first-quarter 2010 profit of $45.4 million ($4.91 per share) compared with a net loss of $19.2 million ($2.04) in the first quarter of 2009.

First-quarter revenue was $1.17 billion, up 11 percent from the same period last year, when revenue was $1.05 billion.

The revenue increase came from gains in The Post Co.’s Kaplan education division, its CableOne cable company and its six television stations, which offset losses at its newspaper and magazine divisions.

Kaplan reported a 20 percent gain in first-quarter revenue to $711.4 million, compared with the first quarter of 2009. Kaplan’s first-quarter operating income surged to $57.9 million, compared with $11.1 million in the first quarter of 2009.

The Post Co.’s newspaper division, which is dominated by the flagship newspaper, lost $13.8 million in the first quarter of 2010, compared with a loss of $53.8 million in the same period last year. This comes after a fourth quarter of 2009 when the newspaper moved into the black on the strength of cost cutting and holiday ad spending.

Clearly if a newspaper can’t make a go of it in the largest rumor mill in the country then what is the hope for any dead tree paper anywhere else? Nil to non-existent is what.

I lament their ultimate demise but Journalism killed the brand. Yes I distinguish between Journalism and Reporting. They are poles apart. We have not seen objective reporting in this country in probably a decade.

The paper is dead, long live the paper.

Linky.