Peoria Pundit

More bloodletting:

GateHouse Media, the parent company of The Girard Press and The Morning Sun, announced Tuesday that it is closing The Press.

The March 25 edition will be the last of the publication.

“The decision to close the newspaper was not an easy one,” said Stephen Wade, editor and publisher of both papers. He noted that economic challenges have overwhelmed the newspaper’s ability to continue printing weekly.

The Morning Sun, with a circulation that overlaps much of The Press’, will continue to serve the area.

GateHouse blames the bad economy, but I note that the company’s entire business stratgey has always been based on buying up every single newspaper in a region, and then eliminating redundant costs. Overlapping circulation? Yeah like that was going to last long.

Via Boston Business Journal:

Struggling newspaper publisher Gatehouse Media Inc. has had its lines of credit reduced by $35 million through an amended loan agreement with its lenders.

[snip]

As of Sept. 30, Gatehouse had roughly $1 billion in debt on its books.

GateHouse owns the Peoria Journal Star, the Peoria Times-Observer and many other daily and weekly newspapers in the Peoria area.

Hat tip: Turner report.

The Pekin Daily Times is boasting a spiffy new Web site. It’s pretty much the same format as every other GateHouse Media site. I’m surprised it took ‘em this long to change over.

Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation reports on an internal memo revealing that Howard Owens, GateHouse Media’s director of digital publishing, is no longer with the company. Nothing in the memo reveals if the leave was voluntary. On Twitter, Owens implies he has found employment elsewhere.

It’s not quite true that I’m out of a job. I’m just no longer employed by GHM. Details in a week or two.

Kennedy says the following of Owens:

Within journalism new-media circles, Owens is a highly respected thinker. Before joining GateHouse in September 2006, he helped launch pioneering new-media ventures at the Bakersfield Californian and, before that, the Ventura County Star, according to his LinkedIn profile.

At GateHouse, Owens pushed a strategy of Web-first journalism, exhorting reporters and editors to post breaking news stories on the company’s Wicked Local sites before running them in their print editions. He was also a strong advocate of quick-and-dirty video for the Wicked Local sites. In addition, he’s a co-founder of the Wired Journalists social network.

Owens’ blog, HowardOwens.com, appears to have gone dark, although a “whois” search reveals that he’s still the owner. Worth keeping an eye on, I’d say. He continues posting to Twitter.

Owens possesses one of the more interesting minds I know in new-media journalism, combining vision and practical experience. Yet his blunt, occasionally caustic manner has not played well with many of GateHouse’s reporters and editors, who work long hours for short money.

I’d agree with Kennedy’s assessment. I know Owns only electronically. We disagreed on the future viability of subscrition-based online news organizations. He thinks history shows the public won’t buy it. I think they won’t as long as the media keep offering up dead tree versions of the news.

No it’s NOT me. It’s Mike Nadel. Since GateHouse Media sent him on a permanent vacation back on January 15, the “Baldest Truth” columnist has been blogging up a storm. He has some pretty damn good insights on the steroid mess, if you want to check it out.

And he’s a Libra.

Considering I’ve blogged about it, I’ve been remiss in mentioning that GateHouse Media and the New York Times settled out of court on the issue of whether a Web site owned by the NYT can scrape the content of GateHouse newspapers and put in on a competing Web site.

Critics of GateHouse Media was out of their minds with indignation that a media company would object to anyone linking to the content. Others, myself includes, actually looked at the site the NYT had put up and concluded what they were doing wasn’t simply linking or making fair comment, but using GateHouse content to comprise the content of their own portal page. Since both companies sell ads on competing portal pages targeting the same readers in the same geographic area, I could see why GateHouse would object.

Just as they were about to go to court, they settled. the NYT agreed to stop it. GateHouse agreed to stop suing the NYT. In other words, GateHouse won. The people who criticized GateHouse for wanting to end links (which is bull) were happy because they thought it averted a catastrophe for the Internet.

I’m printing the memo GateHouse sent to employees in the New England area. Read more »

The mainstream media is collapsing under its own weight. At one time, most newspapers and broadcasters were locally owned. Today, most are owned by corporations that would rather overpay executives who are experts in outsourcing and downsizing than pay people to actually cover the news. That model is failing all over this country. GateHouse Media, owner of the Journal Star and almost every newspaper in this part of the state, is one of them. As B.J. Stone often points out, so is Regent Communications, owner of many local radio stations.

