Carpenter Media’s Ominous Takeover of Local News

Over the past two decades, we’ve seen private equity firms remake decimate the local news landscape through holding companies like GateHouse Media and Gannett (now one and the same, and as of last November officially known as USA Today Co.). But the private-equity playbook isn’t the only way to gut a newspaper. For CJR, Lois Parshley looks at Carpenter Media, which has gobbled up more than 250 papers in North America—and systematically starved many of them of crucial resources.

Unlike the paper’s former owner, EO Media, which had willingly opened its books when staff had to be cut, Carpenter refused to share its financial documents. “Because they won’t do that, presumably they’re not broke. This is just part of their business model,” Scott said. (“Like most privately held companies, we do not make our financials public,” Prince told me. “That policy is consistent across all of our operations and is not specific to any one newsroom or negotiation.”) Roig recalled that, during a meeting, Carpenter Media’s lawyers said that the decision to downsize was a “philosophical” choice. At the bargaining table, another clash soon emerged: management repeatedly tried to tie raises to three-story-a-day quotas. Negotiations are ongoing. 

Elsewhere, Carpenter Media employees say that vacation and retirement benefits have been cut and that their health insurance premiums have skyrocketed. Todd Carpenter, meanwhile, seems to be thriving. In Tuscaloosa, he is building an elite horse-breeding operation on a nearly hundred-acre farm. One of his stallions, a red-roan show horse called Third Edge, recently set a record for the highest-priced embryo ever sold at a public auction, fetching four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Its stud fee costs more than seven weeks of Pleznac’s former salary. (“Personal assets unrelated to CMG have no bearing on newsroom operations,” Prince told me.)