Columbus Dispatch – Print Publications Sold

[Josh Miller]

The writing has been on the wall with so much consolidation in the industry but still a shame to see the Dispatch being bought rather than buying… end of a long legacy. On the bright side it doesn’t sound like there are any plans to change the iconic HQ building or downsize anymore than they already had.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/06/03/0603-dispatch-sold-to-new-media-group.html

The Dispatch Printing Company has reached an agreement to sell its print publications to the New Media Investment Group Inc., based in New York, N.Y.

The sale includes The Dispatch, owned by the Wolfe family for 110 years; ThisWeek Newspapers, a collection of 24 suburban weeklies; and seven magazines, including Columbus Monthly, Columbus CEO and Capital Style.

[Josh Miller]

On second thought after reading the editorial from John Wolfe there are quite a few mentions of the national and regional abilities of the new company to improve efficiencies… that doesn’t sound good for the current employees.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/06/03/letter-from-the-publisher.html

[Jared]

speechless

[pez]

Sadly a Google search shows a history of New Media cutting local jobs after acquisitions.

[MichaelC]

Major, major news for CBus.

The Wolfes ceding of their role in the power structure is perhaps most newsworthy to me (pardon the pun), but the future of all these publications they’d gobbled up of late–let alone the flagship–will be important to monitor.

Will be very curious to glean Walker’s thoughts on this, given his and his business’ place in the local media world.

[MFRONE]

Horrible news. It doesn’t look promising for the future of the paper based on the portfolio of the New Media Group.

[Walker Evans]

MichaelC wrote:

Will be very curious to glean Walker’s thoughts on this, given his and his business’ place in the local media world.

Quick thoughts:

From an industry perspective, it sounds like a continued part of a larger trend of consolidation. So I don’t think it’s too surprising.

From a local newsreader perspective, it’s bad news. It will likely (though not immediately) include job consolidation and less of an emphasis on local coverage and more national stories for the newspaper. I imagine over the course of the next 12-18 months, New Media Investment Group will be assessing the value of each of the individual publications and deciding which make enough money to keep, which can be consolidated with other assets, and which should be killed off. I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t the end of at least some of the local periodicals that were in the sale. And less news coverage is not a good thing for a growing city like Columbus.

[vestanpance]

where are all you Alive haters now?

;)

[MichaelC]

Thanks, Walker.

Given your publication’s local niche, what sort of an opportunity might this present for you to fill that void the Dispatch will leave?

[rory]

MichaelC wrote:

Major, major news for CBus.

The Wolfes ceding of their role in the power structure is perhaps most newsworthy to me (pardon the pun), but the future of all these publications they’d gobbled up of late–let alone the flagship–will be important to monitor.

Will be very curious to glean Walker’s thoughts on this, given his and his business’ place in the local media world.

I’m not so sure the Wolfes have ceded their place in the power structure as much as they’ve realized they don’t need print media to keep them there. They still own televisions stations and the their development arm. The real loss is the role they played in examining the city’s power structure. I’d guess that the larger investigative stories such as the series on slumlords, school data-scrubbing etc are things of the past. While I always thought they could have dug deeper at times no digging into how the city operates is a recipe for disaster. Columbus isn’t the healthiest city politically anyway and this certainly isn’t going to help our city’s future prospects if growth has anything to do with healthy debate, free-flowing information, and an open exchange of ideas not to mention an examination of the powers that be.

[tomkellycolumbus]

From the New Media site:

“New Media will create stockholder value through growth in our revenue and cash flow by expanding our digital marketing services business, growing our online advertising business, and pursuing strategic acquisitions of high quality local media assets. Our strategy will be to acquire and operate traditional local media businesses and transform them from print-centric operations to dynamic multi-media operations, through our existing online advertising and digital marketing businesses. We will also leverage our existing platform to operate these businesses more efficiently. We believe all of these initiatives will lead to revenue and cash flow growth for New Media.”

[Walker Evans]

MichaelC wrote:

Given your publication’s local niche, what sort of an opportunity might this present for you to fill that void the Dispatch will leave?

We’ve had a pretty strong growth trajectory in place already, so any opportunities this presents will just be an amplification of ongoing plans. ;) We’re certainly discussing ways that we can use the momentum to expand coverage, increase staff, and continue to grow our revenue as a business.

[Mister Shifter]

I’ll review beer and video games. Holler. ;)

[Jared]

Walker Evans wrote:

We’ve had a pretty strong growth trajectory in place already, so any opportunities this presents will just be an amplification of ongoing plans. ;) We’re certainly discussing ways that we can use the momentum to expand coverage, increase staff, and continue to grow our revenue as a business.

For local businesses wanting to keep their advertising dollars local, the path forward seems obvious.

[Jared]

MichaelC wrote:

…ceding of their role in the power structure is perhaps most newsworthy…

I couldn’t disagree more. The influence and power of local newspaper publishers has been on the decline for nearly 20 years. Shedding the print products will likely preserve any existing wealth and influence.

[Author]

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