Fine. Let them die. People will still need news, and entrepreneurs will find a way to make money fulfilling that need. The new model is for small online start ups. Some of them are trying a non-for-profit model. For others, a for-profit model is the best fit.

But as the media changes, so should the rules that the operate under. And that’s good. The public is dissatisfied with the news as practiced by the mainstream media. They find it shallow and sensational, and consider claims to be unbias to be dishonest. Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review has suggested new rules that will be a better fit as news gathering moved away from the media conglomerate model to the online blogger/citizen journalist model:

• Old rule: You can’t cover something in which you are personally involved.
  New rule: Tell your readers how you are involved and how that’s shaped your reporting.
• Old rule: You must present all sides of a story, being fair to each.
  New rule: Report the truth and debunk the lies.
• Old rule: There must be a wall between advertising and editorial.
  New rule: Sell ads into ad space and report news in editorial space. And make sure to show the reader the difference.

THIS is more honest, and certainly more workable when you have single blogger/citizen journalists out there doing original reporting and trying to make a living at it. And lets face it, the contribution a part-time journalist can make is limited. To do it right , you’ve got to do it full time. That means citizen news organizations have to spend some time selling ads and les time trying to maintain the fiction they don’t have a point of view.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The public doesn’t really care about objectivity. What they want is fairness. They know that newspapers are affected by the need to sell ads, They know that reporters have opinions and those opinions inevitably MUST creep their way into their reporting. They know when someone is telling a reporter a bald faced lie or is spinning the facts. What they want is for reporters to be honest with them about these things.

These opposed rules work better. But the MSM won’t adopt them because that’s not how corporations do it.

Hat top: Poynter’s Romenesko.

Well, if you have a strong stomach, go ahead:
Read more »

Jerry Klein is out at the Peoria Journal Star. Klein retired several years ago, but the respected columnist and arts writer continued to write a column for Sunday paper (although frequency had dropped recently). He was told today that this column was being dropped. How much money GateHouse is saving by dropping a less-than-weekly column, I don’t know.

Also, Don Baker — former teacher who wrote sports on a part-time basic for decades — was let go as well. As my source says: “Baker covered almost everything kind of sport, an uncomplaining and competent guy in an industry run by weak whiners.”

Another source sells me today what I am hearing from almost everyone still working there: Morale is low because of the staff reductions, but a core of reporters continue to plug away out of a commitment to their profession.

GateHouse Media decided to not replace two reporters who have left: Erinn Deshinsky (night cops) and Frank Radosevich II (East Peoria and medical beat). This source used the phrase “downright depressing and scary.” Everyone is certain there are more reductions on the way. Right now, some beats are being handed out to full-timers who already have their own beats to cover, or they are going to interns.

Also — special sections like the Family and KJS pages — are being reduced or eliminated, my source says.

The newsroom is protected by a union contract, so if there are involuntary layoffs, senior staffers won’t be affected. But how many more reductions in staff can the PJS endure before it becomes impossible to perform  acts of journalism at an even adequate level? When staffing is so low it’s a struggle to fill th4e newshole with any kind of copy whatsoever, how can readers expect reporters to be real watchdogs and make that extra phone call or two?

I am told a visitor to the newsroom would be greeted by a vista of empty desks. It’s a depressing scene.

Poynter has reprinted a memo from GateHouse to employees saying that the company is discontinuiong its contributions to their 401(k) programs.

A commenter in a previous post says that for many employees, the first word they got about this was reading the memo on Poynter, and not from their newspapers’ human resources departments

I have no idea how much GateHouse’s contribution was. In some places where i worked, it was a set percentage. In others, it was a dollar for dollar match, right up to a certain percentage of the employee’s paycheck.

I don’t know how much the company wants to save, or thinks it can save. Perhaps they’ve given up the ghost on the idea that GateHouse newspapers are places people want to finish out their careers. I know that a lot of GateHouse publications are fit only for people right out of J-school, and are NOT where one wants to work for 30-40 years.

Maybe GateHouse needs the money to buy more of their stock, now that it’s cheap.