Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

I think you would have a better chance of seeing the Russian war plans for the Ukraine than those Gannett internals, given how badly it is going at Gannett..

 

A reminder that Mike Reed's 2021 compensation was $7.7 million, which included a $900,000 salary, a bonus of over $700,000 and stock worth more than $6 million.

 

This is a very superficial analysis. I do not have time to read the entire Q2 10-Q. But what the hell.

Aat end of the quarter Gannett report 87 million in cash and 1.59 billon in debt. Cash generated from operating activities was 1.7 million. So Gannett generated enough cash to pay the interest on the debt but nothing more.

Total revenues dropped about six percent year over year. What if they drop that much next year?. Why would they not. The print subscriber base is declining and electronic revenues were up only 1.5%. Is Gannett about to start going cash flow negative? At that point they will start running out of money to pay the banks and on a ski slope to Chapter 11.

In answer to your question about what properties are generating cash and which are not, that is complicated. Gannett has a lot of centralized cost centers. The Washington bureau, CEO pay, etc. The more papers the company has the wider the base to distribute costs. The company is moving to more centralized news gathering so centralized casts are increasing. So the accountants have to figure out if the paper makes enough cash to help out on these central costs.

So, in my opinion, the whole company is sinking.

 

So in two years we're facing about 1,000 papers (or however many there still are) folding, with no one buying them.

Gotta love this journalism racket.

 

The end of journalism is the death of democracy, from village commissions to the WH.

 

The death of corporate entities employing journalists is in no way the death of journalism. It existed before Gannett and it will exist long after the demise of GCI.

 

Fish wrapping. Litter box lining. Packing/moving.

 

I was told that the staff at my old shop, which is down to almost nothing thanks to Gannett, was told in a meeting today to "prepare for anything." When asked to define that, they were told "it means, 'anything.'"

 

All you have to do to "have a newspaper" these days is a local reporter, a local office manager to keep up appearances, and remote everything else — advertising, legals, circulation, even local management.

 

Not a Gannett property but this is all horrifying for whats to come when Great Recession 2.0 gets rolling

 

The link, which you will probably need to copy and paste into a browser, is a list of the 25 papers with the highest print circulation in the United States.

It now take a circulation of 47,000 and change to get on the list. The list pretty much consists of the national papers and the largest metro dailies. There is a print paper in a retirement village in Florida that is growing and made the list. And props to the Buffalo News for landing on the list.

A couple of items that really shocked me. The LA Times, in a market of about six million homes is at 142,000, and the LANG papers are not on the list. So less than 200,0000 homes in the market subscribe to a print paper. The papers in Washington, Boston and Dallas land on the list. But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is not on the list. So in a metro area of six million the AJC can not get to 50,000.

Visualized: The Top 25 U.S. Newspapers by Daily Circulation