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    JOURNALISM

    Nantucket Paper Returns to Local Ownership

    The Inquirer and Mirror joins ranks of independents

    By

    The weekly Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, owned by a series of corporate chains for the last 30 years, has returned to the ranks of independent and locally owned newspapers.

    A group of investors headed by David Worth, a Nantucket native and retired business executive, purchased the Inquirer, known on the island as “the Inky,” on Nov. 1 for an undisclosed sum from Gannett LLC, formerly GateHouse Media, the largest newspaper conglomerate in the U.S. GateHouse bought Gannett, publisher of USA Today and about 100 other dailies, a year ago for nearly $1.2 billion and then ditched the GateHouse name.

    The Inky, founded in 1821, has now joined the Vineyard Gazette, Martha’s Vineyard Times, Falmouth Enterprise, Cape Cod Chronicle in Chatham, and Provincetown Independent as news organizations on Cape Cod and the Islands under local ownership. Gannett still owns the Cape Cod Times, the region’s only daily, and the weekly Provincetown Banner, Cape Codder in Orleans, Barnstable Patriot, Dennis-Yarmouth Register, Sandwich Broadsider, and Bourne Courier.

    Gannett, like GateHouse, is controlled by the New York private-equity firm Fortress Investment Group, which is owned by the giant Japanese holding company SoftBank.

    The sale by Gannett to independent local owners is unusual in the recent media landscape, where the vast majority of newspaper sales have gone in the opposite direction.

    The Inky was independent from its founding 199 years ago until 1990, when owners Tom and Marie Giffin — current editor and publisher Marianne Stanton’s parents — sold it to the Ottoway chain, a subsidiary of Dow Jones. A series of buyouts led to the paper’s acquisition by Fortress and GateHouse in 2013.

    GateHouse’s primary business strategy has been to buy newspapers and then dramatically reduce operating costs and maximize profits through layoffs, running operations out of regional hubs as opposed to local newsrooms, centralizing design and layout operations, and outsourcing customer service. When GateHouse bought Gannett last year, taking on a huge debt to finance the sale, industry observers predicted that the company would need to cut at least $300 million per year in expenses to stay solvent.

    The new Gannett has struggled in the year since that sale. Its share price dropped to $0.63 in April, down from over $10 less than a year earlier. The company has resorted to liquidating some of its holdings to stay financially stable. In late August, Gannett sold both the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial and the Mexico (Mo.) Ledger to local media groups, marking a shift in its business strategy.

    “When GateHouse purchased Gannett, they took on a $1.8 billion loan,” said Ken Doctor, an independent newspaper industry analyst. “They have a lot of money to pay off very quickly in what was a bad newspaper economy that turned worse because of Covid. Civic buyers, who are people in the community committed to local news, will often pay a high price — they might overpay — and Gannett can look at that and say, ‘It might be better to get out and get the cash.’ They’re a very opportunistic seller.”

    Worth and Stanton, who were childhood friends on the island, first discussed the idea of his purchasing the Inky last summer, he said.

    “The newspaper staff were having to take furloughs because of Covid,” Worth said. “Part of what piqued my interest was seeing that a lot of stuff was taking place, as Nantucket wrestled with Covid, that wasn’t being covered with good journalism, because of lack of resources. Chalk that up to pressure placed on the Inky by Gannett.”

    Worth called himself an “inveterate” consumer of newspapers, though not “a newspaper person.”

    “I grew up on Nantucket,” he said. “I delivered the newspaper, and my mother used to work at the newspaper. It’s an important part of the civic fabric of the community.”

    When he heard that Gannett would entertain an offer, he worked quickly to assemble a group of investors, arguing that the paper was an attractive purchase.

    “The Inky was a good performing property for Gannett,” he said. “The paper was not in financial distress. Advertising has held up pretty well. It declined with Covid, but it has come back.” Its average paid circulation over the past year was 5,874.

    Still, it took Worth a while to persuade others to join him. “I spoke with a lot of people,” he said. “They’ll pay $400,000 to join a club out here, but ask them to invest in a newspaper and they run the other way.”

    His group, named 41 North Media LLC, made an offer in October and the deal was executed quickly. Worth is the only investor whose name appears on any of the paperwork.

