Trouble at The Oakland Press

Front page picture/graphic, created by me, for the Dec. 23, 2004 online edition of The Oakland Press. Journal Register Company, the newspaper's owner, declared bankruptcy on Saturday.

A little bit of sad, but not unexpected, news today.

The Detroit Free Press (with a heavy heart, I'm sure) rolled out the news that the Journal Register Company, which owns 20 daily newspapers including The Oakland Press, filed for bankruptcy protection on Saturday. The article said JRC will "cancel its stock and become a closely held company, owned by its lenders, under a proposed reorganization plan filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. It listed debt of as much as $1 billion and assets of between $100 million and $500 million in Chapter 11 documents."

As a former employee of The Oakland Press, I can with some authority report that the company has been in trouble for some time.

JRC paid too much – $415 million – for 21st Century Newspapers in 2004. They bought The Oakland Press, The Macomb Daily, two other dailies and 87 non-dailies. Frank Shepherd, 21st Century's CEO at the time, had invested $300 million into 21st Century just seven years earlier. He reassured everyone that the new owners were "good people" and would take "good care" of the employees. Then he took his golden parachute and retreated to Charlevoix.

Shortly after the announcement that JRC was taking over, I remember one of the photographers warning everyone the company was bad news. The Internet is full of horror stories about JRC. (It was named one of the Ten Worst Managed Companies in the America by the Web site 24/7 Wall Street in September 2006). There isn't enough space in this blog to devote to the nightmares that company has brought to other newspapers across the country, but suffice to say there are plenty of other blogs that do. To be brief, flagging morale at The Oakland Press dropped even further. Three senior editors, who had each been with the paper for more than 30 years, were suddenly axed in August 2006. The next month, several IT people, including myself, were let go. There have been other layoff rounds since.

Before the recession hit nationally, the economy had slowed in Michigan about three or four years earlier. JRC was doing fair everywhere else, but the Michigan cluster was dragging the whole company down. It became routine for JRC to announce its financial reports with the words "excluding the Michigan cluster." I remember an immense amount of pressure being applied to the sales people at The Oakland Press. But things really took a turn for the worse when classified advertising fell off.

Last year, JRC's stock was delisted by the New York Stock Exchange. The stock now trades at fractions of a cent. Slowly, the company has been closing, or trying to sell, newspapers in the Philadelphia area, and in Connecticut and New Jersey.

So it was just a matter of time before Saturday's announcement. The big questions now are, will JRC sell The Oakland Press? Who wants to buy it? And what will happen to the people working there now?

But perhaps the most disturbing part about all of this has been the reaction from people back in Michigan, specifically those posting comments on the Freep site in tandem with the article about JRC's bankruptcy announcement.

Some idiot named "Tucker 13" wrote:
I canceled the Oakland Press after 10 years of home delivery after they dropped Ann Coulter because some moonbats complained. Screw em. Hope they go under and all the liberals who work there lose everything they have.

For a region that has been hurting economically for at least three years longer than any other part of the country, and is now suffering more than anywhere else, it's pretty shocking and sad that someone would write "screw them," and "I hope they go under and everyone who works there loses everything they have." Wow. And that diatribe was because they cancelled an Ann Coulter column? Seriously?

Must be a JRC stockholder.