Gannett looks to spare journalists’ jobs after big newspaper merger
The chief executive of the newspaper giant formed by the merger of USA Today publisher Gannett Co. and GateHouse Media said the new company would make deep cost reductions across its organizations, but pledged to avoid big layoffs of journalists, reports The Wall Street Journal.
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The deal, which was agreed to in August and closed Tuesday, creates a local-news colossus that will control 261 daily newspapers and hundreds more weeklies in 47 states. The combined company would publish about 30% of all newspapers sold in the U.S. every day, according to data from Pew and the Alliance for Audited Media. The hope is that such scale will help the company survive amid rapid declines in print advertising and circulation while allowing it to better compete in a digital advertising market dominated by tech giants like Alphabet Inc. ’s Google and Facebook Inc.
When the acquisition of Gannett by GateHouse’s parent company, New Media Investment Group, was announced, the companies projected cost savings of up to $300 million, including significant job reductions. The new company said it intends to focus the cuts outside of its newsrooms.
“We are looking to protect as many of these jobs as possible,” Paul Bascobert, chief executive of the newly formed operating company, Gannett Media Corp., said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
The Gannett-GateHouse merger will bring together Gannett papers such as the Arizona Republic, Detroit Free Press and Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, with GateHouse papers including the Austin American-Statesman and Providence Journal.
