Argus Leader parent company being gobbled up by Aberdeen News and Watertown Public Opinion parent.

Pat Powers

From Sioux Falls Business News:

HEADLINE: Reports: Newspaper giants to announce massive merger

GateHouse Media, which owns 156 daily papers including the American News in Aberdeen and the Watertown Public Opinion, is planning to acquire Gannett, which owns USA Today and more than 100 other newspapers including the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls.

Read that here.

I’m guessing the next headline related to the topic will be “GateHouse Media announces massive layoffs.”

What are your thoughts?

8 thoughts on “Argus Leader parent company being gobbled up by Aberdeen News and Watertown Public Opinion parent.”

  1. Layoffs are quite possible, but likely not at the local level unless local papers either cease publication or go to a less frequent publication schedule. So-called “backroom” functions like advertising sales, graphic design, and customer support/circulation are the easy early targets, and most of those positions (at least in the case of the Argus) are already hosted in regional or national centers outside Sioux Falls.

    No one has yet found the answer to the economic decline of traditional news media, especially newspapers. The nonprofit model (e.g., SD News Watch and my own The Nonprofit Quarterly) has been successful, especially in sustaining investigative and “long-form” reporting. The jury’s out on whether there is sufficient philanthropic interest and support to sustain traditional media under a nonprofit model.

    As a sometime journalist (450 articles and features for The Nonprofit Quarterly as well as op-eds in the Argus and elsewhere), I regret the loss of any journalistic organization. As an editor as well as a writer, I appreciate the value of good editors in story selection as well as in refining writers’ efforts prior to publication.

    I share the frustration of many with biased articles posing as journalism, of opinion not being labelled as such in media. To be credible, the media have a responsibility to publish fairly as well as the near-absolute right to publish. My hostility to bad journalism doesn’t affect my regret to see traditional media shrink.

  2. Joe Steve, please turn out the lights at the Argus when you are the last Mohican to leave.

  4. American News and PO also have ad design services outside South Dakota. Thats where we will see the layoffs. If I were a Gannett employee, I would be worried.

  5. USA Today and the Argus have gone so liberal…a change can’t be any worse than they already are….

    Why anyone subscribes to these liberal newspapers anymore is beyond me

  6. There is demand & a sizable market in SD for a centrist paper offering statewide coverage. Follow sports, business, schools, weather, & local politics, eschew self-indulgent social justice lectures. Don’t pick sides. Don’t endorse. Report.

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