My bald barber and McClatchy’s N&O

I started losing hair when I was in my late twenties.

My bald barber, who looked to be in his mid-sixties, recommended a bottle of something he said did a pretty good job of preventing baldness.

I guess he knew what I was thinking because he added: “They didn’t have this stuff when I was going bald.”

Fair enough. I bought a bottle, but as the barber later told me: “You must be one of the guys it doesn’t help.”

Now fast forward to the present.

The McClatchy Newspaper Company (MNI) has been tanking for years. From a high within the last 5 years in the mid-seventies its stock price has crashed to about $1.50 today. Its bonds have “junk” ratings.

Yesterday a commenter at The Meck Deck summed McClatchy’s situation up thus:

MNI is down to $1.52 right now. Considering that they were over $2.70 just one short week ago, I’d say they’re circling the drain (or swirling around the bowl) pretty rapidly.

Circling the drain MNI may be, but that hasn’t stopped the editors of McClatchy’s Raleigh News & Observer from offering advice on how to manage the various crises buffeting the financial markets.

For years the N&O’s been telling readers what we should and shouldn’t do with our own finances. The “should” has generally included paying more in taxes. Opposing liberals’ government spending plans has almost always been part of “the shouldn’t.”

But for all its opining about how readers, America and the world should manage and improve their situations, the N&O “forgot” about McClatchy. It’s never editorially acknowledged McClatchy’s problems or proposed how they could be solved.

The N&O’s just gone on telling everyone else how to solve their problems and plan their futures.

Maybe editorial page editor Steve Ford and his staff thought McClatchy would be “one of the guys” their editorials wouldn’t help.