The Gannett Company — the nation’s largest newspaper chain and the owner of the Provincetown Banner, the Cape Codder, and the Cape Cod Times — reported a second-quarter 2022 loss of nearly $54 million last week. On Friday, a new round of layoffs began.
Since GateHouse Media purchased Gannett for $1.1 billion in 2019 and adopted the Gannett name, the company has struggled to finance the enormous debt it took on and has steadily eliminated jobs, sold off assets, and shut down some newspapers entirely.
The company has yet to confirm the total number of jobs that will be eliminated in the latest layoffs. But “no staffing changes will be made at the Cape Cod Times or its adjacent weeklies, including the Provincetown Banner,” according to an email from Gannett corporate communications.
A source with knowledge of Gannett’s internal communications was told that 20 people filling a variety of roles — not just journalists — were laid off in the region.
Ann Brennan, editor of the Cape Cod Times, and Mary Ann Bragg, editor of the Provincetown Banner and news editor of the Cape Cod Times, both declined to comment on the latest financial news and its effects on their newspapers.
Melissa Russell of Concord was one of the Gannett employees laid off on Friday. Russell received an email Thursday night saying she should meet with human resources the next morning, when she was told it was her last day as regional features editor for Wicked Local, a Gannett website.
Before that Thursday email, Russell had received two “more jargony” messages warning of changes, she said. “We hadn’t really been hit in a while, so while it was shocking it wasn’t surprising,” said Russell.
Russell had worked for GateHouse Media on and off since 2002. When she was hired full-time in 2009, a colleague told her, “Congratulations: you got the last job in journalism,” Russell said. She subsequently worked as editor of the Winchester Star.
In recent years, Russell said, the company reduced the number of employees to one at each paper. “That was a bit of a shock,” she said.
Northeastern University journalism professor and media critic Dan Kennedy writes about Gannett regularly in his blog Media Nation. While few specifics about the layoffs have been verified, the effect on Worcester County papers is already pronounced and “the chain’s weekly papers were decimated, all the way up to the flagship paper, USA Today,” Kennedy wrote in an Aug. 15 post.
As for those who still have their jobs, “It’s going to be very hard for them to do what they want to see happen, to generate subscriptions,” Russell said. “It’s certainly not trending in a good direction.”
“We’ve been transparent about the need to evolve our operations and cost structure in line with our growth strategy while also needing to take swift action given the challenging economic environment,” wrote Lark-Marie Antón, Gannett’s chief communications officer, in a statement.
The company shut down 19 weekly papers in Eastern Massachusetts in May, including three papers on Cape Cod.
Gannett’s financial woes don’t seem to be affecting the company’s top executives. “In 2021, Gannett paid its CEO Mike Reed $7.74 million while cutting its overall headcount by 24 percent,” according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.
While her heart is in local news, Russell said she is unsure she can find an independent local paper that can pay her a full-time salary. “People keep saying, ‘Start your own,’ ” she said. “But honestly, I don’t want to do that. I don’t know how.
“I loved my job,” she added. “It really is something that people only do when they get called to it.”
