Free Republic

You think $300 million in costs cut is a big number? Try $400 million. Or more than $400 million. Those are the internal numbers in the air as America’s two largest newspaper chains, Gannett and GateHouse, try to land their megamerger, first announced in August. ... Now, talk has gone to $400 million and beyond, into the range of nearly half a billion dollars. What does that mean? Almost certainly, even more reduction in headcount than had been anticipated... And the company won’t wait for the first of the year to begin layoffs: With immediate savings a priority, expect those...

The combined company would have more than 260 daily papers in the United States, along with more than 300 weeklies. It would be the largest U.S. newspaper company ... the U.S. has lost almost 1,800 local newspapers since 2004. Newsroom employment fell by a quarter from 2008 to 2018, according to Pew Research, and layoffs have continued this year. Both GateHouse and Gannett are known as buyers of other papers. Bulking up lets companies cut costs — including layoffs in newsrooms — and centralize operations. ... GateHouse’s owner, New Media, is taking on new debt to get the deal done...

GateHouse Media and its publicly traded publisher New Media Investment Group is deep in talks to buy USA Today owner Gannett — a merger that would make America’s biggest newspaper chain even bigger, The Post has learned. The two parties had been previously reported to be in talks, but it was unclear until now that the deal was for the smaller Gatehouse to buy Gannett, which is already the biggest newspaper chain in the US by circulation. Fairport, NY-based GateHouse — which owns nearly 700 papers across 39 states, including 156 dailies like the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio — is...

Apparently GateHouse Media thinks some employees deserve big bonuses: "CEO Michael Reed had a pay package of $1,250,000 in 2010, receiving a bigger bonus than his base salary. His bonus amounted to $750,000 of the total, according to the report. Apparently, the board of directors were quite pleased with Reed's performance since his contract calls for a target bonus of $200,000 and he received nearly four times that amount. Fortunately for Reed, he did not receive his bonus in GateHouse Media shares." Why didn't the GateHouse CEO get his bonus in shares of his own company? GateHouse trades for less...

As some Freepers here know, I'm a former GateHouse Media reporter with more than two decades of newsroom experience who lives outside Fort Leonard Wood in the Missouri Ozarks. I now compete head-to-head online with a GateHouse Media newspaper, and quite frankly, am blowing it out of the water in average daily readership and many areas of coverage. (And yes, I'm a conservative Republican -- volunteered for Reagan in 1980 when most people in Gerald Ford country in Michigan thought Reagan was unelectable.) This link will take you to some of my thoughts on GateHouse Media's current financial problems. GateHouse:...

The bad news continues at GateHouse Media, owners of the Waynesville Daily Guide, Rolla Daily News, and Camdenton Lake Sun Leader near Fort Leonard Wood. However, things may be less bad than they've been in the past. GateHouse Media issued its first-quarter financial report yesterday with a press release. Key take-away points from the official press release include that GateHouse continued to lose money, though not as much as in the past. Reported net loss for the first quarter was $17.5 million compared to a net loss in last year's first quarter of $31.9 million. For those who don't remember,...

Sometimes a news story is so bad and filled with such dark clouds that there's no way to find much of a silver lining. That's the case with GateHouse Media, owner of many small-market newspapers in the United States. The staff of Editor & Publisher, one of the two main trade publications in journalism, write this about GateHouse Media: "The Street stopped believing the GateHouse Media story long ago, forcing it into the Pink Sheets as a penny stock. Now comes Moody’s Investors Service declaring Thursday its “over-leveraged capital structure to be unsustainable.” This is based on the decision by...

GateHouse Media, the owner of 89 daily newspapers including the Waynesville Daily Guide outside Fort Leonard Wood where I worked before I resigned to begin the Pulaski County Daily News, announced its second-quarter results with more millions of dollars in losses. I could say a lot about the decline of the traditional mainline media, but the numbers from their press release speak for themselves. GateHouse's CEO, Mike Reed, wrote this: "Our total revenue on a same-store basis declined 15.2% which was slightly better than the 16.3% decline we saw in the first quarter. We are somewhat encouraged that our classified...