The Gannett Media Conglomerate's Hidden History--Part 2

(The following (slightly updated) article originally appeared in the May 8, 1991 issue of the Lower East Side alternative newsweekly, Downtown).

Much of Gannett’s mass media empire was purchased via $1.5 billion in Wall Street money in the 1970s and 1980s—after many of the antiwar underground newspapers of the late 1960s, like the Lower East Side’s East Village Other (EVO) and RAT, had folded due to a combination of economic and political pressures. In 1967, only 28 U.S. newspapers had been controlled by Gannett. In the 1970s, 46 additional daily newspapers were bought by Gannett. As its former chairman of the board, Al Neuharth, noted in his Confessions Of An S.O.B. book: “In a single decade—1970 to 1980—Gannett went from number seven to number one, the nation’s biggest newspaper company.”

In the 1980s, another 23 more daily newspapers were added to Gannett’s stable. Many of the newspapers Gannett gobbled up in the 1970s and 1980s had previously been family-owned media operations. Between 1970 and 1989, all of Gannett’s radio and television stations were also acquired.

Among the largest mass media purchases made by Gannett during its $1.5 billion buying spree were the following:

1. In 1979, Gannett spent $362 million to acquire the seven television stations, three radio stations and Cincinnati and Oakland newspapers of Combined Communications—as well as Combined Communications’ 38,000 outdoor billboards, and 2. In 1985 and 1986, Gannett spent $1.2 billion to gobble up the Des Moines Register & Tribune, the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Detroit News and the Detroit News’ Washington, D.C. television station.

Gannett’s 1970s and 1980s drive to control more newspapers in single-newspaper U.S. cities and towns proved to be enormously profitable—as did its preference for utilizing non-unionized employees to operate newly-purchased local newspaper monopolies. According to the book The Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian, “The profit margin on some Gannett papers was astonishing—70 to 50 percent a year.” And these net earnings, according to former Gannett Chairman Neuharth’s Confessions Of An S.O.B. book, “made Gannett a darling of Wall Street.” According to Neuharth (who despite “retiring” as Gannett’s head in 1989—still received $200,000 a year in 1991 from its USA Today national newspaper for being a “consultant” and a columnist), between 1967 and 1987 Gannett’s annual gross income jumped from $186 million to $3.1 billion and its annual net income jumped from $14 million to $319 million. Yet despite Gannett’s profitability, 80 percent of Gannett’s newspaper employees were still non-unionized in 1991.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: The Gannett Media Conglomerate’s Hidden History—Part 3

The Gannett Media Conglomerate's Hidden History--Part 1

(The following (slightly updated) article originally appeared in the May 8, 1991 issue of the Lower East Side alternative newsweekly, Downtown).

The Gannett Company mass media conglomerate was the world’s largest newspaper publishing chain in the early 1990s. At that time, Gannett controlled the USA Today national newspaper, 81 other daily newspapers in the United States and U.S. territories, and 35 other non-daily newspapers. The daily circulation of Gannett-owned newspapers around the United States exceeded 6,000,000 in the early 1990s. Gannett also operated 16 commercial radio stations and 10 commercial television broadcasting stations at that time. Currently, Gannett operates 85 daily newspapers with a circulation of over 7.2 million and 23 commercial television broadcasting stations.

Among the mass media properties controlled by the Gannett Company in suburban New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and elsewhere, in addition to its USA Today national newspaper, in 1991 were:

New York: Yonkers Herald Statesman; White Plain Reporter; New Rochelle Standard-Star; Port Chester Daily Item; Mount Vernon Daily Argus; Mamaroneck Daily-Times; Peekskill Star; Ossining Citizen-Register; Tarrytown Daily News; West Nyack Rockland Journal News; Poughkeepsie Journal; Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin; Elmira Star Gazette; Ithaca Journal; Niagara Falls Niagara Gazette; Saratoga Springs Saratogian; Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Times-Union; and Utica Observer-Dispatch.

