Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

[ChadFelter]

This would be yet another U-turn for Gannett ... aren't they only a few years removed from the "snap up dying newspapers and bleed them of valuable assets" strategy? The linked story noted they still have 260 print newspapers.

Maybe they can find a way to boost digital subscriptions, but their track record isn't inspiring much confidence.

Selling digital subscriptions doesn't inhibit them from selling off real estate and printing presses and getting rid of overhead.

 

[Sports Barf]

If Gannett wants 10 million subscribers they should do something about their epileptic fit of a website

 

[LanceyHoward]

Selling digital subscriptions doesn't inhibit them from selling off real estate and printing presses and getting rid of overhead.

True. But Gannett has 240 newspapers and just reached one million subscribers and it has taken 20 years to get to this point. So they average four thousand subscribers a paper. Wow.

To get to ten million Gannett will need to invest money in a better web site experience. And since they would need to compete nationally with the New York Times and Washington Post they will need to hire a lot of talented staff to provide something approaching the breadth of coverage those papers offer. As long as the company has to pay off a loan at 11.5% interest they will not be investing the money necessary to play in that sandbox.

 

[Twirling Time]

10 million / 240 newspapers = 41,666.67 online subscribers per newspaper.

A bunch of their papers never ever had print subscription that high. They're setting up a bunch of small papers to fail. (Maybe that's the idea.)

 

[ChadFelter]

True. But Gannett has 240 newspapers and just reached one million subscribers and it has taken 20 years to get to this point. So they average four thousand subscribers a paper. Wow.

To get to ten million Gannett will need to invest money in a better web site experience. And since they would need to compete nationally with the New York Times and Washington Post they will need to hire a lot of talented staff to provide something approaching the breadth of coverage those papers do in order to compete. As long as the company has to pay about off a loan at 11.5% interest they will not be investing the money necessary to play in that sandbox.

Totally agree about the UX. They won't reach 10M unless that gets way, way better. But your math is disingenuous. It didn't take 20 years to get to this point. It took like 18 months. And that's not including USA TODAY, which doesn't have a paywall but obviously would have a greater number of potential subscribers than any local website.

10M is (very) ambitious but not impossible. The breadth of coverage could get to a competitive level if they orient their resources in an efficient way. But the UX has to be overhauled. And there will need to be some creativity in how subscriptions are offered. Bundles for multiple sites ... Bundles for one site + USA TODAY ... Modified rates to target specific topics (for example, access to all sports coverage, but not news, for a reduced price) ... you catch my drift. I've heard rumblings about new "verticals" in the works. Sports seems ripe for that sort of thing. An SEC football vertical seems like a no-brainer.

 

[LanceyHoward]

But your math is disingenuous. It didn't take 20 years to get to this point. It took like 18 months. And that's not including USA TODAY, which doesn't have a paywall but obviously would have a greater number of potential subscribers than any local website.

You are assuming that the companies had no electronic subscriptions when the merger was completed 15 months ago. But they had been selling electronic subscriptions for years before the merger. According to the website the company started with 561.ooo electronic subscribers. So since the merger the company has gone from an average of 2,300 paid electronic subscribers to about 4,200 per paper. I realize that is a basically a double since the merger but it still not a heck of a lot of subscribers for that many papers.

And I don't know the number but I would bet a lot of the circ is on reduced rate introductory subscriptions. I think the Arizona Republic is their largest paper. I just checked the website of the Republic and they are offering a $1 for three months introductory rate.

 

[superhater]

The NY Times carved out a niche as a national / politics publication that spoke truth to power over the last 4 years

LOL

The Times pretty much handed Trump the job with that irresponsible "but her emails" nonsense and did next to nothing to hold him accountable afterward. He was their meal ticket and they treated him as such.

Truth to power? GTFOH.

 

[ChadFelter]

You are assuming that the companies had no electronic subscriptions when the merger was completed 15 months ago. But they had been selling electronic subscriptions for years before the merger.