    “I’m very happy,” said Bill Hough, editor and publisher of the Falmouth Enterprise. “I think it’s great for the island, and I hope it’s a good sign for the newspaper business. There’s been so much consolidation and ruination lately that it’s nice to think that someone who cares bought it.”

    OP-ED

    What Has Happened to the Cape Cod Times?

    To save the Cape’s only daily, readers must take the initiative

    By

    gatehouse
    A map depicting daily newspapers owned by GateHouse after its acquisition of Gannett was completed. (Ren LaForme/Google Maps courtesy Poynter Institute)

    Readers must have noticed that Cape Cod’s only daily newspaper has gotten much slimmer in the last few months. It’s no accident. According to the Brookings Institution, over 2,000 U.S. newspapers have disappeared in the last 15 years. People are increasingly getting their news from screens instead of print. And that’s a shame.

    The standard narrative is that ad revenue has dropped, so papers are forced to cut staff to survive. But, behind the scenes, something else is happening: corporate mergers.

    The Cape Cod Standard Times, founded in 1936, became the Cape Cod Times in 1975 and stated in a front-page editorial: “We adopted the new name because we want it clearly known that we are an independent Cape Cod newspaper, printed and published on the Cape, by Cape Codders, for Cape Codders.” Clear enough.

    Since then, the Times has experienced a byzantine succession of corporate owners, including Ottaway, Dow Jones, News Corp. (Rupert Murdoch), GateHouse Media and its parent company, New Media Group, and, most recently, Gannett. The latest merger retained the name Gannett, founded in 1906, ostensibly to give itself a veneer of respectability. But the owners are private-equity Wall Street types. (Gannett also owns the Provincetown Banner and the Cape Codder.)

    In 2013, when News Corp. sold the Dow Jones newspapers, its CEO announced that the papers were “not strategically consistent with the emerging portfolio of our company.” Also, corporate-clear enough.

    Why would Wall Street be interested in failing newspapers? To wring all the remaining profits out of the print edition, while selling off any tangible assets like property. So, what’s the harm? Investigative journalism dies. People no longer know what’s happening in their communities.

    A recent episode of the NPR program Hidden Brain, called “Starving the Watchdogs,” illustrated very well how a local reporter’s investigative work can have international repercussions — and how the demise of local newspapers can increase corruption and taxpayer costs while decreasing voter participation and civic engagement.

    In November 2019, Paul Pronovost, the respected editor of the Times since 2005, resigned. In a parting memo to his employees, he wrote, “I do feel deep regret for not being able to hold the line on some of my core principles. In many ways, I feel I’ve failed you all and those who are no longer working at 319 [Main St.] … That’s one of the reasons I know it’s time to move on: I am not able to give you what you need and deserve.”

    So, what now, after the loss of even more jobs and ad revenue during this pandemic? On May 4, William Mills was the editorial page editor of the Times. On May 5, he was gone. Gannett ordered employees who do yeoman work at the paper to be furloughed for one week per month for three months.

    Gannett recently announced that it had established a nonprofit organization, ostensibly for charitable causes, and subsidized it to the tune of $2.1 million. That money, of course, could have been re-invested locally in the Times. The press release did not mention that $2.1 million was the exact amount Gannett made from the sale of the two Times buildings on Main Street in Hyannis last year.

    If the Cape Cod Times is to be saved, it will be up to its readers to take the initiative. They are loyal, passionate, and generous. Consider their $1 million-plus donations last winter to the Needy Fund, and $1.13 million to the Covid-19 Fund as of last May.

    Consider the Berkshire Eagle success story. The paper, whose roots go back to 1789, remained in private hands until 1995, when debt obligations forced its sale to the Media News Group, which instituted several rounds of staff cuts and price increases. In 2016, a small group of private, local investors bought it back and restored the manpower that had been cut. The Eagle is now on the road to regaining the award-winning excellence it once enjoyed. Yo-Yo Ma and other notables are on the community advisory board.

    Cape Cod has a similar demographic of retired wealth and celebrities. Is it beyond the pale to imagine that this could happen here?

    Leo Thibault lives in Brewster.

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