New Jersey: Camden Courier-Post; Bridgewater Courier –News; Mullville Daily; and Vineland Times-Journal.

Connecticut: Norwich Bulletin.

Washington, D.C.: WUSA-TV.

Arizona: Phoenix’s KPNX-TV; Tucson Citizen.

Arkansas: Little Rock Arkansas-Gazette.

California: Los Angeles’ KHS-Radio; San Diego’s KSDO-Radio; Marin County Marin Independent Journal; Palm Springs Desert Sun.

Colorado: Denver’s KUSA-TV.

Florida: Jacksonville’s WTLV-TV; Tampa’s WDAE and WUSA-Radio; Pensacola News-Journal; Fort Myers News-Press.

Georgia: Atlanta’s WXIA-TV.

Hawaii: Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Idaho: Boise Idaho Statesman.

Illinois: Chicago’s WGCI-Radio; Rockford Register-Star; Danville Commercial News.

Iowa: Des Moines Register; Iowa City Press-Citizen.

Kentucky: Louisville Courier-Journal.

Massachusetts: Boston’s WLVI-TV.

Michigan: Detroit News; Lansing State-Journal; Battle Creek Enquirer; Port Huron Times-Herald.

Minnesota: Minneapolis-St. Paul’s KARE-TV.

Mississippi: Jackson Clarion-Ledger and Daily News.

Missouri: St. Louis’s KUSA and KSD-Radio; Kansas City’s KCMO-Radio; and Springfield News-Leader.

Nevada: Reno Gazette-Journal.

New Mexico: Santa Fe New Mexican.

Ohio: Cincinnati Enquirer.

Oklahoma: Oklahoma City’s KOCO-TV.

South Dakota: Sioux Falls Argus-Leader.

Tennessee: Nashville Tennessean.

Texas: Austin’s KVUE-TV; Houston’s KKBQ Radio; and El Paso Times.

Vermont: Burlington Free Press.

Wisconsin: Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Virgin Islands: Virgin Island Daily News. and

Guam: Pacific Daily News.

Then in 1995, Gannett purchased the Multimedia, Inc. media corporation and temporarily added 10 additional daily newspapers to its chain of newspapers, 5 additional television stations, and two additional radio stations. But by 1998, the Gannett media conglomerate had decided to reduce its involvement in radio broadcasting and had sold off the 16 radio stations it had owned in 1991 and the two additional radio stations it had acquired from Multimedia, Inc. in 1995.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: The Gannett Media Conglomerate’s Hidden History—Part 2

PBS's Historic Gannett Connection--Part 2

(The following (slightly updated) article originally appeared in the May 8, 1991 issue of the Lower East Side alternative newsweekly, Downtown).

In addition to receiving funds from the Gannett Company media conglomerate in the 1980s to establish the private, commercial MacNeil-Lehrer Productions joint-venture, MacNeil and Lehrer’s commercial venture also received public funds from PBS as payment for producing and hosting programs like the 1986 My Heart, Your Heart one-hour special on heart disease and a 12-part series on life in China, The Heart of the Dragon, as well as for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour show. And in its Oct. 6, 1989 issue, the New York Times reported that the Entertainment Division of the commercial NBC network had “commissioned five hour-long health specials from MacNeil/Lehrer Productions which” were “to feature Dr. C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General of the United States.”

According to the 1990-1991 NYNEX Business to Business Yellow Pages, the commercial offices of “MacNeil Lehrer Gannett Productions” were located at 1775 Broadway, on the corner of 57th St. in Suite 612—just around the corner from the publicly-funded, “nonprofit” Channel 13 studio offices of PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour show. The 1990-1991 Business to Business Yellow Pages also then listed 560-3169 as the MacNeil-Lehrer-Gannett Productions telephone number.

