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News flash! Newspapers are in trouble!

Just in case you didn’t know that, credit agency rating company Fitch released a nice, long refresher course on one of the United States’s favorite dying-yet-profitable business.

Titled “U.S. Newspaper Outlook Update – Still Negative,” Fitch sought and caught the hook that reporters use to freshen up the story: Things aren’t just bad, they’re worse than we thought!

Excerpts:

• Gannett Co, Inc. (Not Rated): Ad pages down 17% at the USA Today and pro forma real estate classifieds at community newspapers down 20%.
• Tribune Company (rated ‘B+’, Rating Watch Negative by Fitch): Classifieds down 18% driven by real estate down 24% and employment classifieds down 19%.
• The McClatchy Company (‘BB+’, Stable Outlook): Real estate down 26%, Automotive down 20% and National down 19%.
• Dow Jones (‘BBB+’, Rating Watch Negative): Ad volume down 20% driven by a 75% decline in technology related ads. Classifieds down 14%.

And then there’s this:

Stock prices have been down for several years, but with the turbulent credit markets, Fitch believes that companies that did not already pursue highly leveraged acquisitions or leveraged recapitalizations are less likely to pursue those types of transactions in this funding environment.

Goldman Sachs analyst Peter Appert released a similar assessment on Monday in a research note: “Our message is consistent and (sadly) unchanged: Business is lousy, with no signs of near-term improvement.”

This just goes to disprove the old saying that no news is good news.