Reader’s Digest Bankruptcy: The Latest Print Media Woe

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Print journalism had a bad few days. The Reader’s Digest filed for Chapter 11 for the second time in three years, with $1.1 billion in assets and $1.2 billion in liabilities. The transaction will buy the publisher time and decrease debt service, but that is about all. The magazine’s many editions are read by the old and undereducated. Its Internet presence is inadequate to offset tumbling print sales, which have done so much damage to so many publications that were once the core of a booming industry.

The news comes just days after rumors that Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) will sell most of its publications into a venture with publisher Meredith. Time Inc. may keep Fortune, Sports Illustrated and Time. These three may be handed to media veteran Jeff Zucker, who is the new head of CNN. CNN Money is already the portal for Fortune and Money. And Sports Illustrated has relied on CNN for traffic as well, although that prized position recently was taken by the Bleacher Report.

For the sector to be completely transformed, all that is left is for Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who loaned money to the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) several years ago (and was paid back) to buy the ancient newspaper. Another American industry will have been destroyed.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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