The New York Times Company (NYTCO) had results slightly more engaging than many of its newspaper peers. Media General, a smaller company, also managed to do well, posting a double digit growth for its interactive unit, thanks to its multimedia activities. But companies such as Gannett or McClatchy faced more difficulties to reach the top of the chart.

NYTCO gets the most of its revenue from online advertising. The News Media Group’s online revenues rose 21.4 percent last month, but still the overall ad segment’s revenues were down 1.2 percent.
At the same time, the NYTCO’s online guide segment, which includes the web properties About.com, ConsumerSearch.com, UCompareHealthCare.com and Calorie-Count.com, posted revenue gains of 23.7 percent to $9 million, attributed to healthy display and cost-per-click rates.

Media General suffered from print declines but its interactive media division revenues grew 34.8 percent. Local online revenues grew 42.5 percent since last November, and its partnership with Yahoo's HotJobs also helped to mitigate the weakness in classifieds, which declined 13.1 percent.

The Gannett company operating revenues fell 4.6 percent to $634 million, while classifieds dropped 11.2 percent to $3.4million. On a positive note, local advertising revs grew 1.6 percent in November.

More than others newpapers, McClatchy strongly suffered from troubles with classifieds and circulation. As a Forbes article points out, its shares closed Monday at $12,75, down more than 80 percent from the ’05 peak, which was its poorest finish in more than 15 years.

Newspapers still hope that strong online revenue growth will compensate for these losses, and that wise partnerships will help strengthen their business. But according to a WSJ article , “the online newspaper alliances won’t have a significant impact on companies’ as a whole”. It also adds that it may be too late for newspapers to catch up, despite individual success stories like Media General or the NYTCO.

Source: PaidContent.org