Gannett, on the market?!?!?

Yeah, managers drive the stock into the ground to pick it up cheap. You didn't think they were serious about the Local Information Center did you? Brilliant. I saw Louis Boccardi bailed out of the board of directors last week, don't know if he was aged-out or if it was something else.

 

Nice.

Good God, on one hand I'd love to see the death of Gannett and it's stupid fucking policies but the uncertainty about a potential buyer can't be a good thing. Instead of one huge stupid newspaper company, you could have hundreds of papers being run by non-newspaper companies.

Why would they sell the whole shebang?

 

Who knows, maybe a non-newspaper company wouldn't be deadset on maintaining a 28-percent profit margin.

 

If it's not publicly traded. How many of those are there large enough?

 

Would Google be a possible suitor to expand its empire into print and for all the newspaper websites that Gannett owns?
Or as posted on the Anything Goes board, Yahoo could be a possible suitor for Gannett as well.

 

Google is completely unpredictable. I've been covering some of their activities for the last year and there's just no telling where they're headed.

That said, newspapers seem too cumbersome for a company that's so technologically advanced. I wouldn't put it past them to buy a paper or even a small chain, but the country's largest chain would seem like an anchor.

 

Yeah, Lee stock has lost over half its value in a year. Also it's too soon after buying Pulitzer.

 

Why would Google want newspapers? Yahoo, at least, you could argue wants them for content. If either bought it I would be floored.

 

I thought 28 percent seemed like an extraordinary profit margin, so I looked at Gannett's income statement. Its profit margin hasn't been greater than 17 percent in any of the last five quarters.

 

Whether or not it's the two sets of layoffs made over the last two years or the way the Alabama paper completely screwed over the interns this summer, or maybe the way the only Gannett sports editors were able to attend the APSE convention was if they paid their own way (4 of them from what i hear), the company has been showcasing all the signs that it's in dire trouble.

 

from poynter:
CEO: "A change in control of Gannett is not in the works"
"Or even anticipated," says Gannett CEO Craig Dubow, responding to reports in Deal Journal and footnoted.org. "This handful of bloggers made some incorrect assumptions about information in our quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. ...What we were doing is making routine amendments to our bylaws and compensation plans."

http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12780

 

From Dubow's e-mail:

"...we are actively and aggressively moving forward with our strategic plan. We are seeing success and creating more of it everyday. Come fall, we will have some interesting new approaches to innovation to tell you about. And there are lots of good things happening throughout the company, even though it may feel like a rough ride at the moment."

Could that BE more terrifying?