Extra! Extra! Read All About It! (Newspaper News)
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Hearst buys Dallas Morning News; Jane Pauley and G. B. Trudeau honored; New York Newsday: Truth, Justice, and the Comics; small town journalists disappearing; journalists in general are disappearing; more newspaper printing plants are shuttered affecting jobs and deadlines; the Associated Press at 179; Rob Tornoe’s Pulitzer cartoon.
Hearst Buys The Dallas Morning News
From Rick Edmonds at Poynter (with a link to Hearst’s Houston Chronicle take):
Hearst has entered into an agreement to acquire the Dallas Morning News in a transaction valued at $75 million, the two companies announced Thursday morning.
It marks the end of an era. The News was publicly traded but the stock had been family controlled since 1885. As it is absorbed by privately held Hearst, that leaves just two public newspaper companies oriented to local publishing – Gannett and Lee.
For Hearst, the purchase fills out a massive footprint in Texas. It also owns newspapers and their digital sites in the state’s three other largest markets – Houston, San Antonio and Austin. Hearst bought the Austin American-Statesman for an estimated $70 million in February from Gannett.
Staff reductions on the business side can be expected as those Dallas Morning News functions are consolidated with the rest of Hearst, but except for production, I would expect the newsroom to remain nearly intact. The Morning News’s story on the deal said that it has 157 news employees.
That Morning News story about the purchase.
Hearst is a diverse media company with a portfolio of 28 daily newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News and Austin American-Statesman, and 50 weeklies. In addition, Hearst owns 35 television stations and more than 200 magazines and has an ownership stake in cable networks A&E, HISTORY, Lifetime and ESPN. Outside of media, Hearst owns Fitch Group, a global financial services business; Hearst Transportation; and Hearst Health, a group of medical information and services businesses.
Along with the Houston, San Antonio, and Austin newspapers listed above Hearst also owns Texas newspapers in Beaumont, Laredo, Midland, and Plainview.
Distinguished Service to Journalism Award to G.B. Trudeau
Also from Poynter is news of Jane Pauley being honored with the 2025 Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism. Our readers may be more interested in Pauley’s husband also being feted:
Poynter will also bestow its Distinguished Service to Journalism Awards to two additional icons in the field: Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times Local Investigations Fellowship and previously the Times’ executive editor, and G.B. “Garry” Trudeau, Pulitzer-winning creator of the comic strip “Doonesbury,” who is also Pauley’s husband. Both winners will also be present in Tampa.
Trudeau, meanwhile, began what would become “Doonesbury” while he was a student at Yale University. “Doonesbury” became syndicated in 1970 and quickly became known for its biting commentary on the Vietnam War and later Watergate. Trudeau was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1975, the first comic strip artist so honored. He has also been a finalist for the award three times.
Quibble: G.B. Trudeau is “the first comic strip artist so honored” for his comic strip. As other comic strip cartoonists, most notably Rube Goldberg, have won Pulitzers, but not for their comic strip efforts. Anyway…
“Garry Trudeau is a supremely talented truth-teller whose work as a cartoonist, satirist and social critic occupies a revered place in American culture,” Brown said. “He brought life to a generation of characters as a student at Yale and has used them to offer thought-provoking commentary on every important news and cultural event of the last 50 years, from war to corruption to democracy.”
Newsday: Truth, Justice, and the Comics
Wendell Jamieson at the Columbia Journalism Review celebrates the short life of New York Newsday.
Once there was another newspaper here.
It was born with great hopes but died before it became a teenager. It sought to mix the solid journalism of the New York Times with the aggressively colorful coverage of the Daily News and the New York Post. Its staff was younger than that of most newsrooms, and strikingly more diverse. This newspaper was kinder than the tabloids, could wear its heart on its sleeve, and for this it was occasionally mocked. But over drinks, in a reflexive moment, the others—the mockers—might just admit that they envied it a little bit, too.
New York Newsday was launched in 1985 and closed on July 16, 1995, thirty years ago this month.
Its slogan was “Truth, Justice and the Comics,” and its pages freeze-framed a remarkable decade of change and strife in New York City: The city’s first Black mayor. Record-breaking crime. The ascent of Rudy Giuliani. A catastrophic nightclub fire in the Bronx. Race riots and police riots. The bombing of the World Trade Center. Foiled terrorist plots. Fierce cultural battles over schoolbooks featuring same-sex parents.
