Pat Purcell likes to say that his mentor
Rupert Murdoch taught him that "You grow or you die." In today's troubled media marketplace, Purcell is now operating on the principle that you need to shrink to survive.
The news that the
Herald Media boss has agreed to sell off his Community Newspaper Co. chain of more than 100 publications -- including four dailies -- to the Illinois-based
Liberty Group chain comes as no surprise -- in fact it's a little overdue. It's been known for months that Purcell was shopping the Herald and/or CNC, and recently, the story line emerged that the profitable suburban CNC chain was more attractive to potential buyers than the money-losing urban tabloid. (
See "High noon at the Herald" in the March 31 Phoenix.)
Today's
front page Globe story has more details on the deal, which also includes the sale of the Patriot Ledger in Quincy and Enterprise in Brockton (which are part of the
Enterprise NewsMedia operation) to the Liberty Group folks. The Globe puts a $225 million dollar price tag on the CNC sale, while the Herald's page 2 story, which I couldn't find online today, put the Enterprise purchase at about $165 million. Give credit to the Globe's Steve Bailey who sketched out this scenario more than a month ago.
So, as the smoke finally clears, we have a seriously changed local media marketplace and a few intriguing questions -- including the basic one of how many currently employed journalists will keep their jobs.
1) What is the Liberty Group and how does it operate? (P.S. The Herald story says the company will now change its name to GateHouse Media.)
These guys instantly become major Boston-area players with scores of important weeklies as well as the Patriot Ledger, Enterprise, and MetroWest Daily News. And obviously, they have a track record -- even if we don't know it yet. The rule of thumb these days seems to be that nobody who buys a media property makes it better -- i.e. by investing more resources in the journalism and being a little less concerned about the bottom line. But for now, suffice it to say, there's a new media power in these parts. We'll find out soon enough whether that's good or bad news.
2) How about the Herald? Purcell told the Globe
''We're going to continue to build the Herald. It's my first love." It's good news that Purcell is holding on to the paper he bought from Murdoch in 1994, because there's no doubt it's a labor of love. And no one in his right mind wants to see Boston as a one-and-a-half newspaper city. (The Globe and the Boston Metro that it half owns.) But the question remains -- what kind of Herald will we have going forward? It's clear the business model hasn't been working, which is why the Herald editorially reoriented itself toward a splashier tabloid style in the past few years and why Purcell went looking for a painful $7 million in cuts last year.
Today's Herald story says the tabloid will emerge from the sale of CNC "essentially debt free," but that doesn't mean it's an economically viable operation. There's been continuing speculation that Purcell could employ a number of options -- from going to a free distribution model to streamlining editorial staff and narrowing the editorial mission. I don't know at this point whether the CNC sale takes all that off the table. The fact that the Herald will continue to share editorial content with the CNC papers doesn't suggest Purcell is planning to restock the paper's newsroom
3) How will the Globe react? These aren't exactly happy days on Morrissey Boulevard. Gloomy ad revenue numbers and declining circulation aren't doing anything to ease Times Co. chairman
Arthur Sulzberger's throbbing Excedrin headache and there's been plenty of recent churn on the business side of the Globe. Now, the paper faces a changed local newspaper landscape that could affect its strategy and direction.
Finally, a word about Purcell, a blue-collar kid from Queens who got interested in the media business when -- while working at a summer ad sales job at the New York Daily News -- he came to realize you could make a living wearing a suit instead of a hard hat. I've covered Pat for years and still find him hard to read. At times he is gracious, warm guy, and at times he is as cool and distant as an Arctic chill. He's inspired tremendous loyalty in his employees, but often they're disconcertingly in the dark about his plans for their future.
What can be said is that at one point, Purcell had visions of being a huge media magnate in this region. There was a time, as he was mapping out his 2001
purchase of CNC, that he also had a strategy for buying the Patriot
Ledger and Brockton Enterprise too. And in 2002, he was a player, albeit unsuccessful, in the bidding to buy a group of North Shore dailies.
Now times are hard and Purcell's ambitions have been scaled back considerably. He is back where he started a dozen years ago with his beloved Herald -- and one hopes he has the smarts and resources to keep it afloat and essential.