Tag: Gannett sucks

Invasion of the Circulation Snatchers

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
A little trip down Memory Lane to The New Mexican, circa 1991.

Since I’m not road-tripping this holiday weekend, what say we do a bit of time-traveling?

Shortly after I joined The New Mexican in 1988, publisher Robert McKinney reclaimed that paper from the soulless zopilotes at Gannett. He’d sold it to them in 1976 on the condition that he would retain editorial and managerial control, but just two years later took them to court, alleging breach of contract.

It took a while, but McKinney beat them like a chicken-thieving mutt, returned as publisher in 1987, and in ’89 reacquired the paper he’d first bought in 1949 for a cool half-mil’, but this time paying a slightly higher price: “his remaining Gannett stock, then worth about $33 million,” according to The New York Times.

Today The New Mex remains one of the rarest of birds — a locally owned newspaper. McKinney’s daughter, Robin McKinney Martin, is the big boss.

And once again a McKinney is getting set to throw some hands with Gannett — this time, down south, where those bandidos own and operate the Las Cruces Sun News.

Now, I’ve not read that paper in ages. I do look at its website now and again, and every time I wonder why in hell I bothered.

This is what the American daily newspaper looks like in The Year of Our Lard 2026: the journalistic equivalent of the walking dead. A zombie, full of canned “news” from elsewhere, edited and printed out of town, far from its readership, if any. Check the “contact us” page: Just three staffers listed there — a news director, a news reporter, and a sports reporter.

Now check the contact page at The New Mex.

One name you won’t see there is Julia Gentin. She’ll be joining The New Mex in July to work in Doña Ana County — home of the Sun News — as the Santa Fe paper’s first bureau journalist for southern New Mexico.

“Yes, we’re growing our newsroom and expanding our coverage area,” writes executive editor Bill Church.

It’s an ambitious project, and I’ll be interested to see how it shakes out. Santa Fe and Las Cruces are very different places, and The New Mex is not the acme of perfection. Neither is the Albuquerque Journal, likewise locally owned. No newspaper is.

And speaking of zombies, I wonder whether McKinney — who died in 2001 — might be suiting up for the battle from The Beyond.

Some Gannett drone once called him an “old coot” in a memo. Which was accurate. But I don’t think he liked it.

How many bells for bullshit?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
The Associated Press takes up busking to help cover the lost revenue as Gannett and McClatchy say it’s -30- for them. Photo lifted from Jake Wildwood & Co., which looks like a really interesting operation. Plus their shop cat, Kazoo, could be a twin to Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

When I was a sprat learning my trade at the Colorado Springs Sun one of my jobs was to strip and sort the wire-service copy from the newspaper’s various teletypes, which supplied news and features from outfits like United Press International, The New York Times, and The Associated Press.

Mostly they’d just grumble along like everyone else in the newsroom, dutifully punching out bits of this and that. But occasionally they’d go wild, ringing bells like Quasimodo on meth, for big-ticket items like Tricky Dick’s resignation or the Symbionese Liberation Army going up in flames.

The teletypes and their bells are long gone, but the wire services remain. At some outfits, anyway.

But the “newspapers” of Gannett and McClatchy will soon be drastically reducing their use of The Associated Press, according to their corporate overlords via The New York Times.

The reasoning, such as it is, came laid out in the sort of grandiose and spurious bushwa favored by the mouthpieces who speak on behalf of that famous First Amendment advocate, Slander N. DeFame.

“Between USA Today and our incredible network of more than 200 newsrooms, we create more journalism every day than The A.P.” That’s Kristin Roberts, the chief “content” officer of Gannett, in a company memo. Anyone purporting to speak for journalism who frames it as “content” is farting higher than his or her arse.

That also goes for Lark-Marie Antón, a spokescreature for Gannett, who issued a statement proclaiming that ceasing to use AP articles, photos, and videos “enables us to invest further in our newsrooms.” Ho, ho, etc. I looked up “investment” in The AP Stylebook and it said nothing about gutting newsrooms, idling presses, and selling the buildings that once housed them both.

McClatchy, a once-proud news outfit based in Sacramento, was snatched up out of bankruptcy four years ago by the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, ending 163 years of family control.

The new owners subsequently were charged with “improper trading of certain fixed income securities” and took a $19 million hit in fines and disgorgement, a story that apparently went uncovered in McClatchy publications.

But they don’t need the AP, either. Kathy Vetter, McClatchy’s senior vice president of news and audience, said in an email that the decision means her masters “will no longer pay millions for content that serves less than 1 percent of our readers.”

Like the ones who might like to know whose drawers the hedge fund is pulling down, hey? One doesn’t find piano playing of such quality in any old whorehouse. Bravissimo!

Thus our sources of information about the world outside the corporate boardroom — or inside it, for that matter — continue to dwindle. Back to you, Chet.