Bob Ballow of Nashville-based King & Ballow started his career as a newspaper boy in East Nashville, then went to law school and became a celebrated union-buster. Today, his firm represents 329 newspapers nationally (at least one in every state), including the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News.

Ballow's firm does labor work for some newspapers, First Amendment and
antitrust work for others, and, increasingly, joint operating agreements under which
newspapers owned by separate companies might, for instance, agree to operate one printing plant between them.

The newspaper business is in tremendous turmoil. According to Ballow, he represents one newspaper that had $122 million in EBITA in 2005 and this year is expecting to lose money. Another client was purchased recently at 13.5x EBITA. "Nowadays, investment people won't loan money if you pay more than 3 or 3.5x EBITA, and they want the borrower to have half what they're paying," Ballow says. "I don't know anybody that can fulfill those obligations."

Newspapers have historically been extremely profitable, enjoying as much as 40% margins. Despite the current turmoil, Ballow believes newspapers are still a good business to be in and that papers going forward can expect to have 7% to 8% margins--not what they once were, but not bad, either. He believes better management in the industry will make the biggest difference. "Newspapers historically never had to manage well because money flowed," Ballow explains. "The ones that can get in there and manage and get solid margins will do well."

In the interim, Ballow is trying to do what he can to help out all the people he knows in the newspaper business who are currently out of work. "We're going to put up on our Web page a list of résumés of people looking for work, so publishers can go to that page," he says. "I don't know who is going to be hiring anybody, but it's the most I can do." Given that one Ballow client recently bought out 103 people in the paper's third round of buyouts, Ballow's Web site could be a crowded place for the foreseeable future.