Gatehouse Media in Financial Trouble: Is the A-B TAB At Risk?

Earlier this year the Allston-Brighton TAB had to cut its only full-time reporter position as a result of the budget woes of GateHouse Media, the parent company of the TAB and the owner of more than 100 newspapers (mostly community weeklies).

Now Dan Kennedy reports on the Media Nation blog that Gatehouse Media is descending rapidly into financial turmoil:

GateHouse Media may be in deep trouble. According to the blog 247WallSt.com, the chain — based in suburban Rochester, N.Y. — is doing so badly that you might be able to get some furniture and computers cheap in a few months. After turning itself into a publicly traded company several years ago, the stock price has tanked, falling 80 percent over the past year.

247's Douglas McIntyre writes: "Watch for GHS to be broken up before the end of the year or to enter Chapter 11." (GHS is GateHouse's symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.) Wow.

What's more, the Motley Fool recently listed GateHouse as one of "5 Deathbed Stocks." [some hyperlinks added]

Before you decide not to renew your subscription to the TAB lest the money be lost in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Kennedy thinks the community papers won't die even if the parent company goes belly-up:

GateHouse may or may not survive, but its papers should probably be all right in the long run. Community newspapers are in a better market position than major metros these days. Providers of quality local news don't face a lot of competition either from other papers or, with a few exceptions, from the Internet.

While some in the neighborhood periodically complain about poor reporting here or there in the paper, the A-B TAB fulfills a valuable role in the community by keeping the neighborhood informed of news, activities, and interesting people among us. So send in those renewal checks to try to keep the paper afloat.

WGBH Blogger-Critic Turns Blogger

While it was the media-celebrity layoffs in the WBZ newsroom made news this week, over at public broadcaster WGBH they are suffering, too.

First, news that WGBH's short-term borrowing has recently become more expensive due to the credit crisis:

WGBH [uses] "variable" bonds whose rates reset every week based on certain bond indexes, often tied to complex "swap" agreements that also have proven volatile. The station has borrowed $124 million since 2002 for items including its glamorous new [nuclear aircraft carrier] headquarters in Brighton and to buy a radio frequency in the Brewster area...

Lately its borrowing costs have risen as high as 9 percent, from around 3 percent last year, adding an additional $100,000 or so to its borrowing costs - each week...

"Sadly, first and foremost where the impact will come is on our ability to expand," WGBH chief executive Jonathan C. Abbott said. The most likely candidates are special onetime editions of public affairs programs, Abbott said; he doesn't anticipate having to cut any of WGBH's existing shows.

Today we see that WGBH's own media-celebrity, Emily Rooney of Greater Boston, has started blogging. She says she's filling in for Jeff Keating, whose extended leave resulted in no postings since February. "We too suffer from staff shortages and lack of resources," blogger Rooney writes.

Rooney and several of her regular guests on the "Beat the Press" Friday edition of Greater Boston are often quick to criticize blogging and bloggers. (I wish WGBH posted the old videos so that I could dig out the PJs reference.) The burden to set the record straight about blogging often falls upon Dan Kennedy, himself the author of Media Nation blog, or occasionally John Carroll.

Rooney is clearly learning the ropes of this citizen journalism thing. First she puts up a blank post, then two minutes later she submitted another post. Fortunately, the second post had content, although it was littered with grammatical errors, a misspelling, and no paragraph breaks. But -- Hey! -- she was probably posting it from the basement of her parents' house while wearing PJs, and the wireless signal might not be so good down there next to the boiler. I surmise that Rooney's distaste for the medium has something to do with her sloppy initial foray into blogging. Next I expect Kennedy will explain to Rooney how she needs to learn how to shoot, edit, and post video all by herself to stay current in the new journalism world.

I hope Rooney's new experiment with the medium leads her to a greater appreciation of it. Welcome to the blogging world, Ms. Rooney! Remember: double carriage return for a paragraph break! (Kennedy had to teach his Northeastern students this lesson, too.) And don't forget to edit your writing before posting, because this blogging thing ain't all that much different from your regular gig.

GateHouse Media Staff Cuts to Impact Allston-Brighton TAB

The Boston Globe reported in Thursday's edition that GateHouse Media, the owner of more than 100 daily and weekly newspapers in the greater Boston area, will be cutting around 60 staff positions. Thirty-five of the positions are anticipated to be layoffs, while another 25 will consist of currently-vacant positions that will not be re-filled. The cuts correspond to nearly 5% of the entire staffing of GateHouse New England's papers.

GateHouse Media is the owner of the Allston-Brighton TAB, a weekly community newspaper, which will be impacted by the staff reductions. The larger newspapers owned by GateHouse Media in the Boston area are the Patriot Ledger and The Enterprise of Brockton.

The A-B TAB's position of staff reporter is currently vacant after the departure of Rich Cherecwich last month to California. His duties are currently taken up by a number of free-lance reporters.

