Newspapers and their parents have been finding it harder and harder to juggle Wall Street's financial expectations with journalistic missions. One public company — GateHouse Media — has benefited. Since going public in Oct. 2006, the Fairpoint, N.Y.-based media company has been bolstering its niche of local coverage with more than $1 billion in acquisitions. Its latest deal April 12 for four Gannett dailies for $412 million in stock and debt the Norwich Bulletin (Norwich, Conn.); the Rockford Register Star (Rockford, Ill.) ; the Observer-Dispatch in (Utica, NY); and The Herald-Dispatch (Huntington, W.Va.). Just last month, GateHouse acquired nine local dailies from Copley Press in the Midwest for $380 million. Could GateHouse be on to something? The company doubled its profit to $7.8 million in the fourth quarter 2006. Overall, it registered total revenues of $314.9 million for 2006. Let's face it, the Internet is not going away. Wall Street proclaimed content king several years ago. Maybe that’s true. So if GateHouse can find a way to generate more dollars from its daily print assets and integrate it with the Web, maybe large media companies won't be so quick to unload print assets and newspapers won't go the way of the eight track tape. —Gerald Magpily
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