Idaho Radio News Etc.

The Idaho Daily Statesman is in a world of hurt. With its parent company losing big bucks due to the collapse of classified advertising, one of its top editors is taking heat for saying the University of Idaho should be bombed. Yikes.

The Boise Weekly picked up an earlier report from a Spokesman Review blog that had Mike Prater saying this of the UI on KTIK/ESPN Radio 1350 KTIK The Ticket (there’s your radio tie) last month:

They’re a horrible team, they’re a horrible program. the fans are horrible. The athletic director’s horrible, the president’s horrible. Everybody and everything associated with that program is horrible. They should take a bomb and blow it up and start all over again.

Here’s the audio.

The Weekly’s Shea Andersen also has a dynamite piece on the problems facing the Statesman and other newspapers in our state.

The paper’s owner, McClatchy lost $1.3 billion bucks in the most recent quarter. This is McClatchy’s two year stock chart:

Statesman editor Vicki Gowler: “this is the most challenging time I’ve seen as an editor.”

Boise Weekly: “Gowler said her paper’s circulation is either flat or up only slightly, depending on the edition.”

New Audit Bureau of Circulations figures that hit the street last month show that – despite an increase in population and big efforts by the paper to prop up circulation numbers… fewer and fewer people are getting the paper.

ABC numbers in June of 2006 show the Statesman selling 65,124 copies (link). The latest figure? 61,473 as of September 2007 – a decrease of six percent (link). Not surprisingly, the paper is still quoting the old numbers in its online customer service section.

For reference, Gowler told BW that the Statesman’s circulation is up or flat, depending on the edition. The Sunday edition also lost ground, 86,434 to 83,038.

The Statesman employs some fantastic, hard-working people – truly. I know several of them, and most of them even know how beleaguered their employer is.

UPDATE: Changed the headline from “Prater says UI should be bombed on KTIK” to “Prater says on KTIK that UI should be bombed” … for obvious reasons.