Will newspaper values recover?

Newsosaur reflecting:
As of the end of the first quarter of this year, the enterprise value (market capitalization plus debt) of the publicly traded newspaper companies averaged 5.5 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) in the prior 12 months. The enterprise values ranged from 2.5x EBITDA for A.H. Belo to 5.2x for McClatchy to 13.4x for GateHouse Media (whose value was inflated by its $1.3 billion in debt, not the sub-$10 million value of its stock).
To be sure, newspaper values generally are stronger today than they were in 2009, when a private equity firm picked up the otherwise-unwanted San Diego Union-Tribune for an undisclosed price believed to be less than a fifth of the value of the $100 million in real estate bundled into the deal for the paper. A few years before the fire sale in San Diego, the daily might have fetched something in the very high nine figures, if not a full billion bucks.
Publishers gasped and newspaper brokers gagged in 2010 when I reported that the value of The Daytona Beach (Fla.) News-Journal plunged to $20 million from $300 million in just four quick years. That means the paper was valued at 3x its EBITDA in 2010 vs. 29x in 2006.
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2011/06/will-newspaper-values-recover.html