In the spring of 1991, Downtown telephoned this phone number, which was listed in the 1990-1991 directory under a bold-faced “MacNeil-Lehrer-Gannett Productions” listing, and was greeted by an answering machine. Downtown then telephoned the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour office at WNET-Channel 13 and asked what was then the nature of the Gannett Company’s relationship to MacNeil-Lehrer-Gannett Productions and/or the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.

According to the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and MacNeil-Lehrer Productions’ then-spokesperson, Christoopher Ramsey, MacNeil-Lehrer’s partnership with the Gannett Company had been terminated in 1987. Downtown then asked Ramsey why MacNeil-Lehrer-Gannett Productions was still listed in the 1990-1991 telephone Business-to-Business Yellow Pages if MacNeil-Lehrer Productions’ relationship to Gannett had ended in 1987?

“That’s a mistake made by the phone company. I’ll have to notify them,” Ramsey then answered.

But a customer service representative at Donnelly Directory, which published the 1990-1991 Business-to-Business Yellow Pages told Downtown that “within a year” after a business notifies the phone company that its phone number listing is to be changed, the listing is changed in the Business-to-Business Yellow Pages; and, if the listing is in bold face in the Business-to-Business directory, this fact is noted on the current monthly billing statement that the business customer receives each month.

By the mid-1990s, however, the NewsHour’s historic partnership with the Gannett Company media conglomerate had finally ended, after a controlling interest in MacNeil-Lehrer Productions was sold to AT & T, one of the NewsHour’s then-major donors. A 67 percent controlling-interest of MacNeil-Lehrer Productions was, subsequently, purchased by Liberty Media, another media conglomerate. Until 2006, the Liberty Media conglomerate that owns MacNeil-Lehrer Productions, was also the owner of a large chunk of stock of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation/Fox News global media conglomerate.

Today, the Liberty Media conglomerate (which also now owns the Atlanta Braves baseball team and television stations in Wisconsin) still controls 67 percent of the production company that produces PBS’s evening television news show. But one of the NewsHour’s correspondents (who was the wife of Wall Street Journal Washington Bureau Chief Albert Hunt in the early 1990s), Judy Woodruff, sits on the Freedom Forum foundation that used to operate under the name of the Gannett Foundation. (During the 1990s, Woodruff apparently also sat next to Bush Administration Secretary of State Condi Rice on the board of the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation).

(Downtown 5/8/91)

And the current president of the PBS evening news show’s New York City outlet, WNET/Educational Broadcasting Corporation/Channel 13 President & CEO Neal Shapiro, also sits on the Gannett Company board of directors as a member of the Gannett media conglomerate board’s “Nominating” and “Public Responsibility” committees.

Next: The Gannett Media Conglomerate’s Hidden History--Part 1

PBS's Historic Gannett Connection--Part 1

(The following (slightly updated) article originally appeared in the May 8, 1991 issue of the Lower East Side alternative newsweekly, Downtown).

“Public television’s programming has become subject to external interests, especially the interests of the corporations, foundations and government agencies that fund much of the national schedule…”

The Report of the Carnegie Commission on the Future of Public Broadcasting in 1979

“…On public television, Jim Lehrer and I have been trying an innovative approach to televised news. The partnership with Gannett will let us build on that experience.”

Former PBS NewsHour Anchor Robert MacNeil in September 1981

In September 1981, the Public Broadcasting Service’s evening news anchormen, Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer, formed a partnership with the Gannett Company to produce television news, specials, documentaries and cable programs.

Fifty percent of the partnership, MacNeil-Lehrer Productions, was to be owned by the Gannett Company, 25 percent by MacNeil and 25 percent by Lehrer. According to MacNeil, under his and Lehrer’s agreement with the Gannett Company, Gannett would “fund program ideas we three collectively agree should be produced.”

