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The Cape Codder

    LOCAL JOURNALISM

    Gannett to Stop Printing 19 Eastern Mass. Weeklies

    A transition from local news to regional coverage may be in the works

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Nineteen Gannett-owned weeklies across Eastern Massachusetts will cease print publication in May, according to recent announcements on the company’s “Wicked Local” websites. None of the 19 in the latest round of cuts is on Cape Cod, although in the last year Gannett (formerly GateHouse Media) has stopped printing the Register, covering Dennis, Yarmouth, and Barnstable, the Sandwich Broadsider, and the Bourne Courier.

    Gannett’s corporate office did not respond to questions about plans for its three remaining print weeklies on the Cape: the Barnstable Patriot, the Cape Codder, and the Provincetown Banner.

    Meanwhile, Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy reports in his Media Nation blog that all but three Gannett weeklies in Massachusetts will stop most of their local news coverage and transition to regional coverage. Just three weeklies — the Banner, the Old Colony Memorial in Plymouth, and the Cambridge Chronicle — will continue to cover some local news, according to Kennedy, citing anonymous sources at the company.

    Gannett currently owns 65 weekly newspapers in Massachusetts. The company’s announcements about abandoning print included the statement “​​Now, more than ever, it’s critical to support local journalism.” The Boston Globe reported on April 8 that the 19 papers losing their print editions will effectively “disappear overnight.”

    Mary Ann Bragg, the editor of the Banner, declined to comment, and Cape Codder editor Donna Tunney did not respond to a reporter’s inquiry. The Barnstable Patriot website does not list any staff members.

    Seth Rolbein, a former editor of the Cape Codder, said on April 9 that when GateHouse bought the Cape Cod properties of the Community Newspaper Co. it promised to keep each paper’s local feel.

    According to the Boston Business Journal, Gannett CEO Mike Reed earned $7.74 million in 2021. Gannett’s business model, Rolbein said, prioritizes investor profit and creates “lots of pressure to not reinvest for long-term returns and minimizes investment in journalistic resources.”

    He said this loss of local news coverage is “profoundly dangerous.”

    “Accountability plays a key role in good public process,” said Rolbein. “If we lose strong community journalism, we lose accountability.”

    While the Cape Codder and Barnstable Patriot might retain their print editions, they will have limited resources, said Amy Saltzman, former editor of Gannett’s Cambridge Chronicle.

    “Gannett pushed a one-size-fits-all model with no understanding of our individual communities,” Saltzman wrote in a March 25 email. Gannett executives “didn’t seem to care if we failed or succeeded,” she wrote. “There was a sense it would all be over soon anyway.”

    With no reporters in her newsroom, Saltzman created a partnership in 2017 with Boston University, where she teaches a class on local journalism and has her students write for the Chronicle.

    In 2020, Gannett switched its website and did not retain many Chronicle articles published before that on the new site. Saltzman said the company promised to republish those articles, but that has not yet happened.

    “It felt like we were being erased,” Saltzman said.

    Interest in Local News

    In a Feb. 16 report, Kennedy quoted a Gannett content strategy analyst, Len LaCara: “There is ample evidence people will not subscribe to read a lot of the content currently being produced for the newspapers. We see this in the low subscription numbers and the lack of traffic to the stories.”

    Kennedy was shocked. “That statement is one of the most astonishing things I’ve heard a local news executive say,” he told the Independent. “Gannett has been providing people with so little local coverage, I don’t think their executives are in any position to know whether their readers want local news or not.”

    Kennedy has served as an adviser to the Provincetown Independent.

    Tim Wood, editor of the independent Cape Cod Chronicle in Chatham, said on March 24 that Gannett’s newspapers have so few resources that they “just don’t have the content people want.”

    The Chronicle covers Chatham, Harwich, and Orleans, which have also traditionally been covered by the Gannett-owned Cape Codder.

    A weakened Codder is not necessarily a good thing for the Chronicle, Wood said. “It’s always good to have some competition,” he said.

    Wood also addressed the appeal of print to his audience.

    “A lot of people really like the feel of the newspaper,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about going through dozens and dozens of tabs just to find one story.

    “Readers really care about what’s going on in their community,” Wood went on. “They want to know what’s happening with taxes and zoning. The information we provide at this grassroots level is what people really need to make decisions about their community and their lives.”

    “As for the appeal of regional news,” wrote Kennedy, “isn’t that why we have the Boston Globe, public radio and television, and TV newscasts? I want local news from my local paper.”

    Kennedy’s recent reporting included a Gannett slide show that detailed how current local reporters would have to apply for jobs with new regional beats. The final slide concluded with the message, “Stay calm and carry on.”

    Thomas Lyons is the Independent’s Mary Heaton Vorse Community Journalism Fellow.

    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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