Yes, CNHI actually does sell newspapers

 I guess that the Retirement System of Alabama has enough asset diversity, and has seen its other assets grow enough, that it can sell individual newspapers at something at least approaching today's market values and let the rest of the chain mark to market on its asset value.

Anyway, last year, per a Google for other reasons, the main reason being to wonder if CNHI was still doing its mandatory quarterly furloughs, last year it sold 10 newspapers to Carpenter Media. These were in its heartland — Alabama, Georgia and one Mississippi.

Carpenter itself is "interesting," per Poynter, which notes its apparent "Chainsaw Al" type operations, which make it currently the sixth-largest US newspaper chain by number of papers. In addition, its acquisition of Black Press, besides US papers, gave it a massive Canadian presence in Alberta and British Columbia. More on that acquisition from the Seattle Times.

Per its own website, their papers include a pair of semiweeklies that I had applied to, as ME, a year ago. They made their acquisition just months after I made the first round of cuts but didn't get the job. Per this longform piece, and per the Times, it's probably good I didn't. 

What is UP with newspapers wanting a job application?

 As in job application in addition to a resume for something like an ME position?

Look, if you're hiring a receptionist, or a newspaper delivery carrier, I get it.

But, for something like an ME spot, especially at what appears to be two different semi-weeklies combined, where the ME is managing reporters? Come on.

Yes, I've only run across it twice in two years, but it's stll irksome.

Both were in Aridzona.

The first literally wanted a paper application, like going to work for Walgreens, as I've noted before. And, they only wanted it after initial interview. I refused, because I could already tell they were doing a mix of lowballing without specific numbers and slow-walking giving me numbers, on financials.

The second, recently? It was online, so there is that. But, it wanted references and all that jazz before an initial interview, or before even indicating you might make the cut for an initial interview. I didn't even get to the part about where they might ask me about my academic background, including dates of attendance, which is why you don't fill out such things.

Hard pass and I stopped completing it on page 2. 

I don't know how good or bad they are overall, but actually, I kind of do.

I applied long long ago at their flagship, then a seven-day daily in print. Copy editor position. I know that means nights. I also know that means one or both weekend nights. 

I still thought that I might have a five-day straight workweek and a "weekend" of some sort, as I had already applied a year or two prior for a copy desk slot at a similar-size paper here in Tex-ass.

Nope!

Five days scattered throughout the week.

Worse?

Could change from week to week.

Fuck that shit, and I'll name a name — Prescott. (I won't say which one I applied to this time.) Pay was also a wash after I allowed for cost of living differences.

I see the parent company, which I didn't know back then, has partner ownership with Wick on a couple of papers. Wick about whom I've written more than once before.

That's the third strike and you're out and I'm out of there before going there, I'm sure. It's been a full week since I emailed my resume and no response. That said, given that there's a reporter opening in Prescott, almost brand new?

3,000 circ semiweekly closes office

No, the newspaper itself is not closing, but?

The Copperas Cove Leader-Press, a semiweekly with more than 3,000 circulation per the Texas Press Association's 2025 annual, in a city of more than 35,000, is closing its office and having its staff work remotely. Yes, I know you share Coryell County with Gatesville, and a bit of Killeen intrudes from Bell County, and it covers the Hood, now Fort Cavazos, theoretically more than you do, but still. (Killeen and Temple are still run "shipshape" by the Mayborn family, and interestingly, Temple actually has a higher circulation. That said, a fair chunk of Killeen's population is transients, solders on duty at the Hood and their families.)

More serious sidebar while I'm here? It's Fort Cavazos and Fuck Trump. (And, per Wiki, don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining by claiming it wasn't a naming reversion but that it was renamed after Col. Robert Hood.)

Sadly, and back to journalism, Belton's down to weekly. 

I could see moving to a smaller office rather than their current/previous one, where they had been for 15 years, per the October edition of TPA's Messenger, but shutting entirely?

It's cheap and it smacks to me of "we don't care."

(That said? It looks like one full-time news writer besides the editor, a freelancer who does some news and a little sports, and the publisher doing other sports that's not canned copy. And, that's with the publisher also listed as ad director. Sounds awfully thin on staff, even these days, for a paper that size. And, looking at the website, it looks like they kind of have written off sports coverage.) 

And, if I'm a staffer? Am I being compensated with this savings of, let's say, $1,500 a month with a salary adjustment, for higher-speed internet at home if needed, or for a younger staffer, any internet at home versus having just doomscrolled a smartphone? Additional electricity for summer daytime AC? Hah. Tis to laugh. I'm probably being told that I am saving gas mileage money and I should be grateful my salary isn't being cut.

What if you're the ME and don't even live in the Cove? Maybe you're in Killeen. Or Gatesville. Or Lampasas.

Southern Newspapers sells Lawton Constitution

 It's probably at least 5 years too late, if not 6 or 7, per what I wrote in 2019 about Southern's takeover, but at least it's out of Southern's least-common-denominator, story-number-counting, vulturous clutches.

