depressing stat of the day (newspaper edition)

Or, why I and about 700 people in the first 3 weeks of this new year no longer have newsroom jobs. (That's in addition to the 16,000 who lost them last year.)

The $5.6bn Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp paid in 2007 for Dow Jones, owner of the Wall Street Journal and several local papers, would now be sufficient to buy Gannett, the New York Times, McClatchy, Media General, Belo and Lee Enterprises, even at twice their current share prices.

Le sigh.