Getting to know Gannett — then and now
It was May 18, 1986. My editor called and told me to come to work the next morning with a suitcase packed — “just in case.“ My colleagues on the business staff were working on a story for the May 19 C-J saying Gannett would be announced that day as the winning bidder to purchase The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times from the Bingham family. My assignment, if the new bosses agreed, would be to fly back to Northern Virginia with Gannett executives to interview them.
“Readers will want to know all about the new owners,” my editor said (or something close to that). It was a whirlwind week — including my only flight ever on a corporate jet — that ended with my profile of Gannett and its key executives in the Sunday Marketplace section.
I was reminded of that time 29 years ago when I traveled last week to the current headquarters of Gannett (still in Northern Virginia) to learn about the “new owners” of The Courier-Journal.
Yes, we have “new owners.” A new Gannett was launched Monday as the company split its publishing side from the portion of the company that owns television stations (including WHAS-11 in Louisville) and digital businesses like Cars.com and CareerBuilder.
Many will portray this change as largely driven by financial markets. But it is much more than that. As one of my fellow editors said as we gathered last week, “This spinoff has been told as a Wall Street story. It’s time to tell it as a Main Street story.”
The Main Street impact — or, if you like, the Sixth and Broadway impact — will be profound. The new Gannett’s purpose is clear: “We are a next-generation media company that empowers communities to connect, act and thrive.”
We aim to strengthen our connection to this community even as we take advantage of the strength of Gannett’s nationwide news network. We want to deliver media that creates action, not passive consumption. We want to foster conversations that address the pressing issues locally and nationally. We will lead with digital but not forsake print.
Some of this you can see in the changes we’ve been making over the past year or so. Now, we will work even hard to deliver on that promise more quickly.
Interestingly, the headline of that profile I wrote 29 years ago was, “Many questions cloud horizon of newspapers.” Too often in recent years others have focused on the questions clouding the horizon of media. In the new Gannett and new C-J, we’ll clearly focus on the answers.
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I will say that, in a few ways, the new Gannett is a bit like the Gannett I profiled when it bought the C-J back in 1986. Like that Gannett, it has an appetite for acquisitions. After all, Louisville was the third leg of a “Triple Crown” for Gannett in 1986, after it bought the Des Moines Register and the Detroit News prior to its Louisville purchase.
Acquisitions of other markets could add jobs in Louisville, because we host two operations that support Gannett properties elsewhere. Our design studio is taking on responsibility for a group of Pennsylvania newspapers the company just bought, for instance. And a Louisville-based call center may add other properties, as well.