ASHLAND — The future of Ashland County’s paper of record, the Times-Gazette, is murky following the news of its parent company’s financial troubles and recent newsroom departures.
Gannett’s second-quarter reports showed dismal losses financially, with important revenue sources down, costs up and a loss of $54 million on revenues of $749 million.
As a result, the country’s largest newspaper chain laid off 400 employees and cut 400 open positions.
It’s unclear how Gannett’s news will affect the Ashland Times-Gazette. Nevertheless, here are the facts.
• Sports reporter Chris Snow announced recently on Twitter that his last day at the newspaper would be Saturday, Aug. 27.
• Former TG news reporter Grant Ritchey departed in June, joining Report for America as a corps member writing for Knox Pages, a Source Media Properties publication.
• Jarred Opatz, the news editor serving both the TG and Wooster Daily Record newsrooms, started a new job at Ashland University in mid-August.
The publication’s website lists only Snow and Tom Puskar under its staff directory.
• The publication’s building on Second Street sold to Jewl House LLC in June 2021— ending a 90-year run as the newspaper’s headquarters. Remaining staff continue to work remotely.
• In May of this year, the Times-Gazette stopped printing Monday’s edition and began delivering through the United States Postal Service.Monday’s edition is now only available as an “E-edition,” the paper’s electronic replica.
Gannett — which did not respond to a request for comment on this story — has not announced whether those positions would be filled.
Considering all of that, a former reporter and editor said the paper’s future doesn’t look good.
“I feel sad about what’s happening at the Times-Gazette,” said Courtney McNaull, who worked as a general assignment and education reporter at the newspaper from 2012 to 2015.
When McNaull started at the Times-Gazette, the newsroom had 14 people in it — 15 if you count Jim Brewer covering Loudonville, she said.
“And we didn’t think that was enough,” she said.
McNaull, an Ashland transplant, went from the Times-Gazette to the Mansfield News Journal, where she stayed until 2015 before joining Source Media Properties as a reporter for Ashland Source in 2017. She started at Ashland County Community Foundation as the organization’s communications director in 2019, where she’s currently employed.
As for the future of her hometown’s newspaper, she said Gannett’s strategy might involve supplementing Ashland coverage with reporters from the Mansfield News Journal and the Wooster Daily Record, both Gannett papers.
“So it’s possible they’ll continue to do that, but I don’t know,” she said.
Carol Hunter, the executive editor at the Des Moines Register and regional editor for Gannett/USA Today Network newspapers in the Plains Region, painted a bleak picture in an Iowa Public Radio story published Aug. 23.
She was quoted as saying the “marching orders” involved protecting resources at the top-40 newspapers.
“In order to meet the cut I needed to make, (there) were these very deep cuts at some of the smaller papers,” she was quoted as saying during an “All Iowa” meeting on Aug. 12 to tell staff about the layoffs.
For the Plains Region, that meant layoffs at smaller publications and preserving positions at larger, metro papers.
It’s unclear if the same strategy applies to the 21 Gannett-owned publications throughout Ohio.
Ted Daniels, a longtime editor of the Ashland Times-Gazette, said the corporate “one size fits all” approach to running a newspaper is frustrating.
He worked at the TG from 2002 to 2015 and again from 2017 to 2019, when he retired. He now works as an adjunct instructor in Ashland University’s digital media journalism program.
He said Gannett’s centralized business model leads to making decisions that often ignore individual sites like Ashland, where the market for a print product is strong. Around 12 years ago, Daniels said the Times-Gazette newspaper got into 63% of the county’s households every day.
“That’s a strong advertising vehicle,” he said. “So this could have hung on as a strong print market for a while.”
He said Gannett provides solid state, national and international news, but lacks in local news coverage — an element that Ashland readers have grown to expect.
“People in Ashland need to be aware of what’s going on,” Daniels said.
But the paper’s real “nail in the coffin,” Daniel’s said, was the switch to delivering the newspaper through the USPS. He said the move means getting the newspaper delivered at later times throughout the day, and sometimes getting the Tuesday or Wednesday newspaper a couple days late, frustrating readers.
Joyce Atkins is a Mansfield resident who travels to Ashland a couple times each week to care for her 94 year-old mother. She said her mother has been getting spotty delivery lately.
Starting at the beginning of August, Atkins’ mother noticed her Tuesday and Wednesday papers hadn’t been delivered. Then, on Thursday, she received the Wednesday and Thursday paper.
“So she was shorted one paper. And then, every week, she’s not getting the Saturday edition — and that’s where all the fun stuff is, the comics, crosswords and games. She’s getting the Saturday paper on Monday or Tuesday now,” Atkins said.
Atkins said her mother, who lives on Ohio Street in Ashland, has been a “faithful” subscriber to the Ashland Times-Gazette for more than 25 years.
“She lives for that paper, the crossword puzzles, the obituaries — it’s her lifeline,” she said. “When she doesn’t get it, she doesn’t know what to do with herself.”
