Bankruptcy: Lee Enterprises follows an American Business Tradition

How would Joseph Pulitzer, founder of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1879, respond to news that the newspaper’s current parent company, Lee Enterprises, Inc., on December 12, 2012, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection?

It is safe to assume that Pulitzer knew that with every shift of an industrial paradigm, bankruptcy filings can mount up as high as the piles of pennies young children donated in Pulitzer’s campaign to fund installation of the Statue of Liberty in 1885. His newspapers in St. Louis and New York covered paradigm shifts as railroads outmoded wagon trains, electricity replaced gas lamps, and old technology companies began to unravel.