They may have sold some digital subscriptions before, but they didn't start treating it as a main revenue stream until the summer of 2019, when a bunch of sites started putting content exclusively behind the paywall. And that's pre-merger. I have a friend at a Gatehouse-turned-Gannett site who says her paper is going to a digital subscription model for the first time starting next week. By the looks of it, the "new" Gannett is very much still in its infancy with this business model, so to already be at 1M isn't something to sneeze at.

 

[LanceyHoward]

They may have sold some digital subscriptions before, but they didn't start treating it as a main revenue stream until the summer of 2019, when a bunch of sites started putting content exclusively behind the paywall. And that's pre-merger. I have a friend at a Gatehouse-turned-Gannett site who says her paper is going to a digital subscription model for the first time starting next week. By the looks of it, the "new" Gannett is very much still in its infancy with this business model, so to already be at 1M isn't something to sneeze at.

I think all virtually all Gannett papers have been behind some form of a paywall for years.

Gannett wanted to treat electronic as main revenue stream for a long time. They just did not make enough money to treat it as such. But electronic revenues are becoming more important to publishers such as Gannett. Not because electronic revenues are increasing that much, if at all, but because print revenues are dropping so much that electronic is all that is left.

I know Reed has been promising increased electronic revenues but he has also been promising cost cuts. I don't see Gannett spending the money they need to successfully convert to electronic.

 

[Readallover]

"Part of the USA Today network". You see this on the web sites of Gannett's dailies. It seems this is how the company is trying to show digital subscribers a value-added benefit. will it drive subscriber growth? I don't know. Hey, it's almost the 40th anniversary of Big Al's baby.

 

[playthrough]

Totally agree about the UX. They won't reach 10M unless that gets way, way better. But your math is disingenuous. It didn't take 20 years to get to this point. It took like 18 months. And that's not including USA TODAY, which doesn't have a paywall but obviously would have a greater number of potential subscribers than any local website.

10M is (very) ambitious but not impossible. The breadth of coverage could get to a competitive level if they orient their resources in an efficient way. But the UX has to be overhauled. And there will need to be some creativity in how subscriptions are offered. Bundles for multiple sites ... Bundles for one site + USA TODAY ... Modified rates to target specific topics (for example, access to all sports coverage, but not news, for a reduced price) ... you catch my drift. I've heard rumblings about new "verticals" in the works. Sports seems ripe for that sort of thing. An SEC football vertical seems like a no-brainer.

They should have been The Athletic before The Athletic, bundling all those sports sections together and covering basically every pro team and major college and capped with USA Today's national columnists and beat writers. I don't trust Gannett to get it right, ever.

 

[sgreenwell]

Totally agree about the UX. They won't reach 10M unless that gets way, way better. But your math is disingenuous. It didn't take 20 years to get to this point. It took like 18 months. And that's not including USA TODAY, which doesn't have a paywall but obviously would have a greater number of potential subscribers than any local website.

10M is (very) ambitious but not impossible. The breadth of coverage could get to a competitive level if they orient their resources in an efficient way. But the UX has to be overhauled. And there will need to be some creativity in how subscriptions are offered. Bundles for multiple sites ... Bundles for one site + USA TODAY ... Modified rates to target specific topics (for example, access to all sports coverage, but not news, for a reduced price) ... you catch my drift. I've heard rumblings about new "verticals" in the works. Sports seems ripe for that sort of thing. An SEC football vertical seems like a no-brainer.

Speaking as someone who used to work at a Gatehouse paper before a 2019 layoff - We had been aggressively trying to get more digital subs since before we were acquired by Gatehouse, which was around November 2017. In January 2018, IIRC, Gatehouse even reorganized the news desk, so that there would be three full-timers doing 24/7, digital coverage. By August 2019, that effort had been abandoned.

The "pivot to digital" or switch or whatever you want to call it has been pushed for years, with the only "successes" being the Times, the Post and the Globe (at least from the outside looking in). I suspect it is because they had good cash on hand and decent enough reputations to still be deemed essential by their readers. There isn't some magic bullet to this - You need steady, realistic leadership. The megachains don't have it, and the eventual end game is going to be a bunch of bankrupt papers.