Gannett's stock has dropped from 5.07 the five weeks ago to 3.73. 

Three things you could use Gannett as an example in class for is:

1. The board of directors. Although the Chairman of the Board is also the CEO this is really the only thing that the board has that is not a good characteristic of a board. The board has three women on it, which seems to be a good number. It is small, only 10 people, they meet regularly.  Although some are on other boards, most are only on one to two other boards. There are also people from outside the US on the board. This is an interesting item to note. The person is from England who seem to be having better growth with their papers than the U.S. 

2. The business level strategy of the company is diversification. They have several different newspapers aimed at different targets. They have the USA Today for the readers who want graphs, charts, short stories. They have the 20-30 something publications for people in those age groups who want to read more about feature articles and entertainment than straight news and facts. 

3. Their mission statement is what not to do. They are very vague. The mission includes very little of what we discussed in class for being a good mission statement. It says nothing about the consumers or stakeholder or  employees. By reading this mission is seems like Gannett doesn't even know where it is going or where it wants to go with all the changes in the media.

I would not invest in this company right now. The main reason is because they can not get their cost low enough right now to be able to show a profit. This industry is going through so many changes right now that I would not want to invest in this company before I knew what their game plan was. Their stock has dropped almost 2 dollars in 5 weeks, they have laid-off several workers and a whole division has received a pay cut. However, I think the best time to invest in this company would be right before the recession is over. This is because after the recession is over and once people begin to buy again businesses will advertise again raising the sales of the newspapers.

I would work for this company. They seem to care about their employees and want to reward them for their excellence. The company is also very well known in the journalism field and is very reputable. The newspapers that Gannett owns are quality newspapers. 

Many newspapers are losing circulation, however you don't see many  TV commercials trying to get people to buy newspapers. This is not true for other countries though. Take a look at this link to you tube of a commercial for the Ziarul newspaper. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfBPDOeY__U

I think that this is a funny ad and maybe something that more newspapers should try. There have been newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal to run ads about their weekend paper, which I think has let people know about this product. 

Many of my post have been about the decline in newspapers, both with their finances and circulation, but there is a side of newspapers that hasn't been discussed, the editorial part.

Newspapers are to be watchdogs for a community, town, state and even the nation. Many times newspapers run in depth stories about corruption in state and local offices. 

This was the case with the Detroit Free Press, when they ran a story about a text message scandal that led to the resignation and jailing of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. 

This story also led to the 9th Pulitzer Prize for Gannett. Which is a great accomplishment. Obtaining this award shows that newspapers are continuing to serve the purpose they set out to.

From my last two post you can see that Gannett is facing some problems. To help cut some cost, rumor has it that the CFO, who is currently taking over as CEO while he is on medical leave, will cut approximately 4,500 jobs in the next two weeks and cut pay by 10 percent for the broadcast division of the company. 

Although this is not official and has only been noted on a highly credible Gannett blog, this could be an interesting change for the company. By laying off this many people the company will cut cost, but will it be enough to help their 2.3 million deficit that they already have this year?

Only time will tell...

Since the last post the stock price has gone down to even more to $3.57. 

Investors feel that this is because of the fear of what is going to happen due to the leave of the CEO for what could be several months. 

I feel like Gannett needs to do something to gain investor confidence, or their problems will be getting much worse.  The company can not continue to have a drop in stock of 7.3 percent in a day.

A top news story of the week for Gannett is that the President, Chairman and CEO of Gannett will be on sick leave for back surgery that he had on Monday. According to a statement released by the company says that Dubow's is looking forward to a full recovery. 

However it also stated that it does not know the length of time Dubow could be out, but the statement says his doctors say it could be about 4 months. 

I think this is going to be very interesting for the company. The CFO is going to take over Dubow's responsibility while he is out, and the company says they have no intentions to replace Dubows. But in a time where the newspaper industry is changing by the day it is hard for me to imagine stopping for at least four months. 

According to their 2008 financial report Gannett lost over 6 million last year in net income. This year has been no turn around, so with 2008 in the red and Dubow being out for most of the rest of the year it should be interesting if there are changes in the top management of Gannett. 

Although I have not posted anything about stock price, I feel like today is a good day to talk about it. Gannett's stock price has continued to go down over recent months and today if fell to under $4.00, it ended the day at $3.99 to be exact. 

To give you an idea of how much Gannett stock there actually is, according to their web site, they have aprox. 225 million shares owned by about 8,000 shareholders. I am by no means a finance person and have not done much research, but just by looking at the numbers it seems as if that is a lot of common stock for only a few select people. 

Most people know that McDonald's helped found and to an extent continues to fund many of the Ronald McDonald House's. Well, Gannett also as a foundation in which they help give back to the community.

Gannett Co. help found the Gannett Foundation which helps communities by giving out grants to non-profit organizations, matching funds donated and much more. In 2008 in total they gave out 9.7 million dollars in grants and matching funds. 

When I saw this sight I didn't think it was tied to the Gannett Co. at all until I began reading and noticed some similarities in their web pages. I think that this is an awesome thing for any company to do. 

I'm sure it does give them some good PR from time to time, but they also help out many organizations that need support from others to be able to offer their services. 

As I was researching for my presentation on Monday, we kept reading about the argument that young people don't read newspapers. I was wondering what Gannett was doing about this problem that some say is going to be what really kills the newspaper industry.

On their web page they have a list of 11 publications that they call "young reader publications." These publications are targeted at the 20 and 30 somethings, says the web page. One of these publications are produced in Louisville, Ky.

These publications are more tabloid size than broadsheet like a daily newspaper. They usually come out once weekly and have more feature stories and bolder designs. Many of these 11 publications have at least 40,000 in circulation. 

I think that these publications are good for newspapers however I don't think that they will in turn get the 20-30 year olds to start reading a daily newspaper.

Here is a link to see all of the young reader publications that Gannett publishes: 

http://www.gannett.com/yrp/glance1.htm

A topic we discussed in class got me thinking about the board of directors for Gannett. Although Gannett does not list how long they have served the board, there are other interesting things I learned. 

Of the 10 members only 3 are women. 

The CEO is also the Chairman of the Board

The youngest member of the board is 46, while most are in their 50-60's

All but 2 members are on other boards

2 members serve on 4 other boards

To find more information about the board members you can follow this link:

http://www.gannett.com/about/management/board_of_directors.htm

The last post was copied from Gannett's web page. After our class discussion about mission statements and what they should accomplish, I do not think that this is a good one. They do not talk about their shareholders or employees in this mission statement.

 Although they say that they will transform Gannett into the new environment, I wonder what they mean by a new environment? Are they looking to change all of their newspapers to online? This still makes me wonder what they will do. 

Here is Gannett's Mission statement:

"To successfully transform Gannett to the new environment.

We will provide must-have news and information on demand across all media, ever mindful of our journalistic responsibilities."

Gannett Co. is the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S. They currently have 84 daily newspapers along with 850 non-daily publications. Here is a link to a map that shows all of the newspapers that they own. As you will see the only one Gannett owns in Kentucky is the Courier-Journal in Louisville. 

http://www.gannett.com/about/map/propmap.htm

Here is a link to the History of Gannett. It tells just about anything you would want to know on the history of the company.

http://www.gannett.com/about/history.htm

The company I am following is Gannett. Even though many of you may not of heard of this, you have probably come into contact with the company. Ever walked by the Curris Center and picked up a USA Today? If so you have picked up a newspaper published by Gannett. Gannett's stock ended the day at $5.07 which was up 6.25%.