A source at GateHouse Media confirms that the reporter position at the A-B TAB is one of the 25 vacant positions that will not be filled as part of the staffing cuts. The A-B TAB has typically had 1.5 FTEs on its staff -- one full-time reporter plus an editor, Valentina Zic, who is in charge of two newspapers -- which will be reduced by two-thirds. Free-lance reporters will be replacing the full-time staff reporter position.

The staff reduction at the A-B TAB comes at a critical time for the community because of the challenge in covering the massive institutional expansion proposals of Harvard University in North Allston and Boston College in Brighton. Free-lance reporters will have a steep learning curve in getting "up-to-speed" with the complicated projects proposed by the institutions, and the year(s)-long process of regulatory approval an discussion between the community and the institution.

One way the A-B TAB appears to be dealing with this challenge is to have the same free-lancer cover a given issue regularly. In the last month, Susan Haverson, for example, has had several bylines covering the BC expansion issue. The Boston Globe has also been using the same approach in its City Weekly coverage, where free-lancer Andreae Downs is covering the Harvard and BC beats in A-B for the Sunday section.

GateHouse Media will also be laying off their only staff reporter covering the Massachusetts State House -- reporter Tom Benner of the Patriot Ledger -- as part of the staff reduction, according to Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix on his Don't Quote Me blog. Dan Kennedy writes in the Media Nation blog that this one particular position will be sorely missed:

This is a tough cut indeed — one of the benefits of a local paper's having a Statehouse reporter is that he or she can cover hometown legislators, assess the local impact of various initiatives and the like.

The A-B TAB regularly includes "roll call" summaries of how local elected officials voted on various bills in front of the State Legislature. Such coverage will be more difficult -- possibly even stop altogether -- without a State House Bureau staffer in the GateHouse Media consortium.


EDIT (2/17/08): Dan Kennedy reports at Media Nation that, while State House Bureau reporter Tom Benner is being laid off, he will be replaced. The Patriot Ledger of Quincy is therefore not closing their State House Bureau, after all. Adam Reilly recounts how he tried to fact-check his original report, which now appears to have been wrong.

Councilor McDermott Receives Annual "Muzzle Award"

MediaNation commentator Dan Kennedy has published his annual "Muzzle Awards" highlighting "outrages against free speech and civil liberties in New England." It appears in the current issue of the Boston Phoenix.

While Mitt Romney lead the list again this year (for the second year in a row) -- this time for refusing to provide state security for the former Iranian President who was giving a speech at Harvard University -- a local pol made the list, too.

After Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made negative remarks about U.S. President George Walker Bush at the United Nations in September, Allston-Brighton District City Councilor Jerry McDermott called for the Citgo sign near Fenway Park to be taken down.  Writes Kennedy:

Jerry McDermott
Boston city councilor aims at Chávez, hits Citgo sign

If there’s an iconic piece of pop kitsch that defines the Boston skyline, it’s surely the giant Citgo sign in Kenmore Square. Lovingly restored in 2005, its burned-out neon tubes replaced with bright LEDs, the 60-by-60-foot sign can been seen from several miles away and is as much a part of the Fenway Park experience as David Ortiz walk-offs and steamed hot dogs in damp, squishy buns.

But the sign came under fire in September after Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez took the podium at the United Nations and issued an offensive — and, let’s be honest, hilarious — attack on President Bush. “The devil came here yesterday,” Chávez said. “And it smells of sulfur still today.”

It turned out that Citgo, based in Houston, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Venezuelan state oil company. Enter Boston city councilor Jerry McDermott, who introduced a resolution demanding that the Citgo sign be taken down in retaliation for Chávez’s words. “Given the hatred of the United States displayed by dictator Hugo Chávez,” said McDermott, “it would be more fitting to see an American flag when you drive through Kenmore Square.”

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, including that of Mayor Tom Menino, who rightly called the sign a “landmark.” But given McDermott’s predilection for heavy-handed governmental authority (he also spoke out against supposedly objectionable material on Boston’s local-access cable channel, and called for voters to produce photo IDs at the polls), the best news to come out of his office all year was his announcement that he will not seek re-election to his Allston-Brighton seat this fall.

Ouch.

While the Citgo sign might be iconic, it ain't no landmark, at least in my mind. I would be surprised if removal of the sign, for example, would require approval of the Boston Landmarks Commission, for example.  But removal of the sign is definitely an unnecessary step in protesting Chavez's remarks.  How about writing an Op-Ed about why you think he's a bad guy?

Q/A With Dan Conley, Suffolk County District Attorney

A local blogger, Adam Gaffin (adamg) of "Universal Hub", has arranged for a written question-and-answer with Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley.

People have submitted questions already, and he has whittled it down to ten. Vote for your top five; the top five questions go to the DA. Conley will have a week to answer those five questions.

No, I did not submit any questions to Gaffin's project. But I did vote.

Update (6/30/07): Journalist and commentator on the media, Dan Kennedy of Northeastern University (and blog MediaNation), refers to this process of voting on the questions as "crowdsourcing." I've never heard the term before, and the poor wikipedia entry doesn't seem entirely applicable. A neat word to watch, though.