Gannett buying The Dallas Morning News?

One of my oldest colleagues, Ed Gotwals, got the axe. He had been simultaneously acting as SE in Chambersburg, where he'd been for 30 years, and Lebanon.

He was planning to retire any time now anyway, but he should have gotten better treatment. Of course, we're saying that about a lot of people.

 

5 now. They are down to 12.

 

Wichita Falls lost five, four in the newsroom

 

Same editor will oversee papers in Redding, Calif., and Salinas, Calif., for Gannett. Mapquest says those cities are 305 miles apart, or a drive of almost five hours (or God knows how long in traffic on I-5 and 101, I assume).

 

Anderson's coverage had grown really good in the past few years. Cutting all them to keep the Greenville guy, well, just Gannett as hell. (Greenville not the most on the ball paper either)

 

Visalia/Tulare too, IIRC. But I guess Gannett is thinking "they're all in California, right?"

 

You mean "the 5" and "the 101," right?

 

What does Gannett's recent bloodletting signify? Are we closer to online only or not?

 

I think we are evolving to regional papers with frequency of two-three times a week. There will be one paper for a large area like the state of Wisconsin. Why does Gannett need sports editors in every town? They could have one sports desk who staffs the Badgers, Marquette basketball, the Packers, Brewers and Bucks with a couple prep guys and a couple guys to staff UW GreenBay, etc.

The only advertisers who seem to be left are the retailers and fast food places with their inserts. These chains generally blanket a region. I am from Denver and the grocery stores, big box retailers and fast-food restaurants are the same in Pueblo as they are in Ft. Collins. They don't care about local issues. They are looking for a delivery mechanism for their ads.

Do I think that this centralization would be a editorial and civic disaster? Yes. But in the end money rules.

 

I guess one of the things that I find most distressing about the state of the industry - and perhaps they had information that this was the best course of action, I don't know - but it seems as if every year's cycle of dwindling returns was a surprise, that the corporate types actually thought the various new "initiatives and innovations" would turn things around. Or perhaps they knew all along that they needed to hold on to print subscribers and advertisers as long as they were willing to pay, rather than doing a drastic reboot of the operations that was out ahead of the market conditions and dumping any vestige of the daily newspaper.
Of course now they've screamed "We're innovating!" so many times nobody believes them. The news audience has moved on and adapted to other news sources.

 

That is a sensational post. Truly right on the money.

 

My experience as it relates to the perceptiveness of this post:

Nearly 10 years ago, when the major metro paper I worked at announced at a hurriedly called newsroom-wide meeting that, because of declining revenue, layoffs were in play, I asked the editor in chief what the advertising revenue forecast for the current fiscal year was compared to the previous fiscal year. (Recall, this was near the depths of the latest recession.) Her reply was, It’s about the same year over year. (WTF? I’m thinking.) Now out of the industry and in a different city, I have come to learn that the local daily -- family-owned, about 30,000 circulation -- is budgeting for INCREASES in advertising revenue for the next fiscal year.

When newspapers were bathing in profits, some of them should have been earmarked for innovating products or systems that would allow the profit-making institutions to survive. Far too late now.