Great plan, guys! Lemme know how it works out

The start-up company that bought my newspaper a year ago is about to implode. GateHouse Media was formed four years ago when two bottom-feeding newspaper chains -- Liberty Group Publishing and Community Newspapers -- met in a dive bar five minutes before closing time. They were too drunk to see straight and went home together. Because they both specialized in raping small community newspapers, it was a perfect match.
The new company's CEO, Michael Reed, was lauded as a savior to the flagging newspaper industry. The fledgling company created a "hyperlocal" strategy: delivering content in small markets where newspapers still own the advertising dollar. Using cheap borrowed money, GateMouth gobbled up small dailies, including Gannett's Rockford Register Star, which became one of the largest papers in the new chain.
The company IPO'd at $18 a share in 2006 and a New York hedge fund, Fortress Investment, held a majority of the stock, which paid dividends -- a sweet gimmick attract shareholders.
Then the magic faded. Ad revenue tanked. Thanks to the mortgage meltdown, free-lending banks got kinda stingy with their dough. A year ago, GateMouth was trading near $20 a share. This week, its share price fell below THREE DOLLARS. That's an 86 percent free-fall in value.
If its stock chart were a ski hill, you'd break land speed records going down the slope. And then you'd crash and die...
Last quarter earnings showed a 4.2 percent slide in same-store revenue. Operating margins were barely wide enough to slip a credit card through. That's bad news when you're $1.3 billion in debt and promising your shareholders a dividend payout every quarter.
So long story short, analysts are now predicting the dividends will evaporate so the company can pay its own bills (including $24 million in debt service payments). And with them the last few shareholders will vaporize too since they were only hanging on to the penny stocks for their dividend anyway.
Did I mention that this media company shaved payrolls at nearly every paper it bought in the last year? We lost six people in my newsroom through buyouts. Now we've got one editor for every two reporters.
So one of three things is going to happen: GateMouth is going to start sloughing off its newspapers to stay afloat or file for Chapter 11 protection and slough off its newspapers to appease creditors.
Man I'm glad I'm getting out of this @!#$*& business.