Media and Marketing

CJ owner Gannett’s new head of investigative reporting: ‘They want someone who is exclusively focused on investigative work’

As The Courier-Journal’s owner advances on a takeover of the Los Angeles Times and more than 160 other titles, it has promised it won’t take a top-down approach to managing news at the company’s existing chain of more than 100 papers.

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Davis

A big test of that pledge comes with one of Gannett Co.’s newest editors, Chris Davis, hired for a new position leading the company’s chain-wide investigative reporting. He joined the company in July from the Tampa Bay Times, where he edited two Pulitzer Prize-winning projects.

In a new interview, Davis talked to industry trade site Columbia Journalism Review about what he sees in the future for the CJ and Gannett’s other dailies. Here’s an excerpt:

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Today’s paper.

What do you think this new position says about Gannett’s journalistic ambitions now and in the future, especially as the company continues to refine its strategy?

To me, it’s a clear signal that the editors here are putting journalism first, particularly investigative journalism. They could have hired all sorts of people, but they wanted someone who could come in and really drive the most important kind of journalism, which is watchdog and investigative work. I think it shows a clear commitment, and it was one of the reasons I was intrigued at the outset. They want someone who is exclusively focused on investigative work to be in a top-level position. I think that says a lot.

Read the full Q&A here.

Philanthropy

David Jones Sr., his alma mater UofL, and the politics of money and power in Louisville

By Jim Hopkins
Boulevard Publisher

David Jones Sr
Jones

If there’s anything surprising about David A. Jones Sr. formally entering the high-stakes fray over the University of Louisville yesterday, it’s the fact it took this long to become public.

Nearly three months ago, when Gov. Matt Bevin shocked the community by seizing control of the school and dismissing the 20-member governing board he declared “dysfunctional,” the first person I thought of was Jones, the Louisville native, co-founder of Humana, and one of the state’s leading philanthropists.

That June 17, Bevin said his decision was the “culmination of all the conversations I’ve had with everybody on all fronts.” He didn’t reveal the names of those he’d spoken with, but it certainly would have included alumni whose opinion mattered. And few among that select group matters more than Jones.

“One of the university’s most influential and wealthiest graduates,” I wrote the day Bevin moved against the 22,000-student school, “is Humana co-founder David A. Jones Sr., who received a bachelor’s degree in business there in 1954.”

Jones and his wife, Betty Ashbury Jones, have long and extensive ties to UofL. She received a bachelor’s degree from the school in 1955, and the two went on to graduate school: David to Yale Law; and Betty, much later, to the French School at Vermont’s Middlebury College. (More on those two schools in a moment). Back in Louisville, Jones and a law partner, Wendell Cherry, launched the health-care company in 1961 that would become the Humana empire, starting with a single nursing home; they became millionaires after it went public in 1968.

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Betty and David Jones.
A Depression-poor childhood

David served on the board of trustees for a time, and Betty taught French Conversation in the Continuing Education Department from 1993 to 2003. For their service to the school, the couple were among the first to be made members of the Arts and Sciences Hall of Honors, in 2007.

David didn’t come from money, and UofL — which he attended on a ROTC scholarship Continue reading “David Jones Sr., his alma mater UofL, and the politics of money and power in Louisville” →

Latest Headlines

Schnatter trades another $360K in Papa John’s shares; Yum sells 250-outlet Pizza Hut master franchise in Australia to Sydney private-equity firm

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:18 p.m.

PAPA JOHN’S CEO John Schnatter sold another 4,736 shares of company stock for $360,000, at around the same per-share price he’s been fetching since he began selling aggressively in early August: $76, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this afternoon. The latest sale, which was on Friday, brought to $10.9 million his total proceeds over the past month (SEC document). Papa John’s PZZA stock closed at $75.96 a share today, up 21 cents.

Pizza Hut boxPIZZA HUT: Private equity investor Allegro and three local fast-food management veterans are taking over Pizza Hut’s 250-unit master franchise in Australia; terms, including a price, haven’t been announced. Pizza Hut has about 10% of the $4 billion takeaway food market in Australia, according to industry analyst IBISWorld. The deal will “accelerate growth and deliver Pizza Hut to more consumers across Australia,” says outgoing Pizza Hut Australia General Manager Graeme Houston. Corporate parent Yum will retain its KFC outlets in the country (Business Insider). The deal is the latest foreign market shift for corporate parent Yum, which last week said it agreed to an advance sale of a $464 million slice of its China operations to a prominent Chinese deal maker and the financial affiliate of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba ahead of next month’s planned spinoff of the China Division.

