Federal regulators have approved Gannett Company’s $280 million purchase of the Milwaukee-based Journal Media Group, which owns the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and 14 other papers across the Midwest and South.
Stephen Lacy, a professor focused on media economics at Michigan State University, said the sale is part of a pattern of newspaper consolidation across the country. One hallmark of that consolidation is aggregating content from papers in nearby markets.
“I suspect that you will see something more like that,” he said. “The online will be aggregating across all its newspapers, which to some people will be a good thing. To others, it won’t be meaningful.”
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Gannett has a history of cutting costs through centralization, said Lacy.
“They will do like they’ve done most places, which is sort of control the costs,” he said. “One good thing for Milwaukee is that Gannett has traditionally invested more in their larger newspapers than their smaller newspapers.”
Gannett already owns several Wisconsin newspapers including the Green Bay Press-Gazette, the Appleton Post-Crescent and the Wausau Daily Herald.
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