The Gwinnett Daily Post's corporate owner told investors Monday that it was in danger of being dropped from the NASDAQ stock exchange.

Triple Crown Media Inc. announced that it had received notice from NASDAQ officials on April 15 that the company had dropped below the exchange's $15 million minimum market capitalization requirement. Triple Crown Media will be delisted unless it raises its stock price high enough for 10 consecutive days by July 14, the company said in a news release.

Triple Crown Media trades under the symbol TCMI. Monday, the market valued the company at $9.63 million at a share price of $1.80, or about 35 percent below the minimum.

Triple Crown Media carries about $82 million in debt, according to the company's latest quarterly financial report.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services lowered Triple Crown Media's corporate credit rating in February to CCC+ — or junk bond status — from a B rating. The credit rating service cited the company's high debt, a weakening economy and difficult times in the newspaper industry as cause for the downgrade. Last month, the company laid off five percent of its work force, including some newsroom employees at the Gwinnett Daily Post, according to a report in Editor & Publisher magazine.

Gwinnett Daily Post publisher J.K. Murphy referred inquiries to Triple Crown Media's chief financial officer Mark Meikle for comment. Meikle did not return calls.

Triple Crown Media owns eight newspapers in Georgia — the Albany Area Advertiser, Albany Herald, Gwinnett Daily Post, Newton Citizen, Rockdale Citizen, Clayton News Daily, Henry Daily Herald and the Jackson Progress-Argus. Together, the newspapers have circulation of about 109,000 daily with 140,000 on Sunday. The company reported a 2007 circulation decline of 5.6 percent in its most recent quarterly report.

Adverse conditions in the industry have affected newspapers around the country, with several companies facing delisting, said John Morton, a veteran newspaper analyst in Silver Spring, Md. The Journal-Register Co. — owner of 22 dailies including the New Haven Register — and Chicago's Sun Times Media Group also could be delisted.

Newspapers face a combination of declining circulation and steep declines in classified advertising revenue, he said. Automotive, real estate and job advertising has been especially hard hit recently, adding to the decline.

"Those are the three major sources of advertising, and they're all in the tank," he said. "The question is, when those three categories come back, will they be able to recapture what they've lost?"

Triple Crown Media was formed when Gray Television Inc. spun off its newspaper and wireless businesses in December 2005. Triple Crown Media subsequently merged with affinity-marketing company Bull Run Corp. The company sold its wireless business in June and its collegiate marketing and association management businesses in November, using the money to pay off some of its debt.

Morton doesn't think the Gwinnett Daily Post is in any danger of going out of business yet. The company remains cash-flow positive after paying the interest on its debt, he said. If they were in more trouble, he said, "you'd see them cutting more than five percent."