Yellow Pages Companies Sinking Into Oblivion

March 13, 2009 at 1:43 pm PT

For a vivid reminder of the way the Internet–combined with a vicious recession–can destroy a well-established industry, consider today’s news from the collapsing Yellow Pages business.

Idearc, a 2006 spinoff from Verizon (VZ), late yesterday warned investors that it is considering various ways to restructure its mountainous debt; among the options it’s mulling over are a prepackaged bankruptcy filing; though the company said if it can’t negotiate a prepackaged deal with creditors, it might filed for bankruptcy protection anyway.

CEO Scott Klein said in a statement that the directory publisher is “making progress on our transformational and cost-cutting initiatives,” but that “the unprecedented economic challenges this nation is facing are creating never-before-seen obstacles for our clients and, as a result, for us as well.”

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Tagged with: advertising, bankruptcy, bankruptcy protection, Barrons, creditors, debt, economy, Eric Savitz, frontpage, Idearc, Internet, recession, Scott Klein, spinoff, Tech Trader Daily, Yellow Pages

comments so far. Add yours.

http://allthingsd.com/ Dave Barnes

1. My 23-year old daughter has NEVER opened the paper Yellow Pages in her life.

2. Yelp.com

3. CitySearch.com

4. The Google

5. iPhone

We (60 and 51 years old) have not used the Yellow Pages in the last 5 years. We get DEX and Verizon books delivered to our house once a year and keep trying to stop them.

Computer database versus paper book. we report, you decide.

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