• The New York Times, Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10 AM

The San Francisco Chronicle, owned by the Hearst Corp, is losing $1 million a week. On top of long-term changes hurting the newspaper ad industry, the weak economy is severely squeezing ad sales, especially in Florida and California, where the housing slump has cut deeply into real estate ads.

Overall, newspaper ad revenue fell almost 8% last year, is falling about 12% this year, and company reports issued last week suggested a 14% to 15% decline in May.

The results are sure to be bad, says Peter S. Appert, Goldman Sachs analyst. A number of individual newspapers and newspaper companies will probably "fall into a loss position this year," he says, "and it's inevitable that there will be paper closures and maybe bankruptcies."

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