Boston Globe columnist: Odd timing for GateHouse IPO

At a time when the nation's largest newspaper companies are seeing their stock prices slumping, GateHouse Media is ready to take its stock public.
The company, which owns The Carthage Press, Joplin Daily, Neosho Daily News, and the Big Nickel, among hundreds of daily and weekly publications, is saying its strategy of buying small newspapers in areas with little or no competition helps insulate it from some of the problems facing other newspaper companies.
The $16 to $18 per share touted by the company is steeper than what stock for the nation's largest newspaper company Gannett Co. and the owner of the Kansas City Star, McClatchy, is going for, according to a column in today's Boston Globe:

The GateHouse offering isn't exactly cheap, either. Based on valuations relative to cash flow, GateHouse shares priced at their preoffering estimate of about $17 would be a bit more expensive than McClatchy Co. stock and much richer than Gannett Co. shares, says analyst Melanie Hase of Renaissance Capital Corp. , a Greenwich, Conn., firm that follows IPOs.

GateHouse officials are saying their method of operation keeps the company better protected from internet advertising competition:

The GateHouse stock pitch comes with four elements. Most importantly, the company hammers away at its "hyper-local" newspaper strategy, which it claims is better insulated from Internet advertising threats. There may be something to that today, but no publisher is immune to the Internet threat. Meanwhile, Morton notes, the stocks of public companies that own smaller community newspapers have stumbled, just like those of the industry leaders. What happened to their insulation?