Update: Gannett still lags under Dubow

Gannett's poor stock performance under CEO Craig Dubow offers a glimpse at some of the pressures now bearing on senior management. GCI is down 37% in the more than two years since Dubow became CEO. That's a bigger loss than any other major newspaper stock but McClatchy, which continues to suffer after its poorly-timed purchase of most of Knight Ridder. (These percentages are rounded; carried out to several more decimal places, you'd see the New York Times Co.'s shares turned in a tiny bit better performance during the period.)

Dow Jones shares are still No. 1, after DJ reached agreement to be bought for $5 billion by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. And News Corp. shares are doing well because of its greater diversification into non-print properties, especially its canny purchase of the social-networking site MySpace. (An interesting footnote: News Corp. bought MySpace the same month Dubow took over GCI.)

For this analysis, I'm using Google Finance's database, which I guess explains the different closing prices I found the last time I examined these figures. I've also added a few more stocks to this analysis. As before, I've also thrown in the change in the S&P-500 Index for an overall market barometer. In any case, the trend remains the same: Whether by bad timing or bad management, Dubow's team has done little to make shareholders happy. Unless, of course, I'm missing something here. Anyone with a better head for numbers want to comment?