GateHouse Media shuts down another printing press

Bad memories returned for me when I read that Gatehouse Media has shut down the printing press at the Pontiac Daily Leader in Illinois and is forcing the newspaper to print at Peoria:

Beginning Monday the newspaper editions for Monday through Thursday and Saturday will be printed at the Peoria Journal Star.
The Leader and The Journal Star are both owned by GateHouse Media, Inc.
“Our press made its first run on Aug. 5, 1968,” Tom Hutson, publisher of The Daily Leader said. “As with all pieces of machinery, it has become antiquated in many ways. It was at the point where GateHouse had to make a decision on what to do about our press. Their decision was to have us printed on a daily basis by our sister paper.”

It was decisions like this, when they took place at The Carthage Press in the 1990s that started the disconnect the newspaper has with the community. GateHouse Media, then Liberty Group Publishing, eliminated jobs at The Press while building the bottom line at the Neosho Daliy News.

At the time, The Press had a thriving print business that included not only the newspaper itself, but the Webb City Sentinel, the WiseBuyer, and every high school newspaper in the area. It was also undeniably a stronger newspaper than the Daily. To this day, The Press' circulation has remained consistently greater than the Daily's.

GateHouse Media has a well-earned reputation for buying community newspapers, and then stripping "community" from them.