GateHouse Media buys the Oklahoman Media Company

[sooner88]

https://newsok.com/article/5609812/g...-media-company

[TheSteveHunt]

Funny stuff. America, the farewell tour.

[Timshel]

Was told they've already let half of the Big Wing (the Oklahoman's affiliated digital advertising company) staff go. And Steve is tweeting names of people that have been cut from the Oklahoman side.

[Pete]

This same company already owns the Journal Record. I wouldn't be surprised if they are ultimately merged with the Oklahoman, as having two somewhat competing publications in the same medium-sized market doesn't make a lot of sense.

Anchutz only really wanted the Broadmoor when he bought OPUBCO and has no doubt been looking to off-load the Oklahoman, especially after he sold their old HQ and put that money in his out-of-state pocket.

Wish everyone at the Oklahoman the best but I have personally been through several layoffs -- on both sides -- and it's a big part of life in almost any business.

[Pete]

https://www.poynter.org/news/oklahom...sroom-staffers

Holy cow, this is cold-blooded:

Employees reported being alerted via email yesterday to a mandatory meeting at 10 a.m. Thursday. They sat through a 35-minute presentation about the sale and upcoming changes before being informed of the layoffs.

Publisher Chris Reen addressed the staffers and said those who'd been laid off had just been notified via email, and their firings were effective immediately.

The entire room then checked their phones, as the meeting disintegrated.

[Midtowner]

This should represent a pretty great opportunity for local content producers to make some pretty big moves. Pete's stock is up considerably today.

[Pete]

We have big plans at the Gazette, have already hired new employees and are planning a bigger, better headquarters.

Very bullish about our prospects and our expanding influence.

[PhiAlpha]

We have big plans at the Gazette, have already hired new employees and are planning a bigger, better headquarters.

Very bullish about our prospects and our expanding influence.

There’s definitely blood in the water right now, not a bad time to make your move.

[WileyPostage]

GateHouse isn't a media company. It's just a vehicle for extracting local money and funneling it away as fat management fees to Fortress Investment Group LLC, the private equity firm that controls it. That's why you hear this kind of stuff from the staff who work at GateHouse owned newspapers (http://prospect.org/article/saving-f...private-equity):

Cost-cutting measures at GateHouse are absurdly draconian, ranging from the fact that editorial staffers don’t even get complimentary subscriptions to having to buy their own coffee for the office machine. “Next it will be the toilet paper,” says one staff member, only half-joking.

At the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri, massive layoffs began one month after GateHouse took over. “You are expected to do the work that three people used to do, and you are not rewarded for it,” says one former employee. Across the company, employees complain of few resources and little tech support. A senior sales rep at a GateHouse paper in Massachusetts had his computer hard drive crash and couldn’t get a new one from the company for nine days. When he finally did get one, it wouldn’t accept his password.

The ruthless miserliness of GateHouse management has two effects: It destroys the newspaper’s capacity to do its fundamental job of covering the news, and it makes for miserable employees. “Everybody I know in the leadership of the corporation were financial people or ad directors,” says the editor of a GateHouse-owned paper. “They were never journalists—never covered a story in their life. This corporate stuff is killing local newspapers. I’m sweating bullets hoping some bean counter doesn’t say we’ve got to get another 17 percent profit out of this. How much more can these people cut? It becomes harder to do the right thing—to cover the city council meetings and find out what really did happen—when you had five people in the newsroom and now you’re down to two.”

[CloudDeckMedia]

Apparently the Shawnee News-Star was also acquired yesterday by GateHouse.

[jerrywall]

It would be great to see Matt Price carry some of his comic book news and reviews over to the Gazette. Seems like a better fit than the Oklahoman was, culturally.

[PaddyShack]

Other than the Gazette, is there any other local players that could offer another competitor to help take the market share from GateHouse, and possibly offer another option for truly local news coverage. I like the Gazette, but I like to have more than just one option when reading about news events, especially local politics and business dealings. I understand newspapers just don't have the profitability in today's world, where people seem to need news the second it happens, but I yearn for the well written and researched pieces that come from true investigative journalism.

[Pete]

Philip Anschutz was plenty harsh on OPUBCO.

Bought the company, spun-off the best parts (Broadmoor, etc.), out-sourced printing to the Tulsa world (ended lots of jobs here), sold their HQ properties and put that money in his pocket in his Colorado mansion, then got the city to subsidize the Oklahoman's move to downtown to the tune or $1.5 million, more lay-offs, out-sourced all their editing to GateHouse and now has sold to them, a entity that has been ruthless on every newspaper they've purchased.

And who sold to Anschutz? The Gaylords of course.


This has been a slow-motion train wreck for a long time and now everyone wants to act like yesterday was the entire disaster in itself.

[PaddyShack]

Philip Anschutz was plenty harsh on OPUBCO.

Bought the company, spun-off the best parts (Broadmoor, etc.), out-sourced printing to the Tulsa world (ended lots of jobs here), sold their HQ properties and put that money in his pocket in his Colorado mansion, then got the city to subsidize the Oklahoman's move to downtown to the tune or $1.5 million, more lay-offs, out-sourced all their editing to GateHouse and now has sold to them, a entity that has been ruthless on every newspaper they've purchased.

