Agreed. Another consideration is that many newspapers suffer from an outdated ownership structure. I'm not sure about Gannet, but I know some of the others, lik

Agreed. Another consideration is that many newspapers suffer from an outdated ownership structure. I'm not sure about Gannet, but I know some of the others, like Tribune before 2007 and NYT had a problem. They were started by famous businessmen or families that then created a structure to keep the holdings within the family. The problem with this is that their descendants owned the trusts that run the company and were unwilling to forgo the dividends that came their way. People outside the publishing industry are often amazed at how much money these companies gave away to shareholders as dividends and for how long, despite it being clear to everyone else in the world that they should have been keeping the money in the bank.