The Tribune building

The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday, becoming the first major newspaper chain to do so in several decades, reports MediaBuyerPlanner.

The move will allow the company to continue to operate while it seeks better terms from creditors, writes the Washington Post. The company faces a mountain of debt from going private with Sam Zell last December.

"Their newspapers are profitable," newspaper analyst John Morton is quoted as saying. “But their profits have dropped so much and they’re so heavily leveraged that they’ve been put in a hole.” Tribune has already slimmed newspaper staff significantly and sold Newsday to cablevision earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the New York Times Co. hired a real estate firm to obtain financing through a mortgage or sale-leaseback agreement on its new Midtown Manhattan headquarters. It may borrow as much as $225 million against the building. The company faces a $400 million debt repayment in May, according to Bloomberg.

McClatchy, too, is struggling to pay its debts, and is said to be putting one of its largest newspapers, the Miami Herald, up for sale. The newspaper generates a slim operating margin, according to sources, who say that the most attractive part of a deal could be the paper’s prime waterfront real estate.

Newspaper companies across the board have faced some of their worst numbers ever, even before the current financial situation blew up. Fitch Ratings issued a report predicting several cities could be left with no daily newspapers at all after next year. Days following the release of the report, Denver's Rocky Mountain News announced it is seeking a buyer and may shut down if one is not found by mid-January.

But at least one paper refuses to take the dire tidings sitting down. The New York Times has become aggressive in building equity as an online news resource. This week it launched Times Extra, a homepage component that incorporates related third-party site links — including blogs — into leading stories. And over the course of the Presidential election, it orchestrated an online campaign on Facebook to increase "fan" figures on the social network, thereby building 'net-based brand equity.