And who sold to Anschutz? The Gaylords of course.


This has been a slow-motion train wreck for a long time and now everyone wants to act like yesterday was the entire disaster in itself.

Why did the Gaylords sell? If I was such a prominent local elite, I would want to keep my reign over the largest news outlet in the state... At least The Oklahoman didn't get bought by Rupert Murdoch though

[Pete]

Other than the Gazette, is there any other local players that could offer another competitor to help take the market share from GateHouse, and possibly offer another option for truly local news coverage. I like the Gazette, but I like to have more than just one option when reading about news events, especially local politics and business dealings. I understand newspapers just don't have the profitability in today's world, where people seem to need news the second it happens, but I yearn for the well written and researched pieces that come from true investigative journalism.

NonDoc, The Frontier, Oklahoma Watch... Even the Lost Ogle.

There is much better local sports coverage and the same can be said for weather and real estate and business and oil and gas and government. If you merely like to hold a physical paper every day -- with 'news' that is already a couple of days old -- then they do a good job of that. But in terms of being a source of truly new and original info that can't already be found elsewhere, I'm not convinced that happens much.

This type of thing -- acquistions, down-sizing, etc. -- has happened in every single industry for decades. Some of these near monopoly industries are the last to fall, such as media, car companies, cable businesses, and taxis. And what always happens is that all these things get serviced in a better way with more competition and that parts get broken apart and then reassembled.

For a long time I was also a big protector of the Oklahoman and bought into the 'public trust' and 'where would we be without them' rhetoric. But not any more. We are not talking about the NY Times or Washington Post. If anything they do a lot more carrying of water for the local establishment than shining a light on things that desperately need it. And I've come to this conslusion over a decade of following all this very closely, getting news at its source than seeing how it is reported and also been a direct participant in which they have done all they can to squash local independent journalism, all the while claiming they exist to serve the community. IMO, they often work directly against the public interest, not for it.

They exist to serve their own needs and wants and to operate as a for-profit business. It's long past time to stop pretending they are anything else.

[TheTravellers]

NonDoc, The Frontier, Oklahoma Watch... Even the Lost Ogle.
...

There's also the Gayly Oklahoman and City Sentinel, but I don't think much investigative journalism has been done in this city for years by anybody (except for some of Pete's stories).

[PaddyShack]

There's also the Gayly Oklahoman and City Sentinel, but I don't think much investigative journalism has been done in this city for years by anybody (except for some of Pete's stories).

The investigative part is what I want to see more of. I got tired real fast of reading puff pieces in the Oklahoman. I hate reading news online though, most stories are just paragraphs that either have nothing to do with the title or keeps repeating the same paragraph over and over without actually revealing any news at all.

[Zuplar]

What are the other options for sports? I'd say the majority of the reason I visit newsok is for local sports.

[hfry]

The Athletic just launched an Oklahoma branch for Thunder and OU so far. Good place to start but there are multiple good podcasts and reporters not through the Oklahoman for sports.

[okccowan]

I just subscribed to the Athletic because of its Thunder coverage and in-depth sports reporting

[pw405]

What's the Broadmoor?

[okatty]

Resort hotel and golf course in Colorado Springs - 5 star.

[Pete]

What's the Broadmoor?

It's pretty spectacular:

[Pete]

This Forbes article goes into detail on how Anshutz had wanted the Broadmoor for decades, then finally saw his opportunity:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christo.../#52ffc5e61199

Finally, in 2011 the Gaylords were ready: For a reported $1 billion, they sold Anschutz his beloved hotel, but they also required him to take over the rest of their collection of businesses, including the newspaper The Oklahoman, a paving-stone manufacturer and frozen-pancake maker De Wafelbakkers.

The Gaylords, in their greed and knowing how this would all play out, dumped the Oklahoman into the hands of someone who never wanted it and who in fact quickly sold off their entire heaquarters and took that money out of the company and back to Colorado with him.

Stripped of everything else, the Oklahoman wasn't even close to profitable and virtually worthless and Anschutz in turn dumped it to GateHouse.

I doubt they paid much for it and now own an entity that is bleeding cash. People can throw rocks at GateHouse all they want but it was the Gaylords and Anshcutz that doomed it and GateHouse is now their only hope of salvation.

[pw405]

This Forbes article goes into detail on how Anshutz had wanted the Broadmoor for decades, then finally saw his opportunity:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christo.../#52ffc5e61199



The Gaylords, in their greed and knowing how this would all play out, dumped the Oklahoman into the hands of someone who never wanted it and who in fact quickly sold off their entire heaquarters and took that money out of the company and back to Colorado with him.

Stripped of everything else, the Oklahoman wasn't even close to profitable and virtually worthless and Anschutz in turn dumped it to GateHouse.

I doubt they paid much for it and now own an entity that is bleeding cash. People can throw rocks at GateHouse all they want but it was the Gaylords and Anshcutz that doomed it and GateHouse is now their only hope of salvation.

Oh, wow OK I didn't realize it was actually the hotel. I googled it and thought "what's a Colorado hotel have to do with The Oklahoman?". Not too shabby. Wish they would build something on that level... or even something near that level. What do they do with all their cash? Nothing, apparently?