Tucson Citizen finds no buyer, close to closing

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/frontpage/110550.php

They would sell only the paper itself, not the stake in the JOA, and nobody wants to buy that, apparently. So another piece of bad news from Arizona.

 

138 years

poof

gone

 

I am shocked the Citizen isn't going all online. You'd think gannett would want this to be the first of so many that will be doing so under their command. Very strange. It could be the guinea pig.

 

My guess would be they rejected online only because the revenue potential from web advertising would not offset the labor cost of keeping it going.

 

The Citizen hasn't made Gannett money in years, but its stake in the Joint Operating Agreement with Lee's Arizona Daily Star (the 6-times larger circ., morning daily in Tucson), has made it millions so when Gannett found a way to continue being a part of a JOA without actually having to put out a paper, that was the best business decision it could make.

Now how a newspaper company can stay in a JOA without a product to jointly operate, I just don't get that. Apparently the Justice Department is OK with it, though.

One question that is still unanswered in Tucson, however, is how the Arizona Republic will continue covering the one million-plus in Pima County and, in particular as it pertains to his site, the University of Arizona.

The first weekend of the NCAA tournament is the weekend the Citizen shuts down and the staff has already been told it won't travel to cover the UA Wildcats in the tournament, assuming they make it, which would be the 25th-straight year. So I suppose the Republic will use wire.

In the grand scheme of things, it appears Gannett has been plotting to make a move on buying the Star from Lee when Lee can't pay its debt down in the coming months, but the unfortunate part of that scenario is laying off 65-70 Garnett employees at the Citizen to save the jobs in another month or so of 150 or so Lee employees... And the Citizen employees have not been allowed to inquire about jobs at the Star, nor have Star employees been allowed to talk with Citizen employees about potential employment - freelancing or otherwise.

From someone who knows quite a bit about this situation, I just wanted to throw out a few more thoughts.

 

Isn't the Citizen still an afternoon paper?

 

If that was Gannett's intent, probably it'd have done it years ago by pulling the old switcheroo like it did in the Nashville and Honolulu and Detroit JOAs. And I don't see what incentive Lee would have to sell the property that has the most potential in the chain, the one that could help keep the rest of the papers afloat. I think they'd dump anything else before Tucson. They could declare bankrupcy and keep Tucson, and I think that's what they'll do.

 

cue sprinsteen.

 

Thanks for a lot of good, but sad, insider info.

 

Found it somewhat ironic that the East Valley Tribune and the Seattle PI both won Polk Awards for work they did last year. Sad.
Makes me think that one of the journo awards ceremonies should have an "In Memoriam" segment and sure they couldn't fit all of the journos who were dumped in the last year, but they could probably fit in the newspapers that perished. (I think).

 

How the hell Tucson survived this long as a 2-paper town puzzles me to begin with.