Washington Post blog article, 6/16/15

 

Spox: Jeff Bezos had ‘no role’ in decision to shut down Gazette papers

By Erik Wemple

June 16, 2015 at 12:35 p.m. EDT

Staffers of Maryland’s Gazette community newspapers wanted some answers. They were assembled last Friday for a staff meeting with Stephen P. Hills, president and general manager of The Post. Hills informed them that their newspapers, which cover Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, would be shutting down. Sixty-nine people would be losing their jobs.

The Gazette papers have been part of Post Community Media (PCM), a property of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Nash Holdings; he acquired the assets as part of his 2013 purchase of The Post.

Gazette staffers pressed Hills at least twice on Bezos’s involvement in the properties, according to a staffer in attendance. One wondered why the Internet mogul purchased them in the first place. Another asked whether the fate of the small papers had come up in consultations with Bezos (PCM’s Southern Maryland Newspapers and Comprint Military Publications, as well as the Fairfax County Times, are being sold off). Hills didn’t answer the questions, clarifying that he was there to discuss how the company was handling the closure. The company couldn’t find a buyer to take over the Gazette.

Kris Coratti, a spokeswoman for The Post, tells the Erik Wemple Blog that Bezos had “no role” in the decisions regarding the community papers.

The papers’ shutdown follows a steady shrinking act over the years. Rounds of layoffs in recent years have crimped the company’s ability to cover Montgomery (population 1 million) and Prince George’s (population 900,000); the company closed its Frederick County edition in 2013. PCM’s chief executive left the company in April and was not replaced. Joining the Gazettes on the spike is Zag Magazine, a publication that targets area “twenty-somethings and their Gen X elders.”

A note from management to PCM staffers last week said, in part: “After a comprehensive but unsuccessful effort to find a buyer for The Maryland Gazettes, we are sorry to report that they will cease publishing effective June 18, 2015. The publications, through their employees, have made a positive contribution to the community over the years and this is truly a heartfelt loss for all of us.” The Montgomery Gazette launched in 1959 (then the Gaithersburg Gazette); The Washington Post Co. launched the Prince George’s version in 1997, four years after buying the company.

By Erik Wemple

Erik Wemple, The Washington Post's media critic, focuses on the cable-news industry. Before joining The Post, he ran a short-lived and much publicized local online news operation, and for eight years served as editor of Washington City Paper