Lyle Muller is a board member of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting and Iowa High School Press Association, a trustee of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, former executive director/editor of the Iowa Center for Public Journalism that became part of the Midwest Center, former editor of The Cedar Rapids Gazette, and a recipient of the Iowa Newspaper Association’s Distinguished Service Award. In retirement, he is the professional adviser for Grinnell College’s Scarlet & Black newspaper. This article first appeared on his Substack newsletter.
It only took a few hours after my November 18 column about supporting local journalists to be published for Folience, the “100% employee-owned portfolio of companies with reputations for excellence,” to announce it had sold The Gazette newspaper in Cedar Rapids.
Also going to the buyer, Adams Multimedia of Minneapolis, are eleven community newspapers Folience owned through The Gazette.
“There’s a lot of processing,” Gazette Editor Zack Kucharski said Tuesday evening about his busy day talking through the sale and concerns with staffers, including those at some of the local papers. “It’s been a difficult day.”
I worked at The Gazette for 25 years as a bureau chief, reporter, and editor, so news of the sale stings. Of course, we should be used to the stings now. Another Iowa newspaper owner gone during the changing landscape for newspapers but also any news organization.
I am sure Adams Multimedia has great plans for the paper. Yet, even though I have full confidence in Kucharski, a friend who has been with The Gazette for around 25 years, I worry about whether or not the paper can maintain its capacity for local reporting.
The concern is a natural response when newspapers leave local hands. Its roots come from a 2022 New Media & Society journal study, which found the most noticeable results of such sales are a reduction in local reporting, more concentrated coverage of local places, and coverage designed to be shared regionally with other publications instead of being a local report for a single market.
“Our findings identify reductions in newsroom resources and regional hubs of publications as detrimental to the information environment of local communities,” the study’s author, Benjamin LeBrun of McGill University, stated in the report.
Adams Multimedia owns 30 daily newspapers and more than 100 non-daily papers, its website says, and more than 220 media-related products and websites in nineteen states. That is encouraging, because at least a newspaper company will own The Gazette instead of an investment firm. Yes, despite its claim to being employee owned, The Gazette’s parent company is an investment firm.
“The family ownership, to me, means something,” Kucharski said about Adams Multimedia. “That’s a crucial piece.”
You can read The Gazette leaders’ November 19 email to customers here.
THE GAZETTE’S LONG HISTORY OF LOCAL OWNERSHIP
You should know some history about The Gazette. The paper was founded January 10, 1883 by two fellows, Lucian H. Post and Elbridge T. Otis, who sold the paper in 1884 to Clarence Miller and Fred Faulkes. Miller’s and Faulkes’ descendants owned the paper or had part ownership until 2012, when The Gazette Company transitioned into a 100 percent employee-owned news operation under its employee stock option program, or ESOP for short.
Throughout those decades of news coverage, The Gazette won a Pulitzer Prize in 1936, a Society of Professional Journalists national award for breaking news reporting in 2008 and another SPJ national award for Mike Hlas’ sports column writing in 2009. It founded KCRG-TV, now owned by Gray Broadcasting, and KGYM, the locally owned 1600 AM sports talk station that formerly was KCRG radio.
Note: On November 19, Hlas posted on his personal Facebook page that his job was eliminated, and that his last day after his storied career with The Gazette will be November 30. Not a good sign.
The Gazette had a Washington, D.C., bureau for a long time and covered overseas wars, the Great Depression, state government, major floods, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and the rest of Eastern Iowa. I joined the paper as an Iowa City bureau chief in 1987 and left in 2012 after three years as its editor.
The Gazette newsroom in March 2008 (Gazette Facebook page photo)
CREATING A PARENT COMPANY
A critical change came in 2017 when the newspaper company created Folience to be its parent company. The company was to seek investments that could keep solvent and grow the ESOP program that ran The Gazette, although rank-and-file employees were not, and still are not on Folience’s board to make any such decisions. A trustee represents them.
Folience bought a Sumner company called Life Line Emergency Vehicles that manufactures emergency vehicles, such as ambulances, which added 200 employees to the Folience ESOP group. Next up was the purchase of Cimarron Trailers, of Chickasha, Oklahoma, and with around 135 employees.
The one-time family-owned media company had transitioned into an investing outlet for manufacturing, and its current pool of fewer than 100 employees comprised the minority in the ESOP group originally set up for Gazette employees’ retirement fund in the 1980s. People in Folience about the newspaper didn’t stand a chance against the manufacturers. At least they found a media company for The Gazette.
A FUTURE FOR LOCAL COVERAGE
I sent Adams Multimedia president and CEO Mark Adams an email, asking what safeguards he would take to ensure local coverage remains strong at The Gazette. He was dealing with a personal matter Tuesday but asked Kucharski to talk with me.
“We are moving forward with strong reporting, we are moving forward with strong regular coverage,” Kucharski said. “I have confidence we will have local decision making.” He said he ran across Adams Multimedia representatives at some industry-related events and saw similar tastes and concerns about keeping alive local journalism.
Two former Daily Iowan reporters who became editors at The Gazette. Lyle Muller on the left, Zack Kucharski is on the right, from June 2018. (Daily Iowan Backstory Facebook page photo)
Adams issued a prepared statement for the sale announcement: “We’ve considered dozens of news organizations in recent years, and I can say with utmost confidence that very few have come with the credibility and promise that we have here today. The Gazette and its commitment to serving the local community — strong journalism and unmatched local business relationships — was a no-brainer for us.”
At least the paper wasn’t purchased by GateHouse Media, owned by the investment firm New Media Investment Group, or one of the other large companies that gut newsrooms when taking over, a different former Gazette colleague reminded me Tuesday morning. It’s true, and knowing that at least moves you back from a ledge.
Another positive: the paper no longer will have to answer to people who understand manufacturing more than hometown journalism. More power to them for shedding the paper and more power to Adams Multimedia for acquiring it.
In our conversation I told Kucharski I had just published a story about the need to support local journalists and then veered into the eleven community papers that are part of the sale. What about them? “They’re not as robust as they have been,” he said, referring to their ability to raise revenue to pay staff. Work will be needed to keep those newspapers’ communities informed with local news outlets. However, he said, “we are committed to not creating a news desert.”
Keeping strong journalism alive is my main concern and Kucharski not only knows it, it is a main concern of his, too. The same goes for a lot of us who have worked in the news business. Kucharski has done a lot to explain journalism at Folience and give it a runway that allowed The Gazette to land with a media company.
He said he is looking at this move with The Gazette’s years of community reporting in mind. “This is about what every editor and every staffer has done for decades, and I want to make sure it continues,” he said.
As one of those former staffers, I wish the paper’s new owners well. I will take some time to get over the fact that a once locally-owned family newspaper, which became an employee-owned paper, will answer to a Minneapolis-based company. But, at least it no longer will have to answer to ambulance and aluminum trailer builders.