McCLATCHY BACK IN NYSE'S GOOD GRACES.

Newspaper publisher The McClatchy Co. said last week that it had received notification from the New York Stock Exchange that its finances are once again in compliance with the rules of the exchange. While good news, the change came because the exchange moved the goal post, not because the company moved the ball.

The Sacramento-based company said the NYSE received permission from the Securities and Exchange Commission to reduce the amount of capitalization it requires that a traded company maintain. In the past, the figure was $75 million over a 30-day period; the new number is $50 million. Similarly, the exchange formerly required that a company have $75 million in stockholder equity and now requires only $50 million.

The NYSE lowered the requirements not specifically because of McClatchy, but because so many of its constituents have had difficultly meeting the thresholds in these troubled economic times.

McClatchy is still skating on the thin ice of another of the exchange's rules, the one in which a company must trade for above $1 over an average of 30 trading days; as of Friday, McClatchy's 30-day average was 73 cents. But because the NYSE has temporarily suspended that rule too, the company has until the end of the year to get back onto thicker ice.

Lee Enterprises, which is also on the NYSE broke $1 on its 30-day trading average on Thursday, dodging that particular bullet (though at closing today, the 30-day average was only $1.03). The company said back last winter when it received its NYSE warning letter that it would do a reverse split to raise both the share price and stockholder equity.

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