While most of 2008 played out pretty poorly for the company, it should see a decent number in the fourth quarter as readers turned to its newspaper for updated information on the Presidential election and Obama's subsequent transition into the White House. In addition, the final months of the year are typically strong for the company as advertisers beef up their advertising presence in preparation for the holiday shopping season.

While the company could show us earnings above estimates, it will almost certainly report earnings below last year's, and this would mark the 9th quarter in a row that the company reported declining earnings. Definitely not a great sign as the company tries to come to terms with slowing advertising incomes.

The past several years has seen the company's flagship, The Washington Post paper, lose large segments of its audience to the internet. More and more people are turning solely to the internet to get their daily news, and newspapers are struggling to keep up. We live in a world where news is able, and expected, to be delivered virtually instantaneously, and newspapers just are not able to accomplish this information sharing in real time.

Give Washington Post credit, they do realize the trend, and they have been beefing up their internet exposure. Their website is a great place to go and find current news, but its ad revenues are nowhere near as lucrative as the spots it is able to sell in print papers.

Adding to the hardship of people moving more towards the internet for their news, is the slowdown in overall advertising that is hitting newspapers, magazines, and internet sites as well. As the current economic slowdown continues to effect companies, they are cutting spending where they can. In many cases that means a pull back in their advertising budgets, and no one is immune to what is taking place in the economy these days.

Even if the company should be able to beat out its $8.17 estimate, it would still be hard to justify adding this stock to your portfolio at this time. The company has a lot to figure out over the upcoming periods as it struggles with lower advertising revenue and falling readership of its print paper.

What are your thoughts on this one? Do you still read your morning papers, or have you, like so many others abandoned your paper in exchange for the internet to find your news? Let us hear your thoughts!