MEDIA | Patrick Yeagle
The State Journal-Register is as much a part of Springfield as Abraham Lincoln. In fact, the city’s only daily newspaper even carries an accolade from Lincoln on its editorial page. Formed in 1974 from the merger of the Illinois State Journal and the Illinois State Register, the SJ-R has become an integral part of the community and the state’s media environment. That’s part of why the condition of the paper is a cause of concern among many current and former SJ-R employees.
“This newspaper has been a part of the fabric of this city for years and years,” says one former employee who asked to remain anonymous. “Residents of this city, whether they loved the paper or hated it, felt like they owned it.”
Changes at the paper have made some past and present employees nervous about the paper’s future and its reputation. They speak quietly, always off the record, about tense meetings, rumors of layoffs and alleged ethics
breaches. But the paper wasn’t always that way, they say. Under the ownership of Fairfield, N.Y.-based GateHouse Media, the environment at the SJ-R has turned sour.
“When GateHouse and [executive editor Jon] Broadbooks came in, it was with a fury,” says a former employee who requested anonymity. “They were very determined to remake the newspaper. They looked at it as broken and in need of fixing.
“What was happening was that they were losing touch with Springfield and its people,” the same former employee continues. “When GateHouse and Broadbooks took over, there was no respect for that relationship between the paper and the people. It was horrible to watch.”
The State Journal-Register was purchased by GateHouse Media in April of 2007 from the now-defunct Copley Press. The paper was part of a package deal including the Peoria Journal Star, the Lincoln Courier and six other Illinois and Ohio newspapers owned by Copley, which sold together for $380 million. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, a private company which tracks newspaper circulation, the SJ-R has a weekday circulation of 45,622, with Sunday circulation reaching 54,610 as of September 2010.
According to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, GateHouse owns 98 daily newspapers nationwide, the most of any media company. GateHouse also owns 82 free weekly papers, 203 paid weekly papers and 127 classified papers in 21 states, according to the company’s website. Twenty of the company’s daily papers are in Illinois.
Now, having such a broad reach may actually be weighing down GateHouse and the SJ-R. Formerly known as Liberty Group Publishing, GateHouse went on a buying spree from the company’s start in 1998 until the late 2000s, purchasing hundreds of papers and incurring massive debt at a time when credit was easy to secure and the economy was growing rapidly.
However, in 2007, at the climax of GateHouse’s gamble and just as the financial crisis hit, advertising revenues industrywide were tanking, falling a total of 23 percent over the two-year period of 2007 and 2008. Ad revenues dropped another 26 percent in 2009, meaning the largest source of profit for newspapers was drying up just when GateHouse needed it most. In a tough economic time that has seen many papers – if not most – losing revenue, GateHouse’s precarious financial position has been intensified by the sheer number of papers under its control.
“We have experienced recent declines in advertising revenue streams and increased volatility of operating performance, despite our geographic diversity, well-balanced portfolio of products, strong local franchises, broad customer base and reliance on smaller markets,” says GateHouse’s 2009 annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.