The GateHouse model in Columbia, MO

Terry Ganey on what happened to the Columbia Daily Tribune when GateHouse bought the paper.

The Tribune’s “Tragedy” | Gateway Journalism Review

 

“To think people are going to subscribe to a newspaper in hopes that someday it will get better is a fallacy,” he said. “You’ve got to put out a product that people want and feel like they need if they are going to stay on top of things.” ...and so on, and so on, and so on....

 

Good story. Those moguls in Manhattan figured out a way to make big bucks (for themselves) in buying newspapers from crotchety old (former) publishers/owners. Good for them I guess, but they certainly preyed on an industry and helped wreck it. Those moguls deserve credit for figuring out a way to make big time cash (for themselves) by gutting newspapers.

 

My experience with WhoreHouse is the bean counters will leave you be as long as your publisher is good at monetizing your paper's assets. Mostly through special publications and presentations of events.

Unfortunately there's only so much blood to be wrung out of a community's economic turnip and sooner or later the sugar stops flowing. That's when it's hello Best Buy.

 

I excerpted this from the article. It was from a column by the editor:

"It’s true we’ve lost some subscribers in 2017, and for every 100 subscribers we lose there’s a $20,000 hole in the budget to fill. So we fill that hole with more cuts, but more subscribers show their disdain of the new changes by cancelling. So we lose another 100 subscribers, and now there’s another $20,000 hole needing filled. The cycle then repeats over and over and over.”

There is a term for this. It is called a death cycle.

 

Frederick We have been waiting for you. Were you on vacation?

 

He got trapped in that 10 a.m. meeting.

 

Surrounded by suits, no doubt.

 

Ha, vacation! Frederick was clearly working one of his daily 12-hour shifts from which he never gets a break or a reprieve.

 

I am hearing through various sources that GateHouse is now the leading contender for the Austin paper. But these sources are third-hand, and I hope they're wrong for the sake of the folks at the American-Statesman (and its readers).

 

That. Is. Fucking. Cold.

 

Gatehouse is going to be rumored as a buyer for any paper, largely because they are very active buyers, and no one else is nearly as as active. Cox has tried to sell Austin and Palm Beach before and pulled them back. They may have qualms about selling to Gatehouse. Since Cox is privately held and has a hell of a lot of money they can afford to wait.

But, Jesus, the fact that the papers in those markets are having trouble selling is depressing. Twenty-five years ago those papers would have attracted boatloads of suitors.