Another great newsletter! Since I read your newsletter first (every weekday!) I was unaware of the Gannett news. It was especially interesting since I spent nearly my entire newspaper career at USA Today, starting a year prior to its launch. I left the following comment under the WaPo article:
Another great newsletter! Since I read your newsletter first (every weekday!) I was unaware of the Gannett news. It was especially interesting since I spent nearly my entire newspaper career at USA Today, starting a year prior to its launch. I left the following comment under the WaPo article:
Gannett is now owned by a hedge fund and the implications are self evident. It’s all about the bottom line and no longer any semblance of providing a breadth of news coverage to the public. I always heard that the purpose of a newspaper is to provide an audience for advertisers. That audience at least, at one time, used to receive something in the bargain.
Gannett did everything possible (even before selling to a hedge fund) to push readers to digital to save money on print, even though they were still quite profitable, to maintain the illusion of quarterly growth. They also began moving print to a less than daily model, again for the bottom line of newsprint, distribution, and staff. The purpose of the days chosen are now related to being a wrap to distribute advertising.
Now it appears Gannett has decided to homogenize it’s news, making it even more bland. It is a sad legacy for USA Today, a newspaper that was once billed as “The Nation’s Newspaper.”
It seems like The Washington Post and the New York Times are two of the few remaining newspapers that continue to offer balanced and robust coverage in both print and digital. I continue to read them both and no longer have an interest in perusing the miserly offerings of Gannett products.
Another great newsletter! Since I read your newsletter first (every weekday!) I was unaware of the Gannett news. It was especially interesting since I spent nearly my entire newspaper career at USA Today, starting a year prior to its launch. I left the following comment under the WaPo article:
Gannett is now owned by a hedge fund and the implications are self evident. It’s all about the bottom line and no longer any semblance of providing a breadth of news coverage to the public. I always heard that the purpose of a newspaper is to provide an audience for advertisers. That audience at least, at one time, used to receive something in the bargain.
Gannett did everything possible (even before selling to a hedge fund) to push readers to digital to save money on print, even though they were still quite profitable, to maintain the illusion of quarterly growth. They also began moving print to a less than daily model, again for the bottom line of newsprint, distribution, and staff. The purpose of the days chosen are now related to being a wrap to distribute advertising.
Now it appears Gannett has decided to homogenize it’s news, making it even more bland. It is a sad legacy for USA Today, a newspaper that was once billed as “The Nation’s Newspaper.”
It seems like The Washington Post and the New York Times are two of the few remaining newspapers that continue to offer balanced and robust coverage in both print and digital. I continue to read them both and no longer have an interest in perusing the miserly offerings of Gannett products.
Maybe you should run Gannett.
That ship has sailed. I ran a portion of USA Today but retired just in time.