Newspaper stocks lose $3.9 billion in 2 weeks

I don’t think many of us — even though we may have intellectually known it was coming — anticipated the magnitude and the pace of value destruction we’re seeing right now in the newspaper industry. From Alan Mutter: “In a historic rout, newspaper shares have lost nearly $4 billion in the last couple weeks, an amount greater than the combined market capitalization of all but the three largest publicly-traded publishing companies.” Just one example: A.H. Belo today is worth $119 million, down 58% from $282 million when it began trading earlier this year as a free-standing newspaper publisher. “At today’s close, the total decline in value of the dozen newspaper shares trading since the first of the year was nearly $27.7 billion, a plunge of 35.7% in 6½ months,” Mutter writes. Simply stunning.