Gannett’s Profit Margins Revealed
I’m a little late on this, but Jim Hopkins, who operates Gannett Blog, has a post about Gannett’s profit margins. Apparently he obtained a document listing the 2007 profit margins of GCI’s newspapers (except for USA Today), which are supposed to be well-guarded secrets. Some highlights:
The Green Bay Press-Gazette was the star. It had the single-highest profit margin: 42.5%. In other words, Green Bay kept 43 cents of every dollar it took in. The paper’s total ad revenue over the three quarters: $25 million. The report doesn’t disclose circulation revenue for any paper. Applied only to ad revenue, then, Green Bay made around $10.6 million during the period.
The money-losing Detroit Free Press and the formerly Gannett-owned Detroit News are published by the GCI-controlled joint operating agency there. To be sure, several barely profitable papers may have dipped into the red since this report was published. The economy went over a cliff this year when the housing bubble collapsed, throwing the nation into recession. Yet, I imagine many of the papers listed below are still enjoying very healthy margins.
The Arizona Republic vies with USA Today as the company’s biggest revenue generator. (Since USAT isn’t included in these reports, the exact rankings remain unknown.) The Republic‘s margin was a solid 25.43%, on $319 million in total ad revenue during the three quarters.
There’s a complete list on Jim’s blog. In short, aside from Detroit, all of GCI’s newspapers were turning a profit in 2007, and many were ridiculously high. Yes, these are 2007 numbers and I’m sure they have all gone down in the past year, but let’s not forget, 2007 was far from a rosy year for newspapers and yet they were still turning such high profit margins. For context, consider this: Apple’s profit margin, as listed on Yahoo!, is 14.88%, and Google’s is 24.14%. If they were Gannett newspapers, would they be considered underperformers?
And, as I’m sure you’ve heard, in the face of numbers like these, Gannett is laying off thousands.
Yes, the newspaper industry needs innovation, and lots of it. But if you think all that needs to change is how journalists practice their craft, get your head out of the sand. Perhaps one of the biggest innovations the industry needs is a cure for greed.
The negative impact that results from a monopolistic media takeover has become obvious in recent years in Northeast Wisconsin. For example, the Gannett Corporation’s buy-out more than 4 1/2 years ago of what were known for decades as the Algoma Record-Herald, Kewaunee Enterprise and Luxemburg News, which were replaced in 2007 by the “Kewaunee County News,” has brought about change for the worse with corporate cookie-cutter journalism placing profit margins over people.
Along with the local staffing cuts, Gannett initially rolled out the Kewaunee County News in a tabloid-style publication as the megacorporation went “on the cheap” with less space for news and sports, before trashing the tabloid after only about a year of existence. The so-called “broadsheet” format that now appears also illustrates Gannett’s preference for superficial journalism.
The year before Frank Wood sold out the newspapers he owned in Northeast Wisconsin to Gannett, former Door County Advocate editor Warren Bluhm, who is now the opinion editor for Gannett’s Green Bay Press-Gazette, described the Gannett Corporation as “the print equivalent of the Wal-Mart-style companies that swoop in, gobble up locally owned businesses and crush what’s left of local competition with predatory pricing and adherence to corporate formulas. Lord help any community that is ‘blessed’ to have its local flavor absorbed by Gannett.”
While I held in high regard a number of the staff members who remained before Gannett’s “launching” of the Kewaunee County News, it is the megacorporation’s misguided management that has tainted what appears locally. For example, I witnessed how certain editors prefer being cozy with certain sleazy people in power, rather than publicly holding them accountable for disgraceful deeds.
To put it simply and nicely, it was because of Gannett’s sleazy practices that I sought out employment elsewhere after more than seven years being a journalist for the former Algoma Record-Herald, Kewaunee Enterprise and Luxemburg News.
When I wasn’t hampered by the heavy hand of Gannett’s misguided management, however, I enjoyed covering issues of interest to people in Kewaunee County. Individuals from across the political spectrum praised my election-related coverage, for example.
I worked most of 2007 as a reporter in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, before returning to Northeast Wisconsin in early 2008 to begin another better-paying job than what I had in approximately 2 1/2 years working in the Gannett Empire.
In 2007 I filed a labor standards complaint against Gannett with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development after the megacorporation resorted to smear tactics against me. The DWD found Gannett violated state employment regulations after improperly releasing false accusations about me contained in personnel records I disputed.
While Gannett claims to promote journalistic “diversity,” the megacorporation arguably turned the newspaper market in Northeast Wisconsin into the Green Bay Press-Gannett, Kewaunee County Gannett, Door County Gannett, etc., etc. Hopefully other information sources, such as blogs on the World Wide Web, will provide true diversity by covering in-depth what Gannett would rather suppress or superficially present.