While analysts have already cut their estimates for most newspaper publishers this year, executives likely will issue new predictions that are even lower, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Peter Appert said in a report this week.

Gannett's Chief Executive Officer Craig Dubow, New York Times CEO Janet Robinson and Dow Jones' Richard Zannino are scheduled to present at conferences during what is known as Media Week. Robinson is facing shareholder pressure to boost the stock amid speculation that Maurice "Hank" Greenberg may wage a takeover attempt. Zannino is betting a redesign of the Wall Street Journal will help boost sales and appease investors.

"Usually Media Week is about outlook and this year everyone knows the outlook is pretty bad," said Michael Kupinski, an analyst at A.G. Edwards Inc. in St. Louis. "They were pessimistic last year about 2006 and probably weren't pessimistic enough."

Shares of publicly-traded newspaper companies have dropped 12 percent in the past two years, based on the Standard and Poor's 50 Publishing & Printing Index, as sales and profit growth dropped. That compares with a 7.7 percent gain in the S&P500 Index.

'Under Siege'

Tribune Co. and the New York Times, the second and third- largest U.S. publishers, missed analysts estimates last quarter and Gannett, the largest, and McClatchy, the fourth-biggest, posted drops in print advertisements.

The declines have prompted criticism from investors unhappy with their inability to boost the shares. An investor revolt that led to the sale of Knight Ridder Inc. this year spread to Chicago-based Tribune and now may upend the Sulzberger family's control over the New York Times.

"Newspapers are clearly an industry under siege," said David Joy, chief markets strategist at RiverSource Investments in Minneapolis. "If there is any value in these stocks it's the notion that private equity or various billionaires will pick them up at premium prices."

Analysts are also taking aim. Appert, based in San Francisco, last week lowered his fourth-quarter earnings estimate for New York Times as did William Bird, an analyst at Citigroup Inc. in New York. Bird cut his rating on the stock to "sell" from "hold," saying the company is the most vulnerable to losing readers to the Internet.

New York Times shares have dropped 41TK percent since the beginning of 2005, weighed by department-store closures in New England that sapped advertisers at the Boston Globe and reader defections to the Internet.

McClatchy, Belo

Dubow of McLean, Virginia-based Gannett, Robinson and Zannino will be joined by will top executives of Sacramento, California-based McClatchy Co., which bought Knight Ridder, and Dallas-based Belo Corp., owner of the Dallas Morning News.

New York-based Dow Jones will separately unveil a slimmer, redesigned Wall Street Journal today. Zannino will then present to the conferences on Dec. 6. Dow Jones and New York Times haven't said whether they will give forecasts.

Chicago-based Tribune won't attend either conference. The company put itself up for sale in September after its largest shareholder, the Chandler family that sold the Los Angeles Times to the company in 2000, pushed for a breakup.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dennis FitzSimons last week delayed a decision on whether to sell all or part of the company after initial bids from private equity firms came in too low. The shares have fallen 6.4 percent from a recent high of $33.99 on Sept. 22.

Gannett Interest

Publishers will emphasize growth in their online properties, cost controls at their paper and an easing of newsprint prices, said Kupinski.

Print ads in newspapers fell 2.6 percent in the third quarter to $11.1 billion, according to the Newspaper Association of America. For the fourth quarter, Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Lauren Rich Fine projects a decline of 3 percent to 4 percent compared with the same period a year earlier.

"The reality is that the industry is going through a transition to gaining more revenue from online that won't be over in one or two quarters," said NAA president John Sturm. The NAA projects that online newspaper advertising will rise 22 percent next year to $3.2 billion. Total newspaper advertising in the U.S. is expected to be $46.9 billion.

Underscoring the decline is a move to the Internet by readers and advertisers that was faster than the industry projected, said Morton. The problem has been compounded by a slowdown in the growth of newspapers' online advertising business.

"We've gone through so many cycles with these stocks," said Kupinski, who rates Tribune "hold" and Gannett "buy." "I think newspapers will have to wake up to see they have the local infrastructure to really grow. Right now, they're losing the battle."