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-John Bitzer
Friday, September 6, 2013
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Hopson's Editorial
From Jim Hopson, Publisher of The Press:
We announced this week that The Press is being sold to BH Media, part of tycoon Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. This sale is good news for The Press, its readers, advertisers and employees, and for the southern New Jersey communities served by The Press.
BH Media is a new company. Its 30 daily newspapers were acquired in the last couple of years. Starting and building BH Media at a time when other owners are leaving the newspaper business, and when many industry observers are questioning the future of the medium, may appear to be a risky venture. But Buffett has confidence in newspapers, like The Press, that provide good local news coverage in healthy markets.
Here is some of what he said about his newspaper investments in his 2013 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders: "Newspapers continue to reign supreme … in the delivery of local news. If you want to know what's going on in your town - whether the news is about the mayor or taxes or high school football - there is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job. …Wherever there is a pervasive sense of community, a paper that serves the special informational needs of that community will remain indispensable to a significant portion of its residents."
BH Media has quickly earned a reputation as an excellent publisher, employer, business partner and community citizen, and you can expect our new owners to be all of those things here. And it says something great about The Press and this southern New Jersey region that the most successful investor of all time just made a big bet on our future.
We need to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the Bitzer/Taylor family, who have owned The Press for 62 years. Their thoughtful stewardship of this newspaper is the reason that The Press today remains a strong and independent voice in this region. The people of The Press remember them as kind and generous bosses. I know them to be smart and highly ethical leaders whose principles and business practices should be a model for all business owners.
Another big change for The Press occurred earlier this month when we shut down our production operation and transferred the printing of the newspaper up the Garden State Parkway to the Asbury Park Press. This move reflects an accelerating trend in our industry, where the economics strongly favor consolidating production into fewer, more efficient sites.
We have succeeded in making this change invisible to our readers and advertisers, with a couple of exceptions. First, our color pictures are now sharper and more vivid thanks to the newer and better printing technology in Asbury Park. And to accommodate travel time from our printer back to Pleasantville, we now have earlier deadlines. Because we go to press earlier, some news, notably sports scores, is left out of the print edition.
Deadlines have always been a fact of life in our business. No matter when we started the presses, some news happened too late to include in the paper. For example, we could never get the scores of West Coast night ball games into the paper. But because we have a website that we update continuously, we can make news available to our readers whenever it happens. That is particularly true with sports scores, which feed automatically from our wire service directly onto our website. We update the website as soon as the Associated Press moves the scores. We quickly post other breaking news, too. For example, the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial was announced after our press deadline last weekend, but the website was all over the story the minute we got it. The combination of the print and digital products enables us to give readers more up-to-the-minute news than we ever could with print alone.
Finally, I want to thank The Press' production people, who worked faithