The last few years have been very strong for the newspaper industry, ... And we think next year is going to be a very good year, as well.
Although recruitment and real estate have remained strong all year, we did not see the hoped-for turnaround in auto in August,
While the fundamentals of this quarter were disappointing, we took important steps to position our company for a strong future in both print and online publishing, and our accomplishments were significant,
Ad revenue growth in February and March, boosted by the early Easter, was the strongest we have seen since the first quarter of 1998. Our focus on operations, with emphasis on cost control and margin improvement, is clearly paying off.
We promised a strong bottom-line performance this year, and we are going to deliver, ... We have offset some tightening in the revenue environment with tough cost discipline, and that will not be a one-time event.
As promised, we delivered a very strong earnings-per-share (excluding nonrecurring items) performance in 1998. We did this in a year where not everything was going our way, which demonstrates our ability-and commitment-to tight management despite soft revenues in key markets.
The newspaper business is strong in most markets, and we continue to restructure culturally to take advantage of it,