Columbia Daily Tribune 'gutted' since sale to GateHouse Media, journalism review story says

The Tribune's publishing plant

Journalists once knew Columbia, Missouri, as the best-covered small city in America, thanks to the daily Columbia Missourian run by students at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the 113-year-old daily Columbia Daily Tribune. But it's not likely able to claim that title any more.

In the 18 months since GateHouse Media Inc. bought the Tribune, "the staff has been slashed, readers are frustrated and circulation has plunged," Terry Ganey reports for St. Louis-based Gateway Journalism Review. "No doubt daily newspapers have retrenched within the last 10 years in the face of market challenges. But the Tribune has been bled dry to achieve financial results. As of mid-February, layoffs and departures had left the newspaper with one full-time reporter in a city of more than 100,000." Subscriptions have dropped accordingly: almost 3,000 daily and 4,300 Sunday since the paper's sale.

Charles Westmoreland, the Tribune's managing editor, wrote in a column last December that the layoffs haven't been "a joyride for us either" and said canceling subscriptions is the wrong way to fix the paper's woes. "For every 100 subscribers we lose, there’s a $20,000 hole in the budget to fill. So we fill that hole with more cuts, but more subscribers show their disdain of the new changes by cancelling. So we lose another 100 subscribers, and now there’s another $20,000 hole needing filled. The cycle then repeats over and over and over."

George Kennedy, former associate dean of the Missouri School of Journalism and former managing editor of the Missourian, told Ganey: "What we are seeing here is a tragedy – a journalistic and civic tragedy. . . . One of the country’s best small-sized newspapers has been gutted." Ganey did not mention contacting GateHouse for comment; The Rural Blog's attempts were unsuccessful.