Gannett, Times-Union parent company finalize deal to become nation's largest newspaper publisher

Shareholders of Gannett and GateHouse Media, the corporate parent of the Times-Union, approved a deal to combine the companies Thursday, after management promised to find $300 million in annual savings some critics warned would further squeeze already shrunken newsrooms but that some investors warned may not go far enough.

In the deal, GateHouse parent New Media Investment Group will purchase Gannett for $12.06 in cash and stock, creating a conglomerate that will own more than 250 daily newspapers including daily publications including USA Today, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Indianapolis Star, plus hundreds of weekly and community papers.

The new company - run by GateHouse's management under Gannett's name - will be under pressure to find $300 million in annual savings within the first two years of the deal, as GateHouse management pledged when it announced the deal in August.

Despite the approval, the deal has come under fire for proposing cuts some view as too drastic and others view as not aggressive enough, a signal of the tightrope publishers of local news have been forced to walk as the industry continues to decline.

Journalism experts and the country's leading newspaper union have warned that the deal will enrich GateHouse's private equity backers while further eroding the number of reporters, editors and photographers covering local communities.

Last week the NewsGuild-CWA, which represents more than 20,000 journalists, issued an analysis of the deal warning that the merger "will hurt the communities these media organizations serve."

But some of GateHouse's top shareholders have criticized the deal for their own reasons, and the stock price of its parent company, New Media, fell by 29% during the past week, to an all-time low of $6.68 when markets closed Wednesday. As a result the deal, originally valued at $1.4 billion, is now closer to $1.2 billion.

"Neither company has digital chops that have you jumping out of your seat," said media analyst Doug Arthur of Huber Research. Gannett has been pushing to bring in digital advertising and subscription revenue, but Arthur said both firms missed his most recent revenue targets.

"At the end of the day there's got to be some revenue magic somewhere," he said.

The new company has a nine-member board that includes no current or former journalists.

Joining Michael Reed, who is chairman, are former gambling executive Kevin Sheehan, marketing executive Mayur Gupta, finance executive Theodore Janulis, Gannett Chairman John Jeffry Louis, marketing executive Maria Miller, marketing consultant Debra Sandler, former footwear executive Laurence Tarica and Barbara Wall, chief legal officer at Gannett. Six members are from New Media and three are from Gannett.

Two journalists who until the deal closed served on the Gannett board are not on the new board: Stephen Coll, dean of the Columbia University graduate school of journalism, and Larry Kramer, former president of USA Today.

Media executive Paul Bascobert has been named chief executive of the combined company.

Founded in 1906, Gannett became one of the Washington area's biggest corporate names in the heyday of the newspaper industry, introducing the country to a national newspaper in USA Today and erecting a glistening tower overlooking the Capital Beltway in Tysons Corner.

As the print media industry became to suffer financially in the past two decades, Gannett enacted numerous cost-saving measures, before spinning off its broadcast and marketing units into a separate company. Gannett was last on the Fortune 500 list in 2014 and in the last two years alone the number of employees at the company has fallen by one-fifth.

Ever since Gannett spun off from Tegna, its broadcasting arm, four years ago, it has been looking to grow through mergers or acquisitions, with little to show for it.