Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

Another quick point: When Gannett News Service was still around, one of its last gasps was to create a centralized nation/world news page (and a biz page) that individual papers could take and plop right onto their presses.

Our marching orders were to use Gannett stuff whenever possible. It was damn-near impossible most of the time, since A) USAT stuff never came early enough, or B) no Gannett paper covered it, or C) Gannett stories were written and reported so poorly as to be completely unusable.

Point being, they didn’t have the resources then to operate a truly national wire service, and their standards and “style” had already gone to shit.

 

In fairness the stylebook rarely has major changes. You could probably roll with a 1992 stylebook and be mostly fine.

 

From Poynter:
"The news that McClatchy was pulling away from the AP also was a surprise.
Kathy Vetter, McClatchy’s senior vice president of news and audience, said in an email reviewed by The New York Times, “With this decision, we will no longer pay millions for content that serves less than 1 percent of our readers. In most cases we have found replacements. However, we are still working on a universal solution for state ‘wires’ content.”

 

It is. Thinner papers are cheaper to ship via mail. I read (I think in their 10-K) that the company is going to aggressively expand mail delivery this year.

 

If Gannett and McClatchy, which together own about 200 appears, both leave does that put AP in the hospice?

 

The Gannett paper that serves my community went to mail delivery beginning this week.

Once you do that, why even put a day and date on the product? Just call it "Volume XXX, Issue XXX."

A few years ago, maybe. But today newspapers only make up just over 10% of AP's revenue. They really found tons of other places willing to pay for their stuff. Of course, there ARE tons of other places available now.

By the way, while perusing today's front pages, I discovered my former paper (Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale) is now charging more for its product ($4.50) than the NY Times ($4). $4.50 for a Wednesday paper!!!!

 

This the cruel arithmetic at Gannett. In 2023 the company said it generated 95 million dollars in operating activities. Same store revenues declined about nine percent or around 250 million dollars. The company consistently sees annual revenue drops in the 8-9% range. Print revenues are plunging while electronic revenues are basically flat.

So if a company that just generated 95 million dollars in cash is looking at another revenue decline of 250 million dollars at least 155 million dollars of cuts must be made.

 

Somebody mentioned upthread about Gannett switching to mail delivery. Our paper has done that already. The Sunday paper is delivered on Saturday since mail doesn't run on Sunday.

 

Sunday papers have historically the days with the most advertisers. Has your paper seen a decline in advertising by dropping the Sunday paper or is advertising so sparse it really no longer makes a difference?

 

That (mail delivery) is really the Last Rites moment for an individual newspaper.

I understand the economic and can’t-find-carriers reasons for mail delivery, but papers who go that route alienate and lose many of the die hard readers who remain because they want and expect the “morning” paper to be there early, to read with their coffee. When you screw up that decades-old schedule many subscribers throw in the towel.

And I’m not even addressing how printing deadlines and other requirements for mail delivery affect content. At best, the newspaper becomes magazine-like with strong feature stories, photography and analysis pieces. But of course, all of that takes extra time, employees and money.

 

The biggest question our shop had regarding advertising was about the midweek grocery store inserts. That’s really the last bit of inserted ads we still have. Other than an occasional (and very thin) coupon booklet, there’s really no ad inserts in the now-Saturday paper, and that was true when it was still home delivered on Sunday.