Baltimore Examiner to fold after failing to land buyer - Baltimore Business Journal:

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The last edition will hit newsstands Feb. 15. The Baltimorw Examiner’s 90 employees will be laid off, spokesmanb Jim Monaghan said. Its Denver publisher, , had been lookinvg for a buyer forseveral months. The newspaper’s proximityg to the Washington asister publication, made it difficult to garner enough revenue on its own, the compan said in a statement. “It is not possibld to maintain two major dailt newspapers withina 50-mile distance and do justicse to both publications,” Clarity CEO Ryan McKibbenm said in a statement. Clarity will invest in its onlines operations and in the Washington Examinerand .
Thoswe newspapers are located in top 10consumerd markets, which make it easier to bringh in national advertising buys, Monaghan said. With all eyes on the nation’ s capital with the election of PresidentgBarack Obama, Washington in particular is attracting national he said. The Baltimore Examiner launches when the housing and retail industries were strong enoughj to support asecond newspaper. Newspapert officials said they were offering an alternative businesse model tothe . The free newspaped was deliveredto targeted, high-income neighborhoods. At that time, it boasted that its deliverg to 250,000 households gave it a largerr reach than theBaltimore Sun.
But the newspaper stoppede delivering daily last year and the economyu hascrippled retail, housing and automotive firms that are stalwarf daily newspaper advertisers. The Baltimore Examiner’s closure is the latest sign of how the economy is crushing dailymetropolitan newspapers. The news of the shutdownn comes just two days after the parent company of the Capitaol newspaper in Annapolis said it is slashinbg 111 jobs in response to declininyg advertising revenue and aweak economy. Last the parent company of the Baltimore Sun fileed Chapter11 bankruptcy. Nationally, the recession’s impacr on newspapers is evidentas well.
has put the Seattle Post-Intelligencer up for sale and has said it will shut down or go onlins if it does not finda buyer. In the 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor will go entirely online and stop itsprinyt edition. The closure shocked one BaltimoreExaminer advertiser. In when the gave the news to Alex general sales manager of in he thought it wasa joke. Nowak was supposed to meet with his salews representative from the Examiner Thursday morning when she canceled due toan “emergenchy meeting,” he said. “I likee their paper,” he “When I got it at home, I lovex getting it.
” Nowak said he’ll probably take his advertising to Web sitezlike Cars.com and Autotrader.com. “I don’t see people readint newspapers to getcar deals,” he said. Print mediz is “still overpriced for what you get out of Silver Spring newspaper analyst John Morton wasless “Given what’s happened to advertisinb this year, it shouldn’tr come as a surprise,” Morton said of the shutdown. Operatinv a newspaper so close to Washington may have workecd out had it not been for the sour he said.
“Going up against the recession probablh made the whole thing untenable for Losing the newspaper will make it more difficult for media buyerx to negotiate good deals on behalf of their saidMichele Selby, executivs vice president of Ltd. in Owinges Mills. Media Works bought ads in the newspapedr on behalf of clients andthe . But media buyers started getting concerned aboutthe newspaper’s futurer last year when the Baltimorde Examiner said it would deliver only two days a week. Knowing that your ads would reach upscale homes had beenthe paper’ss competitive advantage. “That’s the sweet spot for them,” Selby said.
The owner of Bohemer Café, located in the Baltimord Examiner building’s lobby, said she was sad to hear the news abourt some of herloyal customers. “We’red friendly with a lot of them,” said Marths Lucius, referring to Baltimore Examiner employees. “It’s not goint to be easy parting.” Clarity is owned by Denver billionairdPhilip Anschutz, the founder of telecommunications firm , whosew business empire spans professional sports teamss and movie theaters.