How I Got Folded Out Of My Local Newspaper

The following piece was produced by HuffPost's OffTheBus.

There's a quiet death among us, and no one seems to notice.

"Journal Star leader says it's time to go," reads the headline.

That would be the Peoria Journal Star, one of hundreds of small and medium market newspapers that have been swallowed by GateHouse Media, Inc. over the last year. Jack Brimeyer was the paper's managing editor for 16-plus years before announcing he will retire. The reason he's leaving seems a bit unclear. "You could say I'm retiring until the second best job in Peoria comes my way," he is quoted as saying to his staff.

So if he's already got the best job in town, why is he saying good-bye? His diplomatic comment that the new owners will have an opportunity to "establish a relationship with a new managing editor" just doesn't quite sound right.

Then about two weeks later, this headline from wire reports: "Publisher, editors resign from capital's newspaper."

Publisher Sue Schmitt, Editor Barry Locher and Managing Editor Robert Pope of the State Journal-Register, founded in 1831 and claiming to be Illinois' oldest newspaper, all resigned, stating in an e-mailed memo that the paper's new owners - GateHouse Media - did not ask them to leave.

GateHouse, owned by Fortress Investment Group, has systematically bought up hundreds of local newspapers including more than 90 dailies, 200 weeklies, 100 shoppers and also publishes what it dubs "niche" publications targeting topics such as sports and health. Traded on the New York Stock Exchange as GHS, its presence can be felt in nearly 300 markets in 18 states, reaching 10 million people.

They claim to be the premier purveyors of local news and yet they have chopped newsrooms and consolidated content to the point where little more than the nameplate changes. These are, after all, newspaper "franchises."

Despite what appear to be impressive news credentials, the head honchos seem to be mystified by what local means, and see nothing wrong with printing stories from neighboring communities as far as 20 miles away while ignoring the local city council meeting addressing zoning issues, school board agendas, and yes, even the local dance recital.

Worse yet, the powers-that-be have a distinct agenda and will crush anyone who is viewed as not being with the program, which includes just about everyone currently employed at the papers it acquires.

And so I was not really surprised when I got the call last March from my city editor, Dave Fornell, a man 20 years my junior and a dedicated, hard-working journalist, telling me I might want to drive into his office later that day because he thought he was finally going to be fired. A staff meeting would follow.

I had been hired as editor of The Farmside, one of the Liberty Suburban Chicago newspapers Gatehouse acquired in 2005. There had been a string of editors before me, mostly because before the sale the publishers weren't sure if they wanted to put any money into the paper, which serves the Huntley, Marengo and Union communities about 50 miles northwest of Chicago. Fornell believed in the small town newspaper which began publishing in 1960 and in a last-ditch effort to keep the paper alive, hired me.

The impending firing was expected. Fornell's continued attempts to reason with the new management about the increased workload on a diminishing staff (a few editors already had been fired) and the time-wasting, time-consuming and redundant tasks now required on a clumsy computer system keeping us all away from actually reporting news, was not going over well with the big boys. The staff had also routinely received some rather nasty e-mails from Brad Dennison, the newly-anointed vice president of content/news operations. Fornell had started packing up his belongings weeks before.

Dennison and his side-kick David Arkin, director of content, walked in as the group of us including three editors, a photo editor, and two reporters, waited just outside Fornell's office. Dennison walked in and closed the door while a smiling and cheerful Arkin ushered us into a conference room in the back.

"This won't take long, and then Brad will join us," he cheerily said, then walked out.

The tension mounted as we waited for what surely could only be our executions. Finally, Dennison and Arkin returned, and said something about "changes." We were all so blinded by fear, I'm not really sure what he said. One of the young reporters, about to jump out of her skin, blurted out, "Did you fire Dave? Who's gonna be next?"

Arkin took the lead, as Dennison sat slumped in a chair, staring at the floor. He's not one to look anyone in the eye. Arkin babbled about the great plans for the papers, and that there would be some changes they really felt bad about making. None of us believed they did.

"It's business," Dennison mumbled.

The tension mounted as each of us tried carefully to express our concerns over the quality of reporting, tapping into the experience that sat in the room, and how unsettling it was to work in an environment where our co-workers were systematically being fired. I carefully mentioned they might work on their people skills when firing co-workers in the presence of the staff. But it was pretty obvious that was all well-planned for our benefit.

All of us were punished summarily for our candor. I was fired the next day as was another outspoken editor. The photo editor was transferred to another office and the blurting reporter was suspended for a few weeks. The other reporter quit. The remaining editor had to continue working with empty desks around her.

Following the resignations of the SJR executives, GateHouse stock went down 82 cents or 9.6 percent, closing at $7.70 on Wednesday, November 21. A week earlier, the company reported a net loss of $8.8 million for the third quarter.

While newspapers everywhere are feeling the competition of new media sources such as the Internet and cable news programs, the local newspaper has had a tougher time staying alive with increased costs and diminishing revenues. But how will we find out what the city council is considering, what needs to be done to get that traffic light installed at a busy intersection, and what happened in Miss Gray's first grade class over Thanksgiving?

