The Citizen is in a joint-operating agreement, shared 50/50 with partner Lee Enterprises. The agency handles circulation and other business functions for the Citizen and Lee's morning Arizona Daily Star. There are two competing newsrooms; the Citizen employs fewer than 80 Gannett employees. When it put the paper on the auction block, Gannett said it would keep its stake in the JOA, and its share of the profits.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Tucson: GCI talks with two 'very interested' parties
The Citizen will be published on a day-to-day basis while negotiations on a possible sale continue with the two buyers, the Tucson paper is now reporting. It's unclear whether the bidders would seek to operate the afternoon paper as a web-only news site; Gannett has reportedly required that any buyer run the Citizen as a print paper.
The Citizen is in a joint-operating agreement, shared 50/50 with partner Lee Enterprises. The agency handles circulation and other business functions for the Citizen and Lee's morning Arizona Daily Star. There are two competing newsrooms; the Citizen employs fewer than 80 Gannett employees. When it put the paper on the auction block, Gannett said it would keep its stake in the JOA, and its share of the profits.
The Citizen is in a joint-operating agreement, shared 50/50 with partner Lee Enterprises. The agency handles circulation and other business functions for the Citizen and Lee's morning Arizona Daily Star. There are two competing newsrooms; the Citizen employs fewer than 80 Gannett employees. When it put the paper on the auction block, Gannett said it would keep its stake in the JOA, and its share of the profits.
13 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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One interested party seems to have a pattern of running multiple martial art cagefighting companies into the ground.
ReplyDeleteClassy.
And check out the snazzy "journalism" over at the Santa Monica Observer.
"Calls to Gannett's spokeswoman Tara Connell were not returned"
ReplyDeletesurprise, surprise.
Probably working out the details of Content None.
What a crappy way for Gannett to handle this. Everyone on South Park is already on pins and needles and now this.
ReplyDeleteRot in Hell, Gannett Corporate Suits.
Can you say 'Warn Act violation' boys and girls?
ReplyDeleteSay one thing, do another. As per usual.
Word verification: bitors
Why does the Citizen have so many employees? There are plenty of similarly sized Gannett papers with far, far fewer employees. Maybe two reporters, two copy editors, one ME, one photog. What gives? Why are so many papers given the bare minimum, and the Citizen gets a staff way larger than it can support (if not for the JOA)?
ReplyDeleteLee controls half of the JOA and Gannett has the other half. They are equal partners. The odd thing is that it's Lee's paper, the Arizona Daily Star, that drives the JOA and makes it profitable, yet it feels like a Gannett shop. Gannett handles benefits, payroll, and a ton of other stuff.
ReplyDeleteThe big question on any sale would revolve around the JOA share. There is no other place in Tucson that has the press capacity to produce a full color, daily newspaper as far as I know. (Not sure about the Arizona Daiy Wildcat and how much they could handle; their print quality is actually pretty good.) If someone were to publish a printed newspaper, where would they get it printed?
If Gannett sells the paper (or it's name or it's assets or whatever) and the buyer actually closes it and fires everyone does that mean Gannett dodges the severance package payout bullet? Would that be sufficient incentive for them to go day to day until this is resolved?
ReplyDeleteEven though the Tucson Citizen will close March 21, the joint operating agreement between its owner, Gannett Co. Inc., and Lee Enterprises, which owns the Arizona Daily Star, will continue through at least 2015.
ReplyDeleteJoint operating agreements became popular in the past 40 years as a way to give newspapers competing in the same market a way to survive — by sharing business operations, such as advertising, publishing and distribution costs, while keeping newsrooms separate.
Those JOAs, however, became less profitable as newspaper readership and advertising revenues began to decline, and costs to report and publish the news went up.
When Gannett announced that it would close the Citizen if no buyer was found by this week, it did not include its share of the JOA among the assets for sale.
Under the arrangement, JOA partners create an entity — in this case, Tucson Newspapers Inc. — to run non-editorial functions. The partners share operating costs and revenues.
That means that Gannett intends to share the costs and profits under the JOA, but will not publish any newspaper in Tucson.
Holding onto a JOA share has been a common strategy among publishers of failing newspapers in such agreements, media analysts said. That tends to dissuade potential buyers from seriously trying to buy those publications, they said.
"When you sell a paper without the JOA attached to it, you're almost certainly dooming it," said Mark Fitzgerald, editor-at-large for the industry publication Editor and Publisher. "And if not, you're signaling clearly to the marketplace that you're not interested in having another buyer come in."
It also doesn't necessarily attract scrutiny from the Justice Department's antitrust division, which oversees JOAs.
The Citizen reported last month that Gannett and Lee filed an amendment to their JOA with the Justice Department, allowing the corporations to drop a requirement that both companies publish newspapers in Tucson through 2015.
At one time, there were 28 JOAs in the U.S., but only seven remain aside from Tucson: Detroit; Seattle; Charleston, W.Va.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Las Vegas; York, Pa.; and Salt Lake City.
-- E&P
God, I hate working for these "glassholes." Doesn't anyone in the tower have a soul?
ReplyDeleteRE: 2:15 a.m. comment
ReplyDeleteThe Citizen has the best breaking news operation in Tucson. Hands down.
You don't get that with two reporters.
True, the staff is too large for the print circ numbers. But, they have done a hell of a job with their website.
Makes it all the more insane that Gannett would not let them go web-only.
Seem typical corporate BS from Gannett once again to be pushing the staff into a living hell.
I doubt they are really considering offers for purchase. Likely they are just trying to lighten the load on severance packages.
Punks.
Frustrating, but maybe not all that surprising, that Tara Connell returned calls and is quoted in Lee's Arizona Daily Star about this situation but did not return multiple messages left by Gannett's Tucson Citizen reporting on its own fate.
ReplyDeleteCan I buy a newspaper for my kids when they graduate?
ReplyDeleteHell, they're probably more with-it than anyone in McLean.
So we get our choice between some cagefight promoters (cue Members Only jackets and cocaine-encrusted Camaros) and Daddy Computerbucks who wants his little girls to have a toy newspaper?
ReplyDeleteWhat's column C again?
Verification word: pream.