Today it seems incredible to imagine it—a robustly staffed new newspaper, the city’s first in color, entering the country’s most crowded media market and building a classic print infrastructure from the ground up: nearly a hundred reporters (unionized); a generously staffed city desk; bureaus in City Hall, two boroughs, police headquarters, and the courts; an investigative unit; a features section; a fat Sunday edition; editorial and op-ed pages; and movie critics, fashion reporters, a cartoonist [emphasis added], a restaurant reviewer, and a murderers’ row of columnists including Murray Kempton, Gail Collins, Jimmy Breslin, Jim Dwyer, Sheryl McCarthy, Liz Smith, and Ellis Henican…
Where Have All the Small Town Journalists Gone
For more than a century, the McClusky Gazette has reported the news in a small town in the middle of North Dakota. But if Allan Tinker, the newspaper’s eighty-three-year-old owner and publisher, can’t find someone to take over by next spring, she plans to close its doors for good. “I just can’t assume the responsibility anymore,” Tinker said.
In eastern Oregon, the veteran journalist Les Zaitz faced a similar dilemma last year when he sought to sell his 115-year-old newspaper, the Malheur Enterprise. Zaitz tried to find a buyer because, at sixty-nine, he wanted to retire—but with no one stepping up, he eventually gave up and closed the paper in May. The Enterprise was profitable, with a robust advertising and subscription business, Zaitz said. “Finances had zero to do with the decision.”
And in northwestern Oklahoma, Sheila Blankenship made the painful decision to close the 120-year-old Hooker Advance last year, after she failed to find a buyer. “It would have killed me” to keep running it, Blankenship said. People continued to subscribe until the newspaper’s final months.
Liam Scott for Columbia Journalism Review reports that small newspapers are closing for lack of succession.
Small-town newspapers shutting down due to the lack of a succession plan is a growing problem in nearly a dozen states, according to a tally by CJR and a number of statewide press associations. In Colorado, the Range Ledger closed in 2022 when the owner died; South Dakota’s Wilmot Enterprise stopped publishing after its owner got sick in 2024; eight weekly newspapers in northeastern North Dakota closed in 2023 when their eighty-eight-year-old owner wanted to retire…
In related news.
Severe Shortage of Local Journalists in the U.S.
A group of journalism advocates from the nonprofit Rebuild Local News and the tech platform Muck Rack say they have counted — for the first time — how many journalists remain in the United States.
The numbers, as might be expected, aren’t particularly sunny.
By using data never before tapped for this purpose, “we now know just how severe this local journalist shortage has become,” they write in a report released Thursday titled “Local Journalist Index.”
Corey Hutchins at NiemanLab reports on some dire numbers.
Moreover, the new data indicates that journalists haven’t just been fading from rural areas or communities suffering from population decline. The Bronx in New York City, for example, has fewer Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 people than Falls County, Texas with its population of 17,000.
Gannett To Shutter Columbia, Missouri Printing Plant
Gannett is closing another print facility — the Columbia plant that printed the Columbia (Missouri) Daily Tribune and other publications — as it consolidates its operations.
Printing of the Tribune, the Springfield News-Leader and USA Today will move to Gannett’s print operation in Des Moines Iowa. The last issue to be printed in Columbia will be on Sunday Sept. 7, for the next day’s edition.
The Tribune reports that news deadlines and some advertising deadlines will change, but these changes have not yet been specified.
Ray Schultz at Media Post reports that the Columbia Daily Tribune will now be printed 240 miles away.
This is occurring as Gannett reduces its print operations, cutting frequency and moving to delivery by the U.S. Postal Service.
Such closures are now a trend at Gannett and other publishing companies.
The Associated Press at 179
As the news and media industries continue to face disruptive challenges, as unnecessary tariffs on newsprint and aluminum jeopardize the future of many newspapers, and as people in power have trouble understanding the clear language of the First Amendment, The Associated Press (AP) remains committed to its 179 years of journalistic integrity and service to its customers and the wider community.
Bob Sillick and Editor & Publisher celebrates the venerable Associated Press.
AP’s reputation for innovation can be traced to its origins when, in 1846, New York City newspapers began sharing the cost of gathering news from the Mexican-American War, using telegraph, boat and even carrier pigeons. In 1848, they formalized an agreement to receive international news arriving by ship in Boston, transmitted by telegraph. Today, AP serves thousands of global customers, delivering trusted content that reaches four billion people daily.
Tornoe’s Corner
And we can’t leave Editor & Publisher without visiting Rob Tornoe’s Corner.
The backstory to Rob Tornoe’s cartoon.
feature image by Ken Keeley
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