Shares of Journal Register — which owns more than 300 publications in Michigan and along the East Coast, including the flagship New Haven Register in Connecticut among 22 daily newspapers — will be suspended from trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, and eventually delisted.

Journal Register said it will not appeal its suspension.

With its revenue falling in parallel with the circulation and advertising declines publications across the country have seen this year, observers now wonder whether the company can recover.

"I'm not sure they're going to get out of it whole," said industry analyst John Morton. "They can spin off the assets, but they won't get much for them."

Journal Register shares, which traded as high as $23.875 a decade ago, closed Tuesday at 32 cents — less than the weekday paper's newsstand price.

Moody's Investors Service pushed the company's rating deeper into junk status last week due to falling revenue and a "heightened probability of default stemming from eroding liquidity."

The troubles plaguing Journal Register are a replay of sorts for longtime shareholders who remember its predecessor, Ingersoll Publications Co. Both companies ran into trouble making payments on the debt they incurred in several heavily leveraged purchases.

"Journal Register was the remnants of the old Ingersoll group, which got into similar trouble or worse," Morton said.

In the 1980s, Ingersoll bankrolled purchases with junk bonds and amassed heavy debt.

E.M. Warburg Pincus, Ingersoll's financier, stepped in when revenue fell, and Robert Jelenic, an Ingersoll executive, became CEO at the successor company, Journal Register Co., which went public in 1997.

The company's cash earnings hit their peak the same year, with a 37 percent margin for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.

Jelenic expanded the chain by buying clusters of publications but kept a tight rein on other costs. In 2001, Forbes magazine profiled Journal Register in a story called "Cheapskate Journalism."

The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America, which represents union members at six newspapers, said average salaries are near the bottom among the 100 dailies under the Guild.

"It was just a really miserable place," said Chris Collins, a former Journal Register employee who said he had to work with broken chairs and desks with jagged pieces of metal sticking out. "It became impossible not to be depressed or sick to your stomach."

Journal Register did not return calls for comment.

Jelenic left the company last year, due to illness, with $4.76 million in severance, plus restricted stock and options.

Journal Register's latest woes stem from the $415 million purchase in 2004 of 21st Century Newspapers Inc., which had four dailies and 87 non-daily publications in Michigan.

A Moody's report in 2004 analyzing the deal described it as pricey but in line with valuations of high-quality assets. Debt payments would be manageable as long as revenue kept growing, Moody's said.

But the Detroit area economy took a downturn and a severe advertising decline hit the newspaper industry as increasing numbers of readers turned to the Internet for their news.

John Page, senior publishing analyst at Moody's, says the company paid a high price. He said he doesn't think the company will recover this time around — though many papers have rebounded from ad weakness in the past — because so many former readers now get their news online or by cell phone.

Journal Register's revenue has been falling since 2005 and the company found itself increasingly squeezed by its debt, which hit a high of $778 million in 2004, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Last year, its revenue was $463 million and total debt about $625 million.

"They made a bet on the Michigan economy turning around. It turns out to be a bad bet," Morton said. "They went really deep into debt to do it."

The company can still service its debt, but room to maneuver has been shrinking.

"The question is, it is enough room?" said Charles Strauzer, an analyst at CJS Securities in White Plains, N.Y., who's also a shareholder.