The Gannett Company’s chairman of the board and president in 1981, Al Neuharth, characterized Gannett’s decision to form a commercial partnership with the publicly-funded PBS news anchormen as “a marvelous opportunity to add a significant dimension to our development of electronic news and information capability,” according to the Sept. 12, 1981 issue of the New York Times. At the same time, MacNeil explained one of his reasons for then becoming a partner with one of the biggest commercial mass media conglomerates in the world: “Since we didn’t take a vow of poverty and chastity when we joined public television, it would be nice if we could also make some money.”

Yet in 1969, former PBS evening news anchor MacNeil had complained in a WRVR-FM radio discussion that “Television is in the hands of people who want to use it to sell things. It’s a market place.” And in his 1982 memoir, The Right Place At The Right Time, the Canadian-born and bred MacNeil would later claim that he and Lehrer “have turned down a number of attractive job offers in commercial television,” “the pleasure of working together on what we want to do outweighs the higher salaries we have been offered outside” and “freedom from frustration and tension is worth a lot of money.”

Although PBS’ Channel 13 often pleaded poverty in the early 1990s during its annual WBAI-imitation television marathons to help finance the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, neither Gannett nor the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour was then in special need of money. The Gannett Company’s gross annual income exceeded $3 billion and its net income per year approached $400 million in the early 1990s. And in its Aug. 4, 1988 issue, the New York Times noted that the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour also received a “financial commitment of $57 million through corporate support of AT&T, Pepsico and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation” in the late 1980s.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: PBS’s Historic Gannett Connection—Part 2

Shareholders Sue Columbia Trustee-Linked PMI For Securities Exchange Act Violations

Columbia University Trustee Ann Kaplan is also a Professor of Finance at Columbia’s School of Business and both a member of Smith College’s board of trustees and the chair of the Smith College board’s investment committee in Massachusetts. In addition, Columbia University Trustee Kaplan sits on the board of directors of the Financial Guaranty Insurance Company [FGIC] next to certain officers and directors of the PMI Group Inc. (PMI), which has owned 42 percent of the stock of FGIC in recent years.

After PMI announced on March 3, 2008 that its U.S. Mortgage Insurance Operations had reported a net loss of $236 million in the fourth quarter, the value of a share of PMI stock dropped to $6.43, although its value during the Nov. 2, 2006 and March 3, 2008 period had once been as high as $50.07. So on April 3, 2008, the law firm of Schriffin Barroway Topaz & Kessler, LLP announced that a class action lawsuit against PMI on behalf of its shareholders was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

According to the April 3, 2008 statement of Schriffin, Barroway, Topaz & Kessler, the Complaint “charges PMI and certain of its officers and directors with violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934” and alleges that the defendants “failed to disclose material adverse facts about” PMI’s “financial well-being, business relationships and prospects.” The lawsuit’s complaint also accuses PMI CEO and Chairman L. Stephen Smith, PMI Executive Vice-President David Katkov and PMI Chief Financial Officer Executive Officer and Executive Vice-President Donald Lofe Jr. of engaging in profitable insider trading in which they made millions by selling their own PMI stock at the same time they “materially misled the investing public, thereby inflating the price of PMI securities, by publicly issued false and misleading statements” about PMI’s actual financial condition.

Coincidentally, sitting next to Columbia University Trustee Kaplan on the FGIC board of directors are the defendants in this civil lawsuit: PMI CEO and Chairman L. Stephen Smith and PMI Chief Executive Officer and Executive Vice-President Donald Lofe Jr.. In addition, PMI Senior Vice President Patrick Mathis, PMI Group President Bradley Shuster and PMI Executive Vice President Arthur Slepian also sit on the FGIC board next to Columbia University Trustee Kaplan.

Next: PBS’s Historic Gannett Connection—Part 1

Columbia University's Pulitzer Prize Board/`Washington Post' Connections

The Pulitzer Prize Board of Columbia University’s School of Journalism recently gave a Pulitzer Prize to the Washington Post newspaper. Coincidentally, Pulitzer Prize Board Member Donald Graham and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger both sit on the board of directors of the Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate parent company of the Washington Post newspaper which Columbia University decided to honor with a Pulitzer Prize. In addition, Pulitzer Prize Board Member and Washington Post Company CEO Donald Graham is also a trustee of the Philip L. Graham Fund that owned over $35.4 million worth of Washington Post Company/Newsweek stock (46,339 shares) in 2005.

