Tribune Publishing to start new chapter as standalone company

Tribune Publishing charted a new course as a stand-alone company on Monday, with the  long-planned spinoff from Tribune Co taking effect, Los Angeles Times reported.

Regular trading in the stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TPUB would start today, and its board of directors would meet for the first time in Chicago.

The board would represent shareholders in the publicly traded company and oversee Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin works to grow and diversify the business to bring in digital revenue at the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and six other daily newspapers.

Griffin said the job was to manage revenue declines judiciously over time even as the company pursued the growth areas of its business, which were increasingly digital growth areas … so that in the aggregate, the company was a growth business.

Eddy Hartenstein would step down Monday as publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times to assume responsibilities as non-executive chairman of the Tribune Publishing board. Griffin and Hartenstein would serve on the board along with four outside directors.

According to Thomas Lys, an accounting professor and corporate governance expert at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, the primary task of the board was to supervise management - hire the CEO, compensate the CEO, plan for the succession of the CEO and if need be, fire the CEO. He added, this was the direct representation of shareholders, who were the owners of the corporation.

The spinoff of Tribune Publishing, whose other assets include the Orlando Sentinel, the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the Hartford Courant and affiliated websites, comes as the newspaper business is faced with many challenges, USA Today reported.

Print advertising spending continues to fall even as economic outlook improves.

Also for most newspapers, digital advertising revenues and subscriptions had not sufficiently replaced the loss of print ad sales.

Tribune's publishing revenue in the first quarter was down 5.4 per cent from a year ago to $417 million. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes and other items decreased 11 per cent during the period to $40 million.

In a presentation to investors earlier this year, Tribune Publishing said it continued to diversify revenue sources by depending less on retail ads in newspapers. The publication's subscription revenue including online subscriptions comprised 24 per cent of revenue in 2013, up from 20 per cent in 2011.