Gannett has been in on the trend of buying local dailies for a while. They own the GBPG and a bunch of very small local papers in WI (Stevens Point) and I am sure elsewhere. They also have a publishing facility somewhere between Oshkosh and GB (I pass it by on every trip to Fox Valley, but have no idea what exit its on - Hwy 41 somewhere). They are getting the JS company for over $200 mil.Originally Posted by KYPack
The most remarkable feature of the Gannett locals in smaller towns is that they are tiny; literally half the size a newspaper used to be. They are filled with the same stories in each town. The same writers in GB cover the big articles in News and Sports and the Homestyle section is wire service filler. The local section does have local news and some business coverage and there are other local items scattered throughout. Whether this coverage is produced by people in the area, I can't say.
Its a local paper, but in the same way that USAToday is a local Cincy paper because of its Bengals coverage and the paragraph long News and Notes section on Ohio.
They also sell their stories on their syndication service (Wisconsin State Journal has no Packer beat guys, they publish the GBPG stuff as well).
So the question will be how much of the local staff gets retained at JS? Does the retained Milwaukee staff come at the expense of the people in Green Bay? In this model, Stevens Point cannot sustain a full staff for a paper obviously. But Milwaukee and Green Bay together don't need two full time staffs. And one obvious area of overlap is Packer coverage.
GBPG has a new Packer editor, Dougherty, and WesHod. JS has McGinn, Silverstein, new guy Cohen and their own editor. I don't think they all survive. One will end up with the Pack and I would bet another ends up on a cable/radio outfit like Wilde and ESPN.
I Tweeted a job offer to Silverstein to work here. He accepted. I hope Mad has that ad money lying around.
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