Lee Enterprises Inc.

Suburban Journals: Two Print Editions Fold, 20 Layoffs, "Just Really Sad," Says Former Writer

The Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis, the local newspapers owned by the same company as the Post-Dispatch and published online at stltoday.com are undergoing a major transition that involves shuttering two print editions and laying off twenty employees. The official announcement from parent ... More >>

Post-Dispatch Quietly Hikes Newsstand Price

The price of the Monday through Saturday Post-Dispatch increased 50 percent last week from $1.00 to $1.50. The Sunday paper also jumped 50 cents to $2.50.

Warren Buffett Now Owns More Lee Enterprises Stock

Berkshire Hathaway, billionaire Warren Buffett's conglomerate, revealed in SEC filings Tuesday that the company has increased its stake in Lee Enterprises to the tune of 3.23 million shares. That just about doubles the amount of Lee stock Berkshire Hathaway owns, which it first acquired when Buffett ... More >>

Post-Dispatch Layoffs Include Photographer Johnny Andrews, Creator of the LISTEN Series

It's a truly bad day for St. Louis journalism -- the Post-Dispatch has laid off 23 employees, including editors Judith Evans, Steve Parker, Daivd Sheets and Tim Bross, three reporters, a web editor and the editorial cartoonist. This comes one day after Mary Junck, CEO of the paper's owner Lee Enterp ... More >>

Sad Coda for Today's Post-Dispatch News

As you may have heard, the Post-Dispatch laid off 23 employees today. The company announced the development eventually, in this unbylined story. Is it unbylined because no one wanted to write it, or because there was no one left to write it, edit it and produce an image to accompany it? Lee Enterpri ... More >>

Lee Enterprises Lost More Money in 3rd Quarter. Oh, and Paywalls Are Coming to "Nearly All Markets"

Lee Enterprises announced a third-quarter loss of only $1.5 million, which is down quite a bit from the losses of $155 million in the same quarter of the previous year. Successfully pushing that decimal point two places to the left means that shares only lost three cents of their value in the third ... More >>

Lee Enterprises Stock Cools Off a Bit After "Warren Buffet Surge"

Late Tuesday, Berkshire Hathaway -- the conglomerate controlled by investment wizard Warren Buffet -- was forced by SEC fiat to disclose that it had bought $2.1 million worth of shares in Lee Enterprises, parent company of the Post-Dispatch.  So naturally, here's what happened:

Ellen Back Again: Arnie Robbins steps down as editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and RFT checks in with his predecessor

Lee Enterprises Defers Pension Payments to Employees

Post-Dispatch employees enrolled in the Pulitzer pension plan received letters this weekend notifying them that Lee Enterprises chose to exercise an election that allowed the company to defer paying into the plan for all of 2011. So Lee deferred making payments to employee pensions for 2011, but gav ... More >>

P-D Employees Protest CEO's Half-Million Dollar Bonus

Many of you shared our outrage a few weeks ago when we reported that Lee Enterprises, parent company of the Post-Dispatch, gave its CEO Mary Junck a $500,000 bonus for successfully guiding the corporation out of bankruptcy. CFO Carl Schmidt made out pretty well, too: He got $250,000. The P-D employ ... More >>

Lee Enterprises Out of Bankruptcy

​Late yesterday afternoon Lee Enterprises officially left behind its bankrupt status. The parent corporation of our own Post-Dispatch, as well as more than 40 other daily newspapers, successfully repackaged boatloads of debt without paying any of it down or selling it off. That means the big payme ... More >>

Post-Dispatch Parent Co. Files Bankruptcy on 132nd Anniversary of Paper's Founding

The nearest image of a "face palm" Joseph Pulitzer we could find.​Here's betting that the corporate brass at Lee Enterprises up in Davenport has no idea that today is the anniversary of the founding of the Post-Dispatch. If it did, you'd think it would choose any day but today to officially fi ... More >>

Post-Dispatch Subject of New Lawsuit

Retirees of the cash-strapped Post-Dispatch say they were misled about health benefits​A dozen former employees of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch are suing the local daily for fraudulent inducement and negligent misrepresentation, claiming that the paper's top brass pulled out of a 2007 agreement ... More >>

Lee Enterprises' Revenue Likely Down 3.3 Percent in 2011 Fiscal Year

Lee Enterprises stock has declined over the last fiscal year; revenue is expected to have dropped 3.3 percent during that time.​The fiscal year is over for Lee Enterprises, the Iowa-based owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Arizona Daily Star and a host of other daily newspapers -- and the n ... More >>

Post-Dispatch Sued (Again) Over Retiree Benefits

​The beleaguered St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- already fending off a lawsuit from the Newspaper Guild over retiree benefits -- now faces another suit from the union representing its mailroom workers.The CWA Local 14620, also known as the St. Louis Mailers Union No. 3, represents the 220 employees who ... More >>

