Yesterday The Gazette, one of a dwindling number of locally owned news operations around the country, announced a planned acquisition by an out-of-state conglomerate.
Minnesota-based company is entering into an agreement to purchase The Gazette and 11 community newspapers, the companies announced jointly Tuesday morning.
The agreement between Tom Pientok, president & CEO of Folience Inc., and Mark Adams, president and CEO of Adams MultiMedia (AMM), is expected to be finalized by Dec. 1, at which time most employees of The Gazette will join Adams MultiMedia. Employees of The Gazette were told of the transaction Tuesday morning.
That more change was coming to a local newspaper is not a surprise. As Paul Brennan notes in the The Little Village, there have been signs of needing to change coming:
In recent years, the Gazette has experienced the same financial difficulties many newspapers have. In 2021, the company sold off its printing plant, laying off 62 employees in the process. Printing of the paper was outsourced to Gannett Publishing Services in Des Moines.
In January, the Gazette announced it was cutting back its print edition to three days a week, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.
It’s easy to suggest this is another terrible consolidation of local media, and the values of the organizations ownership deeply matter, but I’m willing to wait and see how this plays out.
I said “news operation” above intentionally. Folience, Inc., the local, employee-owned company that owns The Gazette owns a newspaper and lays out daily editions, but only prints the newspaper three times a week. And, I’m told, editors have resisted pursuing digital products like email newsletters. All of this is bizarre to me.
So they’re a news operation, and the sooner they realize that, the better. To survive, the digital product has to come first, and if Adams MultiMedia can help pull the local operation around to that, it only helps.
I should note that I do not currently pay for The Gazette after being a proud subscriber for year for, really, one simple reason: the website could not keep me logged in, so I finally got fed up with having to log in ever time I followed a link instead of just getting to read the story. I was delighted when I discovered This One Weird Browser Trick that let me just…read the news. Give me convenience, and I’ll pay for it.