Gatehouse Media Sets Sights On The Boston Herald

Cost cutting is a fact of life in the newspaper industry. At GateHouse Media, the country’s largest newspaper chain, it is practiced with a discipline that the company says is essential for survival — but that critics say is suffocating local journalism.

According to The Boston Globe, the future of newspapers in Massachusetts may hinge on which view is right. Already the owner of nine Massachusetts dailies from Worcester to Quincy to Cape Cod — and more than 100 weekly papers and shoppers — GateHouse has its sights on Boston.

The company is one of two bidders seeking to acquire the Boston Herald, the feisty tabloid that declared bankruptcy in December. GateHouse declined to discuss its plans for the Herald, saying it must first beat out Revolution Capital Group, a Tampa investment firm, and any other would-be buyers that may jump into an auction for the paper scheduled for next month.

But GateHouse’s playbook is no secret: It scoops up papers whose owners want out of the shrinking business, cuts jobs, centralizes operations wherever possible, and keeps tight control over expenses. While most of its publications are small, a look at how The Providence Journal, Rhode Island’s primary newspaper, has fared under GateHouse ownership for the past three years offers some insight into what could be in store for the Herald.

On the flip side, GateHouse has not abandoned newspapers, and it is possible some smaller papers may not have survived without the power of the chain behind them.

The company has said it would cut employees at the Herald from about 240 to 175. At its peak around 2000, the Herald employed 900 people, the paper has reported. It has shrunk — as have the Globe and legions of newspapers across the country — under the twin pressures of falling print readership and advertising revenue.

The sale of the Herald could affect the Globe financially, as well, because the Globe is paid to print the Herald at the Globe’s Taunton printing plant. A company such as GateHouse, which owns printing presses in New England, could conceivably print the paper itself.

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