A collection of widely traded stocks making 52-week lows often shows sentiment for which industries and investing themes are out of favor.

Some of last week's lows:

Level 3 Communications (NASDAQ: LVLT): The company has one of the largest data and voice networks in the country. But pricing pressure on bandwidth costs and trouble integrating acquisitions did a tremendous amount of damage to the shares when the firm announced third quarter numbers. The stock traded as low as $2.90, down from a 52-week high of $6.80. But, LVLT's real sin is the amount of debt it carries -- almost $7.4 billion. The current market hates balance sheets that indicate too much borrowing.

McClatchy Co. (NYSE: MNI), the newspaper chain that bough Knight-Ridder, has decided to abandon its online sales partnership with The Tribune Company (NYSE: TRB) and Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI) to join a similar venture [subscription] put together by Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO).

The Yahoo! project already has 250 papers from companies like Hearst. The papers will use Yahoo! search and its text ads, which may help it in its market share battle with Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).

As a large online marketer of advertising, Yahoo! is in a better position to help the newspapers, or so the theory goes. Meanwhile, efforts by Google in the newspaper and radio sales business have not gone well.

However, newspapers are desperate. With dropping circulation numbers and falling ad lineage, they need their online business to fill in the revenue hole. McClathcy's stock is down about 35% this year and trades near its 52-week low at $31.57.

The deal with Yahoo! may not work, but the newspaper industry is running out of choices.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.