Gannett - History

History

Gannett Company, Inc. was founded in 1923 by Frank Gannett in Rochester, New York as an outgrowth of a newspaper business he had begun in Elmira, New York in 1906. Gannett, who was known as a conservative, gained fame and fortune by purchasing small independent newspapers and developing them into a large chain, a 20th century trend that helped the newspaper industry remain financially viable. By 1979, the chain had grown to 79 newspapers.

The company was headquartered in Rochester until 1986, when it relocated to Arlington County, Virginia. Its former headquarters building, the Gannett Building, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. Gannett's oldest newspaper still in circulation is the Star-Gazette located in Elmira, New York. In 2001, the company moved to its current headquarters in Tysons Corner, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

Beginning in 2005 at the Fort Myers News-Press, Gannett pioneered the mojo concept of mobile multimedia journalists, reporters who were initially untethered from conventional newsrooms and drove around their communities filing hyperlocal news via Wi-Fi in various formats including text for print publication, still photos for print and online publication, and audio and video for the News-Press website. The practice has spread throughout the chain.

On March 7, 2011, Gannett introduced its new logo for the company, which replaced the stylized "G" logo that was in use since the 1970s. The rebranding also introduced a new tagline for the company: "It's all within reach."

In 2011, Gannett was criticized for laying off 700 U.S. employees a as cost-cutting measure after having increased executive salaries and bonuses. Bob Dickey, Gannett's U.S. newspapers division president, was paid $3.4 million in 2010, up from $1.9 million the previous year. In the memo announcing the layoffs, Dickey wrote, "While we have sought many ways to reduce costs, I regret to tell you that we will not be able to avoid layoffs."

In February 2012, Gannett announced that it would be implementing a paywall system across all of its newspaper websites, with non-subscriber access will be limited to between five and fifteen articles per month, varying by newspaper. The USA Today website will be the only one continuing to allow unrestricted access.

On August 21, 2012, Gannett acquired Blinq Media.

Around the first week of October 2012, Gannett entered a dispute against Dish Network regarding compensation fees and Dish's AutoHop commercial-skip feature on its Hopper digital video recorders. Gannett has ordered that Dish discontinue AutoHop on the account that it is affecting advertising revenues for Gannett's television station. Gannett threatens to pull all of its stations should the skirmish continue beyond October 7th and Dish and Gannett fail to reach an agreement. The two parties eventually reached an agreement after extending the deadline for a few hours.