Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

At least one. Gannett also owns the Burlington, NC, paper.

 

And Burlington, Mass.
And Burlington, Vt.

I wrote this somewhere… I was in Burlington, Vt., a couple years ago and checked out the Free Press. I’d say it used to be the flagship paper in the state. Now it’s a tab that has something like 24 or 32 pages on a Wednesday. At least it’s still a daily.

 

In the latest "everything is fine, nothing to see here" news - Gannett has listed the main production facility for the Providence Journal, Cape Cod Times and others papers up for sale for $8M. According to the Globe's article, included in the fine print is that Gannett would be able to lease the property back for 5 to 10 years. Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee facilities are also up for sale.

Providence Journal production facility for sale for $8 million - The Boston Globe

 

That's really well written, and sad. I'm quite familiar with Eastern Iowa, having lived there during both of the "500-year floods" in 1993 and 2008 (that line made me laugh), and the HawkEye was always one of the strongest dailies in SE Iowa.

As several posters have noted, there are figuratively and literally Burlingtons in many states, small cities with a large senior citizen population who supported the local newspaper all their lives. Now those papers are either gone or gutted and nothing has filled that void.

I know there's someone on here who worked at the HawkEye for a long time; I hope he's moved on to better things.

 

That is what happened at my old shop, almost word for word. Even the same corporate bullshit from the GateHouse execs that came in to reassure us that all was well.
Why I wasn't job hunting that night is a mystery to me to this day.

 

This is how financial engineering at Gannett works.

Let's use a house as an example. In 1965 you bought a house for $20,000 and have paid it off. You sell it to an investor for $400,000. You book a $380,000 profit. But you need a place to live. So you lease the house back from the investor for five to 10 years at $30,000 a year. So this year your expenses flow increases but in future years your expenses will increase because you have to cover the lease.

This is what Gannett is doing. It sells a property and reports the profit. The sales of properties was one reason the company reported a profit this year. But future expenses will increase and therefore depress future profits.

P.S. I tried to access the article but was stopped by a paywall. But the Boston Globe, who claims to have tens of thousands of subscribers paying $30 a month for the e-edition, offered me a $1 for six month rate.

 

Ha, well, I'm one of them. I like to follow the news back home. But they also offered me $1 for three or six months at the start, I believe. It's currently the only sub I pay for - I get the Houston Chronicle for free at work, and there isn't really a good subscription paper that focuses on Katy.

 

The real bottom line is that any profit Gannett might see will go directly to investors and none will go to pay increases for employees.

 

They say they have 200,000 online subs but people are losing jobs, so …

 

According to that story, the Mississippi and Tennessee facilities that are for sale are Jackson (MS) and Knoxville. But according to this other story from January, they just consolidated a bunch of printing operations at both facilities earlier this year. Memphis and Jackson (Tenn.), among others, are printed in Jackson (MS). Jackson (MS) was printing seven papers. Nashville's printing was moved to Knoxville.
So where are all of those papers going to print now?

https://www.jacksonsun.com/story/ne...e-printing-operations-mississippi/6553382002/

EDIT: Dadgummit, missed the part where they're trying to sell the building and then lease it. That doesn't seem shady at all.

 

heh, Yeah. I believe Lancey is correct - It's all about the accounting. They can produce $x million on the balance sheet for now, even though it might mean they lose all of that money over the next Y years, because they're leasing instead of owning the land and facilities.

 

New Gannett to face the consequences of Old Gannett: