Weighed down
Darrel Maurina worked at the GateHouseowned Waynesville Daily Guide in St. Robert, Mo., from 2004 through 2008 before leaving to start his own Internet-based daily newspaper in the same community.
With two decades of reporting experience, Maurina could see the writing on the wall – the media industry is changing, he says, and GateHouse is behind the curve.
“The GateHouse Media model of lots of monopoly newspapers under a single corporate umbrella … is a wonderful model, predicated upon the continued existence of monopoly markets in small towns – which the Internet is destroying,” Maurina says. “In my last few years at GateHouse, I felt like I was a blacksmith attempting to make horseshoes in the dawn of the automobile. It doesn’t help, no matter how hard I work or if I’m the best horseshoe maker in the world, if my market share is going to be five percent of what it was before the automobile took most of my business.”
GateHouse is struggling just to survive, Maurina says, and the company is mistakenly punishing middle managers for declining rev enue.
Maurina points to the case of the Waynesville Daily Guide, in which the longtime publisher was fired and replaced when GateHouse took over because of declining advertising revenue and circulation.
“You get rid of a long-term, experienced publisher who knows the community, knows the advertisers, and replace them with someone from out of town who doesn’t know the community, doesn’t know the ad climate and ends up having even worse problems,” he says. “How can anyone who values the news media hope to succeed in an environment where your goal post is moving, where you don’t know what constitutes success and where you constantly have the fear that no matter what you do, you’re going to get in trouble?”
The SJ-R’s former publisher, editor and managing editor each resigned from their positions in December 2007, just a few months after GateHouse acquired the paper.
Maurina projects that GateHouse could go bankrupt in as few as four years, and many of the company’s smaller papers will likely be discontinued. Larger papers like the State Journal- Register, he says, will probably be sold “for pennies on the dollar” to local investors “who actually value newspapers.”
“I feel bad for the people of GateHouse because they’re in a company which is financially incapable of surviving,” he says. “I don’t believe the people running GateHouse are stupid.
They aren’t kleptomaniacs. They’re not trying to kill newspapers. They made a mistake that will cost them their jobs and cost their employees their careers, and that’s sad.”
A former SJ-R employee, who asked to remain anonymous, says despite the pressure building in the newsroom, the staff there continues to do its best at putting out quality news stories.
“And they do it because they love the newspaper,” the former employee says. “They love the community. And, they love each other. It’s quite a family there. And, they remain forever hopeful that there’s going to be a change in the way things are run.”
Contact Patrick Yeagle at [email protected].
