Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

USA Massachusetts Today.

 

I mean, as someone who (digitally) subscribes to a Gannett paper, it's hard to imagine it becoming any trimmer. You can only put in so much regional content before readers find the local paper even more useless.

In fact, the opposite might end up happening because you can read any e-edition in the Gannett portfolio, which is actually really nice. If they market that well (fingers crossed), that could end up being very profitable.

 

It would be nice and I don't know why they don't do it. I don't think many subscribers pay for more than one Gannett product. The marginal cost of providing the additional subscriptions is close to zero so it would not take many national subscribers to start making a little extra money.

But I think for Gannett to make a real impact nationally they would really have to beef up their national and international coverage . And I don't think it is in the Gannett DNA to actually try to spend money to improve the product.

 

It’s already happening. I was the SE for two Gannett dailies. When I retired at the end of December they did not fill my old position.

 

The part that is maddening is that I need a subscription for the local daily and another for the co-owned local weekly. It’s a pain in the ass.

 

My old paper - the Newport Daily News - announced in an Editor's Column the other day that they're cutting the TV guide to a "featured TV" section, cutting the Wednesday print edition (it'll be digital only), and also using more filler content from the USA Today network. They've never done a Sunday edition, so they're down to five days a week. It's also rumored that they've shut down Newport Life Magazine, but it's unclear, because the March/April issue hasn't hit newsstands yet.

 

I thought that the newspapers were charging television stations for placements in the daily schedule grids that are published. Movie theaters were also being charged for placement in the movie time and location guides.

Am I wrong?

 

I never did pagination for that shop, so I might be mistaken, but I thought it was something they grabbed off the wire. Not to be confused with the local cinema, which would place an advertisement for their 4 or 5 movies playing that weekend.

 

Gannett also owns Providence and I think other papers in the state (The link for the Rhode Island properties in the Gannett website is broken so I can not check.) Given the small size of the state and the fact that the smaller papers do not print much local content anyway due to lack of staff why doesn't Gannett just print the Rhode Island Journal and close the other shops?

 

I imagine it's the same in a lot of places, but Rhode Islanders can be pretty provincial about their news outlets. The Journal used to be a statewide paper with bureaus in towns, but it shed those in the late 1990s, early 2000s, and it's been losing audience in the 'burbs to the local papers since then. It provides good coverage of the statehouse and state government, and things happening in Providence and maybe Cranston or Warwick, but not so much anywhere else. So in most parts of Rhode Island, there is a weekly or a semi-daily (or multiples) that actual locals subscribe to, instead of or in addition to the Projo. I think the worry would be that if they shuttered the NDN, they just lose that audience, period. They aren't going to convert to a Projo subscription.

 

New Gannett continues its efforts to drive away print readers.
https://newjerseyglobe.com/media/massive-price-increase-at-the-bergen-record/

 

The Bergen Record has increased the single copy price to $3.49 for the Monday-Friday editions from $2.50. I have no memory of ever seeing a copy of the Bergen paper but if it is a Gannett product I would think the weekday editions are very thin.

I wonder if the rationale behind this move is that rack sales ahve dropped so low that only a few people are buying the paper anyway. So what the hell. If the buyers were willing to pay $2.50 maybe they will pay $3.50.