What if the Courier's owner is sold?

Gannett has had a number of logos in NJ,
this one was after the acquisition of the
Asbury Park Press.

Reuters reported on Sunday evening (January 13) that newspaper chain MNG Enterprises is preparing to make an offer to buy Gannett, the parent company of the Courier News and five other New Jersey newspapers, including the Bergen Record and the Asbury Park Press as well as USAToday (see the Reuters story here).


MNG, better known as Digital First Media, owns such papers as the San Jose Mercury and the Denver Post, is widely known for its aggressive whittling down of newsroom staffs.



I don't have to tell Plainfield Today readers that the Courier is but a shell of its former self, a faded remnant of the once proud Plainfield Courier.


The paper's coverage of Plainfield began to plummet when longtime Plainfield reporter Bernice Paglia was reassigned from having a Plainfield beat to having to cover communities in three counties.


Since her retirement, things have only gotten worse for Plainfield coverage and for Gannett generally.


There have been constant cuts to newsroom staff, so that no one with any institutional memory or grasp of Plainfield issues and players remains, and reporters are helicoptered in to cover stories without knowing the context, the background, or the players.


Needless to say, coverage is not only thin, it has no real substance (this is not the reporters' fault, they are victims of the same relentless pressures).


While it is not a sure thing that Gannett will agree to be bought (it has turned down offers from MNG before), the current offer is at a considerable premium, which may cause Gannett to give it serious consideration.



What might things look like if Gannett is taken over?


My guess is that the separate operations of the Courier and the Home News Tribune would be the first thing to go. Neither one has healthy subscription bases any more (the last I was aware, the Courier had merely 14,000 subscribers) and my guess is they would likely be merged and one of the two offices closed.


In addition, MNG would probably pare the staffs even further than they have already been reduced.


The net result for Plainfield? We would simply become an afterthought as the further slimmed down paper chased car crashes, teacher misconduct and Somerset County news.


Stay tuned.

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Mu -- Dan Damon [ follow ]

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