DAVENPORT – Lee Enterprises, owner of the Globe Gazette in Mason City and other newspapers, remains close to a billion dollars in debt.
The company stated earlier this month that it had lopped off about $98.5 million in its fiscal year ending September 29th, 2013 but still had outstanding debts of $847.5 million.
The company remains dedicated to what is calls a “reorganization plan” after massive debts piled up over the years. Lee newspapers, including the Globe Gazette, have shrunk in size dramatically over the last 10 years or so.
Lee CEO Mary Junck blamed “macroeconomic and business conditions” on the dire financial situation of Lee. The company has tried slashing its workforce, minimizing its print paper, and other tactics to stay afloat.
NorthIowaToday.com Publisher Matt Marquardt said Saturday he wasn’t surprised that Lee and the Globe continue to struggle.
“I worked there for over six years,” Mr. Marquardt said. “The place was a mess and from my vantage point, it still is. The management treated their employees like crap. They fired good, hard-working citizens of North Iowa to outsource overseas as I understand it. That’s why their ads commonly have misspellings. They brought in designers from second and third world countries. In their print paper, the pictures are so blurry you can barely tell what they took a photograph of. It’s embarrassing; I can’t hardly believe they offer a product of that poor of quality. I predict they will move out of their current location on North Washington sooner rather than later in a massive downsize. NIT will get the story.”
Lee stock (LEE) has traded between $1.10 – $3.20 over the last 52 weeks.
They are still 17 trillion under the US debt, give them a break. We all run our household budget like this don’t we?
Obama said, “just because we increase the debt limit, that doesn’t mean we are increasing our debt.”
I wonder what collection agency is calling the White House every day to collect payments like “Mercy Hospital” does?}
If Mary Junck would monitor the Mason City branch and get rid of the biggest waste of all in John Skipper she may have a chance.
The wrong people are getting let go.
Ok so that’s not exactly where all the problems are but she (They,Lee Enterprises) really need to stop the bias especially at election time. A couple of years ago there were big issues. We tried telling them about Skipper through NIT articles then.
Wake up Mary and see some of your lost readers or possibly new readers won’t tolerate the way John Skipper behaves.
Start with Skipper and you may see a huge turn around. Get him OUT of your corporation!
Be warned though, you will never capture the authenticity of a true news paper until you give it to us like NorthIowaToday. NIT.
Very poor quality printing. If I were an advertiser I would never run my ad in color either-absolutely horrible. So sad I worked there 20 years ago when their was. A lot of pride. Publisher is nothing more than a hatchet guy. He will do anything and everything to keep his job is what some of my old coworkers tell me. No one ever retires from their,they just get their job eliminated or outsourced.
I noticed the black looks decent but the color is always way way off. Its like they printed it twice or three times but off by 4 millimeters every time. I guess the glob is too cheap to hire someone to fix their out-dated giant blue printer. Sad thing for them is, people have noticed and make fun of them all day long.
It really is unbelievable how blurry the pics are in the newspaper. Don’t they have a huge printing press right inside the building?