KFC: In a U.K. court, a former 30-year-old KFC worker was spared jail time after admitting he stole $14,700 from a KFC franchise by processing thousands of fake customer coupons for popcorn chicken. For more than a year starting in January 2015 James Anderson of Basildon, 32 miles southwest of London, pretended to hand money back to customers for the $2.65 snacks, but pocketed the cash instead. He said he wanted the money to contribute to his upcoming wedding. Anderson’s supervisors became suspicious after noticing a high number of refunds being processed under his cash-register ID number (Halstead Gazette).

BROWN-FORMAN will inaugurate new, higher-profile free-standing exhibition space at this year’s TFWA World Exhibition & Conference next month in Cannes. The new Brown-Forman area is more than double the size of the Louisville spirits and wine giant’s former stand and has informal gathering space as well as a large number of meeting tables and four meeting rooms, said Marshall Farrer, vice president and managing director for global travel-retail. The company will join more than 3,000 other brands at the annual duty-free travel-retail meeting Oct. 2-7 at Canne’s Palais convention center (DFNI).

The Jennifer Lawrence Diary™

Here’s the first ‘Passengers’ poster for Lawrence’s December sci-fi movie

The outer-space adventure romance starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt doesn’t hit screens for another 106 days, 15 hours and 12 minutes, according to Boulevard’s exclusive Jennifer Lawrence “Passengers” Countdown Clock™. And here comes Sony Pictures, revving up the promotional machine by releasing the first poster for the movie.

passengers-poster

Passengers is about a 5,000-passenger luxury spaceship on a 120-year journey to an interstellar colony. Lawrence, 26, and Pratt are unexpectedly awakened 90 years too early. Romance and Lawrence’s first on-screen sex scene follow — all of which she’s getting $20 million to act out. Pratt, 37, is perhaps best known for 2015’s “Jurassic World” and “Parks and Recreation.”

Snapshot

Labor Day in Louisville, 1936
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Louisville Motors Co. picnic at Fontaine Ferry Park.

The sign over a crowd gathered at a pavilion at Fontaine Ferry Park in western Louisville says: “Gigantic Display of Daylight Fire Works, Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 7,” above a smaller sign with the Ford Motor logo. The display they’re looking at appears to be part of a car with a steering wheel and gauges, according to the caption supplied by the University of Louisville Photographic Archives.

Ford Motor started making cars in Louisville in 1913 with 11 employees, a decade after Henry Ford founded the company in a converted factory in Detroit. More about Ford’s presence in the city.

The Jennifer Lawrence Diary™

Pop quiz: Here are three of Louisville’s most profitable exports. Quick, name a fourth
  1. Autos and trucks (Ford)
  2. Home appliances (GE)
  3. Whiskey (Brown-Forman)
  4. __________________

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock . . . ding!

The obvious answer, of course, is Jennifer Lawrence! The Louisville native earned $46 million this year, making her the world’s highest-paid actress and one of Louisville’s most famous exports.

Imagine Jennifer County, Ky.

If Lawrence, 26, were a Kentucky county based on annual income, she’d be a brand new one — nudging back Owsley ($37 million total) and making Robertson ($24.6 million) a No. 121, according to the latest available Census data. Owsley (pop. 4,755) and Robertson (2,282) are in historically impoverished eastern Kentucky.

Jennifer Lawrence
Lawrence

Here in Jefferson County, the actress’s $46 million paycheck is strikingly big from a different perspective.

Imagine everyone got paid once a year, and stood in line at the bank to deposit their paychecks at one of two teller windows. Lawrence could stand in a line all by herself to deposit one huge, oversized check, like you see in Publishers Clearing House TV commercials. And 1,738 other people earning the county average $26,473 a year would stand in one very long line for the other teller. It would take their combined earnings to equal Lawrence’s $46 million.

See for yourself, with Boulevard’s new Jennifer Lawrence Income Gauge™. (With obligatory ™ symbol!)