 Best of luck to the new owners, who, kind of like Ballantine Communications in the Colorado portion of the Four Corners, and now in New Mexico as well, began as a telecommunications company, then acquired the Durango and Cortez papers, then went into New Mexico for Farmington, are now entering the media biz themselves. 

Hilliary had formed a media group within the company several years ago, and had already started a business-based paper in Lawton.

Southern? Per this Facebook post, even if you take it not just with one, but several, grains of salt, the Constitution had gone way downhill. I wonder if Hilliary was paying for much more than remaining subscriber and advertiser lists.

I don't know how new Wiki's circ numbers are, but what it lists is less than half of the 2018 numbers. Even with current newspaper decline rates, that's a bigger slump than normal. Perhaps it was "aided" by Hilliary's Southwest Ledger.

Once again, not getting the Gainesville Register

 Gainesville, Texas, approximately 17,000, is the county seat of Cooke County, approximately 45,000.

The paper is CHNI. Nuff ced?

Current editorial staff is an in-house staff writer, and a regional editor, with originally a sports background, running three CNHI papers. Weatherford is about 75 miles away, generally southwest. Cleburne is about 45 miles southeast of it. Weatherford has gotten so bad that a weekly halfway between it and Fort Worth started an online-only competitor. Nuff ced?

The only in-depth sports coverage the paper had in the entire 24-25 school year was of the football state championship game for Muenster, at the western edge of the county. Muenster has its own newspaper, let us note!

So far, this year the same, until the last two weeks, when some freelancer has reported on one game each week from two non-Muenster smaller schools.

But, Gainesville is nearly 40 percent of the county's population and you can't get anybody to cover Gainesville high school sports?

OK.

That may also say something about Gainesville sports fandom, I'll admit. 

Hearst vs Alden: The Snooze between the devil and the deep blue sea

 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.

UPDATE: Dick Tofel, founding general manager and eventual president of Pro Publica, interviewed Hearst CEO Steve Swartz in early October about why the company was buying newspapers. It was decent-good on the corporate side, but didn't ask about further buys in Texas and was also a bit of turd-polishing on Hearst as a company. I posted a link to this piece; it didn't draw comment or a "like" from him. (I get a "like" about half the time.) 

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.

Publishers' Auxiliary fellates the Roswell (Daily) Record

Not the one in Georgia. 

The one in New Mexico, beloved by conspiracy theorists.

Lead story in Pub Aux's July issue? 

Touts local news production with "Roswell UFO controversy was a local story."

Well, today, there is no controversy.

There IS a lot of grifting by the Beck family ownership.

Re both of those issues? 

Per the "about" on its website, the Record is like Jill Stein trying to pretend to not be an antivaxxer while actually being one. In this case, it's trying to pretend not to push 1947 UFO conspiracy theory while actually doing so.

In July 1947, something streaked out of the sky, hitting the ground outside of Roswell, New Mexico, beginning years of ongoing speculation as to what the object was. According to initial information provided to the Roswell Daily Record by the Roswell Army Air Field, the startling headlines claimed that the military had recovered a flying saucer from a nearby ranch.

Overnight, the story changed from a flying saucer to a weather balloon, and over the ensuing years, that explanation morphed into a military high-altitude surveillance program. Over decades of conspiracy theories that the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public interest and fascination with this story.

Wrong. 

And, Beck daughter has a reason to peddle this, as did daddy, assuming he did, too.

The paper owns its own UFO store.

Of course, here's the reality.

And, I knew that reality long ago. I also know that, 25 years ago, Roswell boosters were talking about when the city would hit 50,000. Never happened. Population's been basically flat since 1990 and Farmington has just about caught it, while the Farmington metro area is much bigger.

Not that Teri Saylor at PubAux will tell you that. About halfway through:

In 2022, on the 75th anniversary of the crash event, CBS News reported the debate is far from settled, and “for decades, journalists, authors, documentary film crews and others fascinated by the incident have unearthed and publicized countless bits of information and artifacts o that time.”

Ugh. No skeptical organizations or individuals are quoted anywhere. 

But wait, it gets worse:

On the newspaper’s website, Beck wrote that “over decades of conspiracy theories, the U.S. government has covered up the possibility that an alien spacecraft and its otherworldly crew were responsible for the 1947 crash. Through it all, and continuing to this day, the Roswell Daily Record was there to report the news and to spark the public’s interest and fascination with this story.”

Saylor doesn't question that, nor does she mention the grifting involved. Well, she did mention that above two paragraphs:

Both the Roswell Daily Record and the Morning Dispatch are trademarked, and their UFO crash stories and images cannot be reproduced without permission or by paying royalties to Record Publishing, the parent company.

To be more accurate, she doesn't mention the ethics of a newspaper promoting an untrue conspiracy theory off of which it's grifting.

She and PubAux should be ashamed of themselves. 

But they won't be.