Newspaper Distribution Plan Draws Fight from Sauce, Other Indie Publications

A subsidiary of Lee Enterprises hopes to take over management of freebie publication racks, like this one at Vintage Vinyl in the Delmar Loop.​The publishers of such local indie publications as Sauce, Alive and Vital Voice have long relied on something of a free-for-all distribution system: They p ... More >>

Lee Enterprises Refinancing Plan Fails to Rally Stock

Late yesterday afternoon, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises, parent company of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other newspapers, announced some potentially pretty good news: The company had gotten an agreement to push back the due date on some $864 million in debt.That deal is dependent on the company refi ... More >>

Lee Enterprises Gets Another SEC Warning -- Stock Faces Delisting

Lee Enterprises has loads of debt -- but the company's current market value has dipped below $50 million.​Lee Enterprises -- parent company of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Arizona Daily Star and a number of other smaller newspapers -- has been warned a second time in as many months that it cou ... More >>

Lee Enterprises Wants to Cut Post-Dispatch Newsroom

Paper cuts: Hard to stop the bleeding.​Lee Enterprises is mailing out buyout offers this week to its roughly 150 employees in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newsroom. The Iowa-based parent company of the St. Louis daily has seen its depressed stock price dip impossibly lower this summer and hopes to ... More >>

Lee Enterprises, Post-Dispatch Parent Co., Continues Downward Slide

courtesy of Google Finance.Lee Enterprises' stock (shown in blue) is down 20 percent in the last six months, as this graph shows. Fellow media giants Gannett (in red) and McClatchy (in yellow) have also lost considerable value.​Another quarterly report, another piece of bad news.That's the woefull ... More >>

Lee Enterprises, Post-Dispatch Parent Co., Could Be Delisted from NYSE

Lee Enterprises could lose its spot on the New York Stock Exchange.​The stock for Lee Enterprises, the Iowa-based newspaper company that owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has dropped to bargain-level prices -- as of July 1, it was trading at a mere 99 cents per share.And that could have serious re ... More >>

P-D Parent Company, Lee, Tightening Its Belt After Rough Week

A bad day for Lee Enterprises could become a bad day for the P-D.​Lee Enterprises, the Iowa-based company that owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Arizona Daily Star and a host of smaller newspapers, has issued a press release that explains a bit about that very bad day the company had earlier t ... More >>

Profits Up at Post-Dispatch Parent Company Even As Ad Sales Fall

Online revenue is growing for the Post-Dispatch's parent company -- but not nearly fast enough to replace the print advertisers being lost.Profits up; revenue down -- that generally means fewer journalists.​That's the latest news from Lee Enterprises, based in Davenport, Iowa. The St. Louis Post-D ... More >>

Nosh, "The Neighborhood Bistro," Now Open in Maplewood

Ian FroebNosh, the neighborhood bistro, in Maplewood​Now open at 7322 Manchester Road in Maplewood is Nosh, which calls itself "The Neighborhood Bistro" so you won't confuse it with other downtown Maplewood bistros like the Post Sports Bar & Grill and Las Palmas.Kidding.Seriously, though, don' ... More >>

Report: Copia Urban Winery to Reopen Friday, June 25

Ian FroebCopia, immediately after the 2007 fire​George Mahe reports on Feast (that's Feast, the St. Louis Magazine food blog, not Feast, the new culinary magazine from Lee Enterprises) that at long last Copia Urban Winery (1122 Washington Avenue) will reopen at 11 a.m. on Friday, June 25.Copia has ... More >>

Post-Dispatch Union Scribes Suck It Up & Accept Lee Enterprises' Concessions

Wikimedia CommonsTalk to the hand...​The mood was somber on Saturday afternoon as St. Louis Post-Dispatch employees strode into their union meeting to vote on Lee Enterprises' "last, best and final [contract] offer."The St. Louis Newspaper Guild's contract for P-D employees expired in June 2009; t ... More >>

Lee Enterprises Throws Down the Gauntlet. Will The P-D Union Concede?

Wikimedia Commons​The union that represents St. Louis Post-Dispatch employees has hired a pair of flacks who ran PR for the POTUS' '08 campaign in anticipation of a public fight with the paper's owner. Contract talks between the St. Louis Newspaper Guild and Lee Enterprises broke down last we ... More >>

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Employees May Pony Up $500,000 To Sully Lee Enterprises

Wikimedia Commons​Negotiations between the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's corporate parent and the local union that represents the paper's staff have so deteriorated that union officials have agreed to free up $500,000 in union assets for tarring and feathering. The St. Louis Newspaper Guild is n ... More >>

Lee Enterprises Wants to Cut Post-Dispatch Wages by 25 Percent

Torn to Shreds: The guild says negotiations with Lee have grown "acrimonious."​The St. Louis Newspaper Guild reports that Post-Dispatch owner Lee Enterprises wants to cut wages 15 percent in the first year of a new contract and another 5 percent in both the second and third years of the agreement. ... More >>

