Opinion ID: 660190
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Organization and Operation of the Gateway Newspapers

Text: 8 Gateway is a printing and publishing company based in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, that publishes nineteen weekly papers which serve the Pittsburgh suburbs. Although they are part of a chain and share many common features, each of the papers is also local in orientation and outlook. Each is filled with information about the day-to-day events of their respective local communities--marriages, births, deaths, school events, senior citizen and church activities, local crime reports, local political items, et alia--overlooked by the Pittsburgh metropolitan daily press. 9 Gateway maintains strict control over both the organization and content of each of the papers. Although the papers serve different communities, ranging from Moon Township (in the west) to Plum Borough (in the east), major decisions about administration and editorial policy are made from the central office in Monroeville. For example, the publisher 1 decides how many pages will be in each edition; 2 Edith Hughes, the managing editor, oversees all editorial decisions for all nineteen papers; the Monroeville office sells all advertising, makes all employment-related decisions (hiring, firing, payroll), and does all the printing. 10 Gateway has organized the nineteen different papers into five regional groups: East, West, North, South and Carnegie. 3 These groups are the basic administrative and editorial units of the Gateway chain of papers. For example, the newspapers in each group operate out of the same office and have the same editor; they have common operating budgets. Generally, the reporters and editors work on some or all of the papers within a group. In fact, Gateway's payroll records do not reflect whether a reporter worked for one or another of the papers within a group. 11 In addition, Gateway uses the circulation numbers of the groups--not the individual papers--when selling its advertising space. For example, in Gateway's 1989 Advertising Information and Rate Card, Gateway included under Circulation: 12 Publisher is a member of and audited by Certified Audit of Circulations, Inc. (CAC) Average circulation for six months ended June 30, 1988 East 24,628 South 5,905 13 West 23,980Including Cranberry Review Journal 11,775 14 (Subject to CAC audit) Carnegie 6,609 15 Total Market 61,122. 16 The content of the papers within each group is quite similar. A typical Gateway paper has three sections. The first section contains the masthead and some pages of local news specifically pertinent to the community the paper serves. Other pages in the first section contain features and editorials common to the other papers in the regional group. The other two sections, sports and classified advertisements, contain articles and advertisements identical to those appearing in the other papers in the regional group.