Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

And he’ll have a very soft landing.

 

And the last sports story posted will be the too early top 25 high school basketball teams for 2025-26.

 

And Here's Why

 

Gannett made an offer to the News and Free Press guild just before Easter
It was every bit as horrible as you would think
The link is to a petition demanding fair bargaining in Detroit

Gannett: Invest in Metro Detroit Journalists - Action Network

 

Do you know When does the JOA between the Free Press and the News expires? Also known as the day the News will die.

 

When Gannett “sold” the News (it pays everybody’s salary) and bought the Free Press in 2005 the JOA was renegotiated from 100 years to 25 years, so it should expire sometime around 2030
When the sale was made the Free Press was repositioned and the News became the failing paper

 

The Free Press had historically been the morning paper, correct? I also thought that while the News had historically had a higher circulation the Free Press had a more affluent readership. Was that true?

 

National newspaper chain Gannett plans to cease print publication of 19 weekly papersin eastern Massachusetts and merge another nine papers into four, beginning this month.
Gannett to merge Somerville and Medford weekly newspapers - The Tufts Daily

 

A few of those mergers are insane. I don't recall any recent municipal scandals in Somerville, but that's the type of place where greasing palms seems to be the norm. The Arlington and Winchester papers used to be really good ones. Used to be.

 

Gannett Restructures Into 2 New Units: Gannett Media, Digital Marketing Solutions

 

Gannett and Gatehouse merged in November 2019. At the end of 2019 the company reported in their 10k that they owned 261 dailies and 302 weeklies. In the 2021 10-K they reported 230 dailies and 249 weeklies. The article says the company has just cut 19 more papers, which I would guess were still included in the 2021 10-K so that is an additional drop.

The article also says that 135 Gannett properties have dropped Saturday publication. In addition other properties are being "reformed" which I guess in the context means is being consolidated. Does anyone know if my assumption is correct? I have trouble comprehending Gannett press releases.

I do know the company reported 1.6 billion dollars of debt at the end of the first quarter. It is very hard to continually shrink your revenue base and still pay off your debtors.

This is why I think the moves described in the linked press release are like shuffling personnel on the Titanic.

 

So the chain in my town which was scripps when I moved here years ago, and became Gannett in 2019, just announced that they were consolidating their Friday and Saturday papers into one edition. They have also reduced the days they're running letters to the editor. Instead of running them every day they're running them three or four days a week. So they are doing quite a bit of consolidating. There are some other things that I don't remember what they were.