GCI stock falls 4%; market value dips below $5B

Shares plunged again yesterday, closing at $21.79 -- down 4.2% -- amid a jaw-dropping rout in stock markets overall. Gannett's market value fell below $5 billion -- putting it in fourth place among major publishers I follow:

• News Corp.: $41.2 billion
• E.W. Scripps: $7.0 billion
• Washington Post Co.: $5.7 billion
• Gannett: $4.98 billion
• New York Times Co.: $2.3 billion

As GCI's market cap crumbles, the company grows more vulnerable to bottom-feeding investors, who'd like to see it broken up into pieces that could, in sum, be more valuable than the enterprise as a whole. I'm not smart enough to calculate the value of Gannett's hard assets. But I wonder when the company's real estate alone would become much of its worth. It's no wonder people are speculating that GCI is considering subleasing more space at its headquarters in McLean, Va.

GCI's decline yesterday was the worst among my group of major publishers. What's more, although stocks in many industries have gotten clobbered by banking industry and other worries, Gannett's decline has been far, far worse: In the past month alone, GCI shares have tumbled nearly 25%, while the broader S&P-500 Index has dropped a much smaller 6.7%, Google Finance says.

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