1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Gannett buying The Dallas Morning News?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by FileNotFound, Sep 25, 2016.

  1. LanceyHoward

    LanceyHoward Well-Known Member

    Same question I asked about Wisconsin. What is the largest paper in the state Gannett does not control. I don't think they own Chattanooga but what is next in size?
     
  2. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    Probably Kingsport and Johnson City, in some order. Both Sandusky papers.
     
  3. LanceyHoward

    LanceyHoward Well-Known Member

    Wisconsin has about the same popualtion as metro Atlanta and Tennessee about the same as Houston. What would happen to circualtion if Gannett moved to one statewide paper with the equivalants of zones for different parts of the states?
     
  4. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    A fucking disaster.

    Memphis and Knoxville are 380 miles apart, about the same distance as New York City and Pittsburgh, except with possibly less in common.

    EDIT: And that's before accounting for East Tennessee being in a different time zone.
     
  5. LanceyHoward

    LanceyHoward Well-Known Member

    It agree it would be a fucking disaster from an editorial and community service perspective.

    But I always remember that Frank Gannett was known as the "Great Hypenator". He made his fortune by going into a town, buying two struggling newspapers and then combining them. Is that strategy still viable?

    I don't see a lot of Gannett product but I understand they are moving to a national look. Given there acquisition strategy of Gannett of concentrating in regions I wonder if the company is moving towards consolidating newspapers. Hasn't this already happened at the Bergen Record which Gannett just bought?
     
  6. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    If anything, Gannett would fold the Murfreesboro and Clarksville papers into the Tennessean. Maybe the Jackson Sun into the Commercial Appeal. But I tend to doubt it.
     
  7. PaperDoll

    PaperDoll Well-Known Member

    No, just the usual newsroom slashing which accompanies acquisition. But there ought to be far more New Jersey collaboration (and possibly consolidation) than currently exists, given how much overlap there is in coverage area and limited staffing.
     
  8. Twirling Time

    Twirling Time Well-Known Member

    GateHouse is also moving toward a national look. They're supposed to go to a standard page design for all sections later this year. It stands to reason that they'll follow a similar path.
     
  9. LanceyHoward

    LanceyHoward Well-Known Member

    I stumbled on this while looking something else up. Belo has a market cap of about 130 million dollars. But they only cash flow about 10 million dollars a year. Newspapers are selling for 4-5 times cash flow. So a company like Gannett would look at the Dallas Morning News and say it was to expensive. I don't think Dallas is going to sell unless the stock price drops from $6 a share to $2 or so.
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2017
  10. Bronco77

    Bronco77 Well-Known Member

    Not sure what the Morning News would have fetched when Dallas became a one-newspaper town 25 years ago and print was robust, but somewhere in the $1 billion-$1.5 billion range probably wouldn't have been out of line -- and might even have been too low.
     
  11. LanceyHoward

    LanceyHoward Well-Known Member

    The Minneapolis Star-Tribune sold for 1.2 billion in 1998. Both papers had competitors in part of the their metro area in Ft. Worth and St. Paul, respectively. So Dallas, given its greater size and the more rapid growth of the metropolitan area, which fueled lots of real estate and help wanted adds, was worth substantially more than Minneapolis. I am also pretty sure that Minneapolis was unionized and Dallas was not.

    The New York Times paid 1.1 billion in 1993 for the Boston Globe and sold it for 70 million.
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2017
  12. Matt1735

    Matt1735 Well-Known Member

Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page