"The McClatchy family, descendants of the company’s founder and namesake, are relinquishing control in this bankruptcy, handing the keys to Chatham Asset Management," Ken Doctor writes in the latest issue of Newsonomics. "Does Chatham want to be an operator of a newspaper company for any period of time? Or will it try to transmute its suddenly shinier asset through the alchemy of the hour, consolidation?"
He says: "Both arguments can be made. McClatchy post-bankruptcy will now produce similar levels of profit but won’t have to hand as much of it over to feed massive debt and pension obligations. In that scenario, Chatham could just … happily operate the company for a while, even though the ongoing reality of double-digit revenue declines dispel any notions of longer-term stability."
In this post, Doctor poses the six questions he has about what will happen next.
