Tag: Gannett

Latest Headlines October 21, 2016October 21, 2016

Storm clouds gather over CJ owner Gannett Co.

Newspapers are suffering an accelerating drop in print advertising, a market that already was under stress, forcing some publishers to consider significant cost cuts and dramatic changes to their print and digital products, according to a new Wall Street Journal story with implications for The Courier-Journal and the broader Louisville media scene.

Jefferies stock analyst John Janedis has forecast an even more difficult calendar third quarter. Last month he lowered his estimates for Gannett Co., forecasting a 12.5% drop in combined print and digital ad revenues.

We’ll see how accurate he is when Gannett reports third-quarter results next Thursday morning.

Wall Street is worried. Gannett’s stock traded at a new 52-week low this morning, $10.16, before easing back into the black.

The figures will come after a recent management shake-up at the CJ, where top editor Neil Budde quit unexpectedly last week. Published reports said management believed too much emphasis had been placed on digital vs. the print version. That’s hard to fathom, however, when newspapers face more and more competition from online upstarts such as Insider Louisville.

Latest Headlines October 14, 2016October 14, 2016

CJ top editor Budde is out, effective immediately; paper to ‘sharpen our focus on investigative journalism’

Neil Budde‘s abrupt resignation was announced this morning in an email to staff from Publisher Wesley Jackson, who didn’t provide an explanation for his departure. Budde, who is about 60, had been in the job since September 2013.

Budde leaves as the paper faces heightened competition from legacy rivals such as WDRB and from new ones: WFPL’s Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, and digital standalone Insider Louisville.

In his email, Jackson said: “We will sharpen our focus on investigative journalism and the urgency of all our coverage while doubling down on our goals of building new audiences and engaging them digitally.”

Jackson didn’t say whether any other staffing changes were in the works.

CJ owner Gannett Co. is ramping up efforts to coordinate news coverage among the approximately 100 dailies in the chain by having reporters from different sites work together on projects with a more national scope. The Louisville paper’s shakeup also comes as Gannett draws closer to buying Tronc, which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and seven other big dailies plus 160 smaller weekly and monthly niche titles.

Jeff Taylor, the top editor at the CJ’s sister paper, the Indianapolis Star, will serve as interim editor while a permanent editor is found, according to Jackson.

Latest Headlines October 7, 2016October 7, 2016

Schnatter dumps another 86K Papa John’s shares; and U.S. economy added 156K jobs in September, weaker than forecast

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 9:24 a.m.

PAPA JOHN‘s CEO John Schnatter continued unloading shares in the pizza giant, selling another 86,000 on Wednesday and Tuesday for $6.6 million, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. That trade followed Monday’s, where the executive sold 73,637, and are in accordance with a trading plan he adopted early last month.

schnatter-stock-sales

The chain’s shares closed yesterday at $75.41.

In other news, the economy added 156,000 jobs last month vs. a forecast 170,000, the Labor Department said. The jobless rate, meanwhile, rose to 5% from 4.9% in August, according to the agency (multiple news accounts).

Courier-Journal owner Gannett Co.’s bid to acquire Tronc, owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other papers, could wrap up in the next two weeks if all the due diligence now underway checks out, sources tell the New York Post. “There is no disagreement on price, but there is still some [work] to be done,” one source close to the situation told the New York tabloid (Post).

The Post report follows an earlier one at Politico, which speculated the deal could be announced as early as this week.

Latest Headlines October 3, 2016October 4, 2016

CJ owner’s purchase of L.A. Times, other titles could be sealed today

The announcement of a deal could come as soon as business opens on the fourth quarter of the year, as early as this morning, according to Politico. Given the many twists and turns in this process so far, further delays are certainly possible in any agreement between The Courier-Journal’s parent, Gannett Co., and Tronc, which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, nine other dailies and 160 weekly and niche publications.

In early trading, Tronc shares rose 5% to $17.72 — near the reported $18-a-share price Gannett is offering. Shares of Gannett fell less than 1% to $11.59.

What happens to the CJ in the increasingly likely event Gannett lands Tronc? Here are some possibilities.

Media and Marketing September 7, 2016September 7, 2016

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.

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:

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.

Media and Marketing August 31, 2016August 31, 2016

Tronc’s opposition to the CJ owner’s $900M bid for the Los Angeles Times, etc., is testing ‘just-say-no’ defense

Named after Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug campaign, the “just say no” defense has had varying degrees of success, according to Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. “Yahoo used it to fight off a $44.6 billion bid from Microsoft eight years ago,” he writes in The New York Times. “Though some dispute how serious Microsoft was at the end, Yahoo’s initial rebuff looks like a clear mistake in retrospect, as its core business recently sold for $4.8 billion.”

The risk in this strategy is that The Courier-Journal’s owner, Gannett Co., walks away instead of acquiring Tronc, leaving its rival newspaper publisher to wither like Yahoo or find its own path to success, Solomon says. And if you accept Gannett’s argument, that would effectively leave the CJ and all its 108 other sister publications in a less competitive position in a future dominated by digital media.

LA Times August 31 2016 — This morning’s.

So far, however, Tronc appears to be winning. Gannett’s initial offer last April was $12.25 a share, or $815 million. It boosted it to $15 the next month, or $864 million. And a published report last week says Gannett raised it again, to around $18 — even as Tronc is holding out for something closer to $20.

But that report by industry watcher Ken Doctor said it appeared Tronc would ultimately agree to a deal: “It’s apparently no longer a question of whether to sell or not, but for how much.”

If it wins, Gannett would add the L.A. paper, plus the Chicago Tribune, seven other big dailies and 160 smaller weekly and monthly niche titles to its existing portfolio of 109 publications in the U.S. and U.K. It would also add 7,000 Tronc employees to the nearly 19,000 it already employs.

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