Gatekeepers, Gatekeep Thyselves

From Nick Coleman's column last week skewering his current and future employers:

When it bought the Star Tribune in 1998, McClatchy was a second-tier chain that had 10 dailies and a profit margin of 13 percent. Today, after buying its way into a far better club by using the Star Tribune for leverage, McClatchy has 32 papers and a profit margin of 26 percent.

But 26 ain't enough. It would be higher if not for the Star Tribune, which earns only about 19 percent, though its revenue has declined over the past year or so. That's still good for a newspaper its size, and two or three times the margin demanded 20 years ago. But it ain't enough.

Now the correction appearing on the top of his archived column:

Correction: Nick Coleman's column incorrectly stated the McClatchy Company's operating margins. McClatchy had an operating margin of 18.6 percent in 1998, the year it bought the Star Tribune. Its operating margin last year was 19 percent. In 1998, McClatchy's free cash flow was 28.3 percent, as measured by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. In 2005, its free cash flow was 25 percent.

They doubled their profit margin, it stayed the same. Their financial position is twice as good, it has actually degraded. Tomato, tomahto. Potato, potahto.

Come on people, you can't expect a newspaper to get all the facts correct. But you have to get a little suspicious of the quality control of an organization that publishes falsehoods about itself.