Forget about any reputable newspaper company buying Liberty Group Publishing, the company that owns The Neosho Daily News, The Carthage Press, The Neosho Post, and the Big Nickel, and a total of 300 publications in the United States.
Newspaper industry sources say the newspaper companies did not survive the first round of bidding for Liberty which ended earlier this month. The only remaining suitors for the newspaper company are private equity investors, who are looking at the company as a cash cow.
"Only financial buyers are left in the auction," the source said.
Liberty DEO Ken Serota has claimed in print interviews that his company is "recession-proof" because it is insulated in the communites in which it serves. In nearly all of the towns in which Liberty has properties, it has no competition, which makes the company extremely attractive to investors.
These companies generally expect a 30 to 35 percent profit each year, which usually can only be done with continued purchases of new properties or by cutting payroll costs and quality.
It was only about two decades ago that a 20 percent profit was considered outstanding and many newspapers were content with half of that.
Ninety-six percent of Liberty Group Publishing is currently owned by the leveraged buyout firm Leonard Green and Partners from Los Angeles. Investment companies have made a general practice of buying newspapers, increasing the value of the properties through further acquistions, and draconian cost-cutting measures, including consolidating operations, then sell the companies in five to 10 years. Liberty Group Publishing was formed seven years ago from newspapers which were once a part of Hollinger International, a Canadian firm.
Since that time, in this area, the company gutted the operation of The Carthage Press, removing its printing press and selling it for parts and requiring the newspaper to have earlier deadlines so it can be printed in Neosho. Liberty also cut the production staff in Carthage, having the work done in Neosho, fired the inserters so that work could be done in Neosho, and after all of those moves, recently announced plans to move its offices to a site on Central Avenue in Carthage, far from the downtown building in which it has been situated for 50 years. That building is now too large for The Press since it no longer has a printing press, or a composing department.
Changes also affected the much smaller weekly, the Miller Press, which had its offices consolidated with the offices of the weekly Greenfield Vedette, nearly 20 miles away.
There is no way of forecasting the future, but it appears that the area newspapers will likely remain under the same publishers and editors who currently manage the day-to-day operations.
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The Ron Doerge situation continues to develop in Newton County. The administrator of Neoshoforums.com released a complaint filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission against the Newton County sheriff.
He also released a portion of an audiotape which apparently has Doerge using foul language and threatening the people in his department who are turning against him. In today's Neosho Daily News, Doerge claimed that it was not his voice on the tape and that he never uses profanity. Everything was attributed to a "disgruntled ex-employee." I hate to disillusion Doerge, who has served four four-year terms as sheriff, but is not running for re-election next month, but Newton County must be starting to fill up with "disgruntled ex-employees" considering the number of people who are voicing concerns about the ham-handed way he has tried to continue his dominance of the county by pulling the strings for Republican nominee Kenneth Copeland.
I thoroughly expect more revelations will be coming every day. Once the dam breaks, and people, this dam has definitely been broken, the flood waters are going to come pouring through and they may just drown Ron Doerge. A lot of people have been waiting for the opportunity to right wrongs they believe he has committed against them and they now see his aura of invincibility rapidly eroding.
The media coverage has been interesting. So far, the Daily has been the only member of the traditional media to tackle it with Michelle Pippin turning in a well-balanced account. It would be easier if the Daily had someone with connections witnin the department and the community. If it did, I guarantee you it would take no time to come up with a series of stories that could put the newspaper on the map with state, regional, and national investigative reporting awards. When you don't have those sources, though, you are limited to a get a quote from each side brand of journalism. It's fair, but it doesn't provide the public with the in-depth informaton it needs to know what is really going on.
The Joplin Globe did not run a story this morning. That could very well be because of the limited manpower it has available on Sundays (just check how thin the Monday newspapers are). Tomorrow will be the test for the Globe.
None of the TV stations carried anything on their 5 or 6 p.m. reports, or at least I didn't see anything and the Fox station did not carry it on its 9 p.m. report a few minutes ago.
The problem here is that Doerge has made a career out of boosting his reputation by constantly playing up to the electronic media. If they seek scandal, they risk cutting off their access to the Newton County Sheriff's Department. This is also not a story that lends itself to television. There are no visual elements to it, except a face shot of Doerge, a shot of the outside of the sheriff's office, and perhaps a shot of the copy of the complaint that was filed against the sheriff.
Our local newspapers with reporters forced to meet quotas of stories at the Globe and having too little time and too many stories at the smaller daily newspapers, are ill-equipped to handle investigative reports. The TV reporters are even less trained than the print journalists for this kind of story and usually just ignore them.
The traditional media had better be ready, though. Further developments may make this story impossible to ignore.