And besides, I felt duped. Why tell me one day it's all about on-line capabilities and one week later tell me it's about profits. For those who don't know, Gannett, which owns the ACT and USA Today, is the major player in the daily newspaper industry. 99 dailies in the U.S. and 15 in the United Kingdom, according to an article in last month's American Journalism Review. The company that owns our regional daily newspaper now has almost 14 percent of the nation's daily newspaper circulation.
Daily newspapers are extremely profitable.
For those that are publicly traded, the average profit margin is 22.2 percent. For Gannett, however, the margin is 24.6 percent. Because of its size, it controls newsprint prices and other supplies needed for newspapering. According to John Morton, a newspaper consultant who wrote the article in the American Review, Gannett has another policy that helps profits. Hence, I suspect, the fiasco of a couple of weeks ago.