With Hearst, already owning Houston, San Antonio, Austin (I forgot
that they bought the Stateless earlier this year, somehow) Laredo,
Beaumont and Midland, along with a few yet-smaller properties, is its purchase of the Dallas Snooze
good for journalism in Texas? Michael Hardy discussed that a little while back at Texas Monthly.
My thoughts?
It is the tough issue above, tougher for the Snooze's employees yet, and I'll get more below.
I can say that, at a minimum, it's better than vulture
capitalist Alden owning the Snooze, Michael. On the other hand,
especially seeing how the SA Express-News is treated as not much more
than an appendage of the Chronic, and suspecting that's started
happening at the Stateless, and knowing that it's surely happened to
Beaumont, which is otherwise in the crapper, I can understand worries
about how other papers outside Houston will lose, or have already lost,
individual identities.
But, that's a lesser issue than the future
of journalism. Even if the Chronic itself hasn't been gutted, the
Stateless acquisition shows Hearst is no white knight overall:
Some
journalists at Hearst’s Texas papers have a less rosy view of their
employer. When Hearst bought the Statesman this spring, it declined to
ratify the contract that the paper’s union had signed with Gannett just a
few months earlier. Hearst and the union are in negotiations over a new
contract; in the meantime, the company has laid off the paper’s copy
editors, eliminated job protections, and cut some employee benefits. In
May, the Austin News Guild filed an unfair labor practices charge
against Hearst with the National Labor Relations Board.
I mean, yes, with more and more of a truly digital first world? Those copy editing positions are dead in the
water. Do you want to pick up a reporter's notebook or microcasette
player?
But? Some are still needed, and laying them ALL off sure
as hell looks like union-busting. It does so to the unionized in Dallas,
and at Hearst papers elsewhere:
In July, the union issued a statement on X
expressing alarm at the paper’s sale: “The experiences of our
colleagues at other Hearst papers have left us with concerns that we
look forward to addressing with Hearst leadership.” This was followed by
an open letter to Hearst
from unionized journalists in California, Connecticut, New York, and
Texas urging the company to refrain from “intimidation tactics and
inappropriate discipline meant to scare journalists into silence or
complacency.”
Ugh.
An additional problem is
that Hearst is privately owned, so it can say it needs to bust unions
for the bottom line, but, unless somebody leaks some financials, who can
tell, and there's no shareholder pressure anyway.
As an
additional note, online personal friend Chris Tomlinson, author of
"Tomlinson Hill" and other books, is at the Chronic — and by extension,
at the Expressed-News. And maybe at the Stateless now. His social media
doesn't comment on the acquisition.
==
As for where we stand?
Per D Mag's Brian Reinhart, Sept. 23 has been called for a shareholder vote. Bob Decherd may need to do some uphill sledding to round up two-thirds of both classes of shareholders, but Alden has much more of such sledding to do. Reinhart explains details here, including how the vultures at Alden sneakly bought just under 10 percent of Class A shares before making their bid.
At Nieman Lab, Josh Benton, who used to work in this part of the world, including at the Snooze weighs in on other things, including why Decherd does NOT have a "fiduciary duty" to accept Alden's higher offer. He can, like a local government looking at the big picture on bids for products or services, go with a different offer if he believes it's in the best interests of the company, since the Snooze / Belo are NOT a Delaware company.
He also notes that the Snooze, no longer A.H. Belo, but now DallasNews Corporation while it's been gutted enough, has been gutted less than Alden's franchise. Look at the Denver Post as the prime example.
==
More on my personal thoughts? For Decherd and other Dealey family remnants owning any part of the Snooze? Schadenfreude.
This is a paper that got luck dropped into its hands twice at the tail end of the previous century.
The first was, three years after MediaSnooze Group, eventually acquired by Digitally Fucked-Up Media, both of which had their own bankruptcy problems later, spun off the Dallas Times Herald to a friend of MediaSnooze founder Deano Singleton. The Snooze bought that carcass three years later.
The other was when the Fort Worth StartleGram, under its then owners, ended circulation west of Abilene about the same time, and the Snooze filled in that void. In the middle 1990s, you could still get it in the "little Texas" part of New Mexico, at least at stores or racks; I don't know about home delivery.
Anyway, beyond that, by the time I was in the Metromess, it long had the attitude that its shit didn't stink.
And, it made dumb, dumb biz decisions. Like the CueCat — which was basically ripped off by MediaSnooze! Or selling off its portion of Cars.com (or so I thought at the time). And, during these years, it kept selling off other papers, like in Providence, Rhode Island, or Riverside, California, in California's Inland Empire.
Side note on the Cars.com link? I have never understood why Decherd didn't go further down the road toward a full JOA with the StartleGram, especially before McLatchKey entered bankruptcy during COVID. I explicitly wondered about this in 2017.
==
Now, how does this play out in the longer term?
Beyond
Hearst? Craphouse (sic), the half of the post-merger company that is
the tail wagging the dog of the new Gannett, owns El Paso, Amarillo,
Lubbock, San Angelo, Abilene and Corpus Christi, and continues to
implode. In other words, outside of Odessa, two chains own all dailies
in West and West Central Texas, and Hearst making a bid for Odessa and a
consolidation with Midland wouldn't surprise me. CNHI, a chain that's
the crappiest one not owned by a hedge fund, owns many newspapers in
Texas that were dailies before COVID. It's not quite imploding, but just
falling apart more and more.
The StartleGram is owned by hedge-fund controlled McClatchy, or McLatchKey, which also continues to implode.
Papers
inside or near the Triangle, since, setting aside Cowtown, Hearst will
now pretty much control all points? Temple remains privately owned by
the Mayborn family and won't be sold. Waco and Bryan-College Station are
both part of Lee Enterprises, whose flagship is the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch. They might sell.
Per a piece I wrote 10 months ago,
if this David Hoffmann still owned, as of September 2025, a slice of
the Snooze, since he also owns a slice of Lee, at least looking at Waco
and BCS, if not far beyond that? (As of of early September 2025, per this story, Hoffmann was now one of the top two Lee investors and was still trying to buy the company outright, and still owned his slice of the Snooze.)
In the Valley? Hearst, if the
price is right, might look to move further south from Laredo. It
wouldn't need to buy everything, just one or another of Brownsville,
Harlingen etc, and then use its growing clout. (The partial carcass of FreeDumb Communications owns both those plus McAllen.)
That leaves East Texas, east of where CNHI trails off, as more competitive for now.
Also, a side note to journalism union hater Jim Schutze? STFU.