Not surprisingly, between 2006 and 2008, the Columbia University School of Journalism was also given three grants, totaling $75,000, by the Philip L. Graham Fund on whose board Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate CEO and Pulitzer Prize Board Member Graham sits, prior to Columbia University’s Pulitzer Prize Board giving Graham’s Washington Post newspaper a Pulitzer Prize.

Next: Shareholders Sue Columbia Trustee-Linked PMI For Securities Exchange Act Violations

Columbia University's Historic Gannett Media Conglomerate Connection

For many years, 10 percent of the Gannet Company media conglomerate’s stock, worth about $547 million in 1989, was, historically, controlled by the Gannett Foundation [n/k/a Freedom Forum]. In the late 1980s, the former chairman of Gannett and founder of USA Today, Al Neuharth, was also the chairman of the board of trustees of the “nonprofit” Gannett Foundation [n/k/a Freedom Forum], which spent $33 million per year of its Gannett Company dividends in the early 1990s on grants to such “needy” recipients as Columbia University. In exchange for its grant from Neuharth’s Gannett Foundation, Columbia set up “the Gannet Center for Media Study” in its School of Journalism building to study the same mass communications industry that the Gannett Company and Neuharth historically attempted to dominate. A former president of the Public Broadcasting Service [PBS], Lawrence Grossman was a Senior Fellow at the Gannett Foundation-funded Gannett Center for Media Study in the early 1990s [a few years before Columbia University eventually severed its historic ties to the Gannett Foundation/n/k/a Freedom Forum in 1996).

But according to the associate director of the then-Columbia University-affiliated Gannett Center for Media Study in 1991, Shirley Gazsi, the center then had “no relation” to the Gannett Company and “the Gannett Foundation has no relation to the Gannett Company.”

“We are an operating academic institution,” Gazsi told Downtown in 1991.

Asked by Downtown in early 1991 if she could estimate how much funding the Gannett Foundation then granted to Columbia’s plushily-furnished Center for Media Study, its then-associate director stated that the Gannett Foundation then granted the center $3 million per year and indicated that the Gannett Foundation had by 1991 already made $30 million worth of grants to Columbia’s Center for Media Study over a 10-year period.

According to Gazsi, The Gannett Foundation was set up with Frank Gannett’s ‘private assets,” and “sponsors conferences, grants fellowships and promotes journalism education.” The Gannett Foundation also “makes local community grants,” according to Gazsi, in some cities in which Gannett newspapers operate.

The Gannet Center for Media Study associate director told Downtown in 1991 that neither the Gannett Foundation nor the Gannett Company exercised any control or influence over center activity. But she did indicate in 1991 that “We do get calls from Gannett newspapers and TV stations to respond to certain journalism issues.”

Asked by Downtown in 1991 whether newspaper chains like the Gannett chain are studied by her center, Gazsi replied: “We usually don’t study media chains.”

Asked by Downtown in 1991 if she could recall any Center for Media Study which studied Gannett’s activities, Gazsi replied in the negative. But she assured Downtown that the center would not be reluctant to study Gannett because “in actuality, we are nonpartisan.”

The Gannett Foundation also spent its Gannett Company dividends in the early 1990s on purchasing books. After the then-chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Gannett Foundation, Al Neuharth, had his book, Confessions Of An S.O.B., published, the nonprofit Gannett Foundation told The New York Times on Sept. 7, 1990 that foundation money was used to “buy some 2,000 copies” of Neuharth’s autobiography, but it denied charges that it had “tried to influence best-seller lists” with its foundation money.

(Downtown 5/8/91)

Next: Columbia University’s Pulitzer Prize Board/Washington Post Connections