This is what Journal Star reporter Dave Eminian said:

ON SECOND THOUGHT: The Quad City Steamwheelers, meanwhile, rescinded a trade that had been verbally agreed upon in which Peoria acquired fullback Jason Null in exchange for the Pirates spot in the af2’s waiver claim order.

Peoria was not expected to be a serious threat to beat the Steamwheelers in Sunday’s opener, but instead surprised the Quad City with a potent offense that kept the game within seven points well into the fourth quarter.

Quad City eventually won, 72-56, but on Monday backed out of the trade that would have upgraded the Pirates offense even more.

Then I found this little nugget on the Quad City Times:

– Steamwheelers coach Troy Biladeau said reports out of Peoria that he nixed a done deal to send the Pirates backup fullback Jason Null on Monday were erroneous. He said the trade was never made because Null, who didn’t dress last week, expressed a preference to remain with the Wheelers. “I’m not going to trade somebody who wants to be here,” said the coach. “It’s an entertaining newspaper to read,” he said of the Peoria Journal-Star.

I don’t think me meant that affectionately. Damn nice of the QCTimes to quote him on it.

By all means, guys, let’s fight it out. I newspaper way might be just the thing for boosting circulation.

And I definitely will be taking in a Pirates game or two this season.

Copley Newspapers today (March 17) announced deep cuts in health care coverage for retirees. In trying to lure certain employees to take buyout offerings the last several years, the company had promised to pay 75 percent of medical coverage until the employee was eligible for Medicare. This will end March 31– giving these retirees only two weeks to plan. The company will cover 75 percent of the costs of COBRA, or temporary insurance, until the end of the year in most cases. COBRA permits employees leaving a company to continue group coverage, usually for a short period.

I am reading NONE of these things in the Peoria Journal Star, a newspaper that was once — and very recently, too — worthy of respect. No one would mistake if for the New York Times, but it was better than many papers of its size and circulation. Now, it’s like they are trying to shed pages. I picked up a copy the other day and was astonished at how skinny it was.

But that’s OK. It’s called “fair use.” If people are going to comment on news, they have to be able to tell people what they are commenting on. So, the law allows me to reprint paragraphs from Journal Star articles. I don’t reprint ALL of the article. And I don’t replicate links to all their stuff, and a rarely link to headlines without comment.

This practice helps news sites bring in new readers.

But GateHouse Media — corporate owner of the Journal Star — is facing competition from a bigger “Big Media” company, the Boston Globe. And the bigger company is threatening to use the smaller company’s own words against it:

According to reports, Boston.com plans to launch a line of town-specific sites that will cull content from sources like Boston Daily favorites the Cambridge Chronicle and the Allston-Brighton TAB, which are owned by GateHouse Media.

It’s one thing to occasionally link to a particular news outlet’s stuff. It’s another thing to scrape its site, place the content on a hyperlocal Website, sell ads and pass it off as your own.

But I wouldn’t place bets that GateHouse is gonna take sit back and take it. Look for GateHouse to protect its local information franchise.

If this is what the Boston Globe is going to do, it’s much different than what Google News is doing, which is spidering news organizations and providing the results of searches.

GateHouse Media stock fell to an all-time low of 39 cents per share at the close of trading today [Tuesday]. The previous low was 40 cents.

The price was down 19 cents or 32.76 percent from Monday.

I’m sure much of this is due to the all-around crappy condition of the stock market these days. Later tonight, I’ll post today’s closing price.

GateHouse owns the Peoria Journal Star, Pekin Daily Times, TimesNewspapers and many other daily and weekly newspapers in this part of the state.

UPDATE: GateHouse closed at 33 cents per share. But again, the entire Dow closed 445 points down.

GateHouse owns the Peoria Journal Star, the Pekin Daily Times, the TimesNewspapers chain of weekly papers and many others in West Central Illinois. All these papers have faced reduction in staff as GateHouse moved to cut costs to help pay higher than normal dividends.

Mike Reed, Chief Executive Officer of GateHouse Media, commented in a statement, “While we are constantly evaluating investment opportunities in the local media sector and continue to have a very strong pipeline of future opportunities, we did not see the Grand Island operation as a good strategic or geographic fit and felt we could redeploy the capital more effectively elsewhere. I am delighted to announce the sale of these publications to the Omaha World-Herald Company which has a significant and venerable presence in Nebraska.”

GateHouse Media has been threatened with delisting from the New York Stock exchange if it doesn’t come up with a plan to get it’s stock price consistently above $1 per share. A respected analyst told me recently that if GateHouse ends up declaring bankruptcy, that purchase by a local philanthropist would be the Journal Star’s best option.

Lauren Rich Fine was a newspaper analyst and the managing director-corporate strategy and research for Merrill Lynch, New York, before retiring to become Practitioner in Residence at Kent State University’s College of Communication and Information. She also is a member of the Advisory Board of the Poynter Institute. I contacted her to get her perspective on the GateHouse Media mess and how it might affect the Peoria Journal Star.

Peoria Pundit: It wasn’t all that long ago that GateHouse seemed like the next big thing in the newspaper industry. It was gobbling up newspapers left and right. Was what happened just part of the general downturn in the newspaper business or was it due to GateHouse’s business model in some way?

Lauren Rich Fine: During a period of economic growth coupled with low interest rates, GateHouse’s strategy made sense. They could use the ample free cash flow they were generating to pay dividends, pay interest, and reduce debt. When cash flow gets squeezed by an economic downturn, the leverage can be catastrophic. Personally, I was surprised by the success of the IPO. The short answer is, all newspapers are suffering so it isn’t surprising that Gatehouse’s are as well, but having an increased debt load compounds the pain, much as it is doing with McClatchy and others.

PP: What are GateHouse’s prospect’s for surviving? And what do you think the company’s next steps are?

LRF: I don’t know the company well enough to comment. It depends on whether they go into bankruptcy and/or can financially restructure fast enough.

PP: The Peoria Journal Star is actually one of GateHouse’s largest newspapers in terms of circulation. Can the Journal Star be sold off, and how much would GateHouse get, do you think? What about smaller dailies and nearby weeklies? Who would buy then in today’s market? The JS bought a brand new printing press a year or two before the GateHouse purchase and presumably owns money on it still. Also, the JS is union. Do these issues complicate matters?

LRF: There are no named buyers for papers right now. Landmark properties have been on the block since the beginning of the year. Big papers like Newsday attract big money buyers who can afford to lose a few bucks. If there are wealthy philanthropic people in Peoria or some corporation with a heart or passion for democracy, they are the likely buyers. No way to value the paper due both to lack of data and no sense of how close we are to the buyer. Being unionized isn’t necessarily an issue as a buyer can buy the assets, close the doors, de-unionize and tell folks to reapply for their job.

PP: Wouldn’t any new buyer also want to cut costs, too?

Of course.

PP: On a more philosophical note, what does the decline in value of newspaper companies say about how much Americans value the newspapers? Is all this just part of the eventual migration from print to online?

It is probably both indicative of the migration but also the change in how consumers get their news; more opinionated sites are doing well, like Drudge, huffpo [Huffington Post], etc. Also, economics at play: Excess supply, unchanging to declining demand.