BoSacks Speaks Out: What Gannett’s Moves Means on the Ground for Local Papers

The latest wave of newsroom contractions isn’t just another chapter in the long saga of media consolidation, it’s a quiet dismantling of local journalism’s connective tissue. Gannett’s recent moves, from voluntary buyouts to centralized content strategies, are reshaping the landscape not with a bang but with a slow, methodical retreat. Editors are vanishing, coverage is thinning, and the once-vibrant pulse of community reporting is being replaced by templated stories and syndicated filler. These aren’t just staffing decisions; they’re existential ones. When a newsroom loses its editors, it loses its memory, its nuance, and its ability to hold power to account. All things counterproductive to a thriving community.

This erosion cuts especially deep for those of us who’ve spent decades championing local papers not just as news sources, but as cultural luxuries, tactile, intimate, and rooted in place. A local paper isn’t just a delivery system for information; it’s a ritual, a shared experience, a mirror held up to the community. It’s where the high school sports scores live alongside the town council drama, where obituaries are read with reverence and classifieds with curiosity. Strip away the editors and the local voices, and you’re left with a hollowed-out product that knows the zip code but not the soul.

Meanwhile, the print product, already beleaguered, is being pushed further into obsolescence. With large printing plants shuttered and markets shifted to USPS delivery, deadlines are creeping earlier and papers are arriving later. The Phoenix-to-Vegas move, with its 117 layoffs, is emblematic of a broader trend: print as an afterthought, a relic to be managed rather than a service to be optimized. For subscribers, this means waking up to yesterday’s news, if it arrives at all. For publishers, it’s a bet that timeliness no longer matters in a world of digital immediacy. But for communities, it’s a loss of rhythm, ritual, and relevance.

On the digital front, the strategy is clear: fewer subscribers, more revenue per head. Cheap introductory offers are out; annual plans and targeted price hikes are in. The result? A 15% year-over-year drop in digital-only subscribers, offset by a rise in the average revenue per user (ARPU). Management insists growth will return in “a few quarters,” but the short-term effect is unmistakable, fewer casual readers, less spontaneous engagement, and a narrowing of the audience to those who can afford to stay. It’s a model that prioritizes margins over mission, and in doing so, risks alienating the very communities these papers were meant to serve.

Content itself is shifting, too. High-engagement verticals like sports and entertainment are being elevated, while resource-intensive local watchdog work is quietly sidelined. The hiring of a former People editor to steer entertainment coverage is more than a staffing note, it’s a signal. National clicks are being prioritized over local truths. The stories that require time, trust, and tenacity are being crowded out by those that promise traffic and shareability. It’s not that entertainment doesn’t belong in the mix, it’s that it’s becoming the mix, at the expense of civic depth.

And then there’s AI, the double-edged sword of modern media. Gannett is leaning into automation not just to streamline workflows but to monetize its vast network of local sites. Licensing deals with platforms like Perplexity and experiments with generative answer engines like Taboola’s DeeperDive are reframing journalism as a data asset. But while AI can summarize, optimize, and even mimic, it cannot replace the lived experience of a local reporter, the institutional memory of an editor, or the trust built over years of community engagement. Automation may save costs, but it cannot save credibility.

Financially, Gannett posted a $78.4 million profit in Q2, even as revenue fell nearly 9% year-over-year. The company is guiding toward a down 2025 with hopes of improvement in 2026, a bet that price hikes, automation, and licensing can outrun audience loss and print retrenchment. But for many communities, the near-term reality is stark: fewer editors, thinner pages, and a print product that arrives late and says less.

This isn’t just a business strategy, it’s a cultural shift. And for those of us who believe in the irreplaceable value of truly local news, it’s a call to arms. Because if we don’t fight for the soul of local journalism, we may wake up in a world where the news knows everything about celebrities and nothing about our own neighborhoods. And that, to me, is not just a loss, it’s a betrayal of what journalism was meant to be. And yet we have to admit that there is no cure for greed.