Post-Dispatch Parent Made Bank (Sorta) This Last Quarter

Wikimedia Commons​Circulation, print advertising and online ads this past quarter all declined (again) on the books of Lee Enterprises, the corporate parent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. But so did the costs of compensation, newsprint and ink. Which is good news for Iowa-based Lee.&nbs ... More >>

Ink-Stained Kvetch: Post-Dispatch Retirees Make Good on Threat, Protest Ex-Employer

It all piles up.​Several dozen former employees of the Post-Dispatch gathered yesterday morning outside the newspaper's office on Tucker Boulevard to protest cuts to their health-care coverage. As first reported last week in Daily RFT, Lee Enterprises, owner of the paper, notified former employees ... More >>

Jeez Berger: Unreal Takes the Pulse of the STL via Jerry Berger (October 30 Edition)

​Our years apart have not dimmed the torch Unreal carries for former Post-Dispatch gossip columnist Jerry Berger. (Now that we think of it, make that "former Post-Dispatch and Globe-Democrat gossip columnist Jerry Berger"!) Yet we realize that not every St. Louisan follows the Berge ... More >>

Wounded, Laid-Off Lee Enterprises Reporter Gets Hired & Hitched

Todd Smith was the only person wounded in the Kirkwood shootings to survive. ​In case you missed Deb Peterson's schmooze on Todd Smith, the former Suburban Journals reporter who was wounded in the Kirkwood City Hall shooting a year before being laid off by the employer he took a bullet for: Smith ... More >>

Suburban Journals Announces Layoffs and Restructuring

Several former Suburban Journals staffers tell Daily RFT that the regional chain of free weeklies laid off an undetermined number of sports and news reporters yesterday. ​At the same time, the Journals managers told staff that the chain is restructuring its editions, and going from sixteen to ten. ... More >>

Post-Dispatch Publisher's Million-Dollar Manse on the Market, But He's Sticking Around in St. Louis

The rank-and-file in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newsroom has been busy speculating about more changes in upper management at the Lee Enterprises-owned newspaper ever since Pam Maples, the managing editor, suddenly announced she was resigning. ​Fueling the chatter: a recent BlockShopper blurb abou ... More >>

In Bid to Survive, Newspaper Industry May Steal Play From Music Publishers

flickr.com/photos/iboy_danielDetails are beginning to emerge from the meeting we told you about last month involving some of the nation's biggest newspaper publishers -- including Lee Enterprises owner of the Post-Dispatch.  Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that the newspaper honchos ... More >>

Newspaper Titans in Secret Meeting to Decide Their Future -- and Yours

fllickr.com/photos/Fish EnterTop executives from Lee Enterprises, owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, were among a select group of newspaper heavyweights who assembled in secret Thursday for a series of hush-hush discussions, including the possibility of charging for Web content. The meetin ... More >>

More Furloughs & Pay Cuts at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Late last week Lee Enterprises informed all the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's non-union editors and managers that they are required to take a *second* week-long furlough in 2009. According to the memo circulated, the furlough days must be taken between June and September 27. This time, pay will be reduc ... More >>

Suburban Journals Laying Off Today?

An anonymous tipster tells me (briefly) that Lee Enterprises'/St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Suburban Journals is laying off its "creative department" today. (By my tally, the last pink-slipping, of 45 employees, occurred last fall.) Supposedly the creative jobs are being "outsourced." Not sure how many ... More >>

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Ramps Up Its 'Social Networking'

The local daily continues to rejig operations in the wake of significant cost-cutting  (layoffs), and is now hoping to ramp up online traffic (revenues) with a social networking portal a la Facebook and the New York Times' TimesPeople. Called MySTLToday, the application apparently launche ... More >>

Post-Dispatch Layoffs Include 14 From Newsroom

Columnist and commentary page editor Eric Mink and prep/college sports editor Cameron Hollway were among the slew of folks who got pink-slipped at the local daily yesterday.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch laid off 39 employees across four departments, including fourteen from the newsroom. ... More >>

Suburban Journals Also Shedding Employees, 45 Fired Friday

Former Web Editor at Post-Dispatch Rejoins Post's Old Guard

All In A Name

Did the Post-Dispatch deliberately give its new blog the same title as the competition?

Vintage La Russa

Ladue News: Read It Here First!

Hang Tuft

An embittered Post-Dispatch reporter says her editors hung her out to dry.

Redesign and Conquer

Unreal spills the beans

Sea Changes

The Post goes pirate, our talking billboards return in a big, nerdy way, and a local blogger condemns snobby metrosexuals. Plus, Unreal asks the question on everyone's mind: "Is white trash deserving of nannies?"

Pulitzer's Gain

Some say Pulitzer Inc.'s sale to Lee Enterprises blew in quicker than a shotgun wedding. Others saw it coming a mile away.