Newsonomics: Poison Pill Swallowed, What’s Next For Reeling Gannett?

Sixty-three cents. That’s all it took to buy a share of Gannett at market close yesterday. The entire company — valued at $18.5 billion-with-a-“b” 15 years ago when it owned TV stations but many fewer newspapers, not to mention $823 million-with-an-“m” as recently as January — is today worth ...

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Newsonomics: Tomorrow’s Life-Or-Death Decisions For Newspapers Are Suddenly Today’s, Thanks To Coronavirus

As local newspapers’ businesses hit the skids, they’re finding themselves careening right now into a future they’d thought was still several years away. “We are all going to jump ahead three years,” Mike Orren, chief product officer of The Dallas Morning News, suggested to me last week. At ...

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The Newsonomics of the Mnuchin Money And The Bailout’s Impact On America’s Press

  Is that a light at the end of the tunnel? Or just the Mnuchin Express coming for the newspaper industry? The $2.2 trillion CARES Act will likely become law at some point today. It’s a bailout that has got local news publishers and their trade groups scurrying; they’re eyeing two big ...

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Newsonomics: In Memphis’ Unexpected News war, The Daily Memphian’s Model Demands Attention

At first blush, it looks a bit like an old-fashioned newspaper war. (For our younger readers: Long ago, some cities had two or more strong newspapers that fought each other for scoops, talent, readers, and advertisers. Really.) In Memphis, two newsrooms — each with about three dozen journalists ...

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Newsonomics: Six Takeaways From McClatchy’s Bankruptcy

What McClatchy’s Thursday bankruptcy filing lacked in suspense, it makes up for in our ability to game out the next skirmishes in the Consolidation Games, now ramping up its second season. That massive movement within the newspaper industry — equal parts financialization and consolidation — has ...

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Turns Out Warren Buffett Won’t Be The Billionaire Who Saves Newspapers Either

By JOSHUA BENTON AND KEN DOCTOR  Circa 2012, one of the most popular lines among American newspaper journalists went something like this: “Newspapers can’t be that terrible of a business if Warren Buffett, the smartest investor in the world, wants in.” That was the year that Buffett’s Berkshire ...

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Newsonomics: By Selling To America’s Worst Newspaper Owners, Michael Ferro Ushers The Vultures Into Tribune

Is it the apocalypse, or just an unreasonable facsimile? In a week of newspaper industry drama — GateHouse’s expected takeover of Gannett and McClatchy’s unexpected move in the direction of bankruptcy — who could write a better next act than that old newspaper vaudeville duo of Michael ...

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Newsonomics: With Its Merger Approved, The New Gannett Readies The Cost-Cutting Knife

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. Follow the money: When I ...

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Newsonomics: The Gannett–GateHouse Merger Is Really Happening, And Expect To See More Than 10% Of Jobs Cut Off The Top

The megamerger is really happening. Expect the new Gannett — the brand that will survive that chain’s acquisition by GateHouse Media — to officially take wobbly flight soon, perhaps around Thanksgiving. Both companies, the country’s No. 1 and No. 2 newspaper publishers, say it’s full speed ...

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Newsonomics: The Perils — And Promises — Of New Gannett

  There’s the megamerger, and then there are the numbers: $1.8 billion, 11.5 percent interest, 5 years, $300 million, 18 percent…and many more.   RELATED ARTICLE Newsonomics: The GateHouse/Gannett newspaper megamerger could be announced as soon as Monday morning August 4, 2019 ...

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