It's not unusual for a changing of the guard with new management. After all, they're in the driver's seat.

But some of us just don't want to go for a ride on this bus.

Comments

[Smalltown1]

"Despite what appear to be impressive news credentials, the head honchos seem to be mystified by what local means, and see nothing wrong with printing stories from neighboring communities as far as 20 miles away while ignoring the local city council meeting addressing zoning issues, school board agendas, and yes, even the local dance recital."

What "folks from away" don't understand, when they buy the local papers is that understanding the story requires understanding the culture. When "folks from the city" come out to rural America, they never get the story right, because they don't understand the culture. If you get the culture wrong, you get the story wrong, each and every time.

[PaulH]

This article is dead on in its accuracy and insight. I was in much the same scenario at a different Gatehouse office. Sandy has calmly crafted a fly-on-the-wall look at how corporate front men are carrying out the gutting of a once crowded, diverse field of business.
Poke fun at the folksy, often unsophisticated content of community newspapers if you must. But they cover events that would otherwise be dismissed by metro dailies and they are sometimes the only light being shined on village politicians who hold the keys to the tax coffers.
When they were independently, usually family owned, community newspapers were debt free, profitable and loyal to employees, many of whom invested decades of their lives to the business. Top brass knew how to successfully run the company because they knew the business first hand. The companies were decent places to work and employed a lot of local people.
Corporations, and Gatehouse is but one example, believe a VP is a VP and can run a company whether the product is newspapers or car parts. Flush with IPO money, they buy local companies in bulk, clump them into business centers, and wait for profit from economies of scale.
The New York execs pulling that suburban Chicago VP's strings have never seen the pages of the newspapers they have bought, preferring to read Excel spreadsheets. When the numbers demand it, experienced staff is cut in bulk and replaced by fewer, newer journalists who cost less and whose writing is reworked into dumbed-down generic stories that can be plugged into any page of any town's MacNewspaper.
Readers are leaving, advertisers are following and another industry is being lost to the "new business model."
Sandy has done readers a service by putting faces on the trend. Nice work.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I think media in general is going to continue
to undergo this paradigm shift, where one-way
communication interspersed with advertisements
just isn't as cool as it used to be. Now that
anyone that wants to can journalize to their
heart's content on the Internets, well, the
old model is going to diminish, stands to
reason. But, the online world still holds
much promise, and billions in advertising
dollars, but there's 2-way communication
now, something that's foreign and unfamiliar
to the folks economically integrated into
the Old Model. Easy switch, though, check
out Associated Content. Plus, if your column
gets picked up, now it could go global instead
of just to the local paper etc...

[Sanderella]

Foohog, you are very correct about delivery which is why I cancelled my subscription to the Chicago Tribune. But that doesn't change the fact that these conglomerates are scarfing up all these papers and there is no effort whatsoever to do a good job reporting, to cover local news, provide information to the public, and to act as the Fourth Estate for Main Street and the taxpayers who keep this whole ball rolling.

Yeah, I'm an idealist, but I still like to think that if their "product" actually did those things, they might have more subscriptions.

[larry278]

The sad thing about the little papers closing is that the people who don't own computers, have access to computers & aren't computer literate no longer have any access to local news. Many of these people are older, less affluent folks.
They are becoming more isolated by the death of small local papers.

[mamacat]

The local paper where I live closed about 20 years ago. I loved that little paper. It was so refreshing, so different from the big papers. Not that I would think of completely forgoing the big papers, its just that hearing local news from someone who lives in the area was a wonderful experience. Plus it cost a fraction of what the big papers cost. I considered it one of my dirty little pleasures; I enjoyed it so much, it felt like it had to be a sin.

[Foohog]

And what exactly was it about the way the small papers did business all those years that put them in this position? Could it be the constant changover in delivery people? Or maybe the idiotic price structure? Or both?

I just quit a rural road route after 14 months. November 3rd was my last day. They've had four drivers on that route since then. And since it takes a couple of weeks to learn the route, no one on that route has gotten their paper on time since November 3rd.

Or how about charging someone who lives out in the middle of nowhere the same (or less) that you do someone who buys the paper in town?

No furniture or lumber or appliance store could maintain their customer base under the following conditions: Expect somebody who is responsible and has a good work ethic to drive for hours in the middle of the night, 6 or 7 nights a week, hundreds of miles a night, dodging Bambi and racoons and possum and beating their personal car to death, all for a few hundred bucks, if that much.

But newspapers somehow think they're above common sense.

And why the shabby pay? Because the morons who were running the show could never grasp that when it's twice or three times as expensive to get the product to the customer than it is to have the customer come to the product, you lose money unless you adjust your subscription rates accordingly.

No, we just load up a quarter-inch Saturday paper with three inches of ads that nobody reads, then spend less and less space on news and more and more on the newest shop that opened on Main Street. Free advertising that passes as news.

Meanwhile, if you're lucky, your small town paper bothers to get the obits right some of the time and finds space for a two day old wire story about something that happened in the real world.

Gosh Mr. Hearst-wanna-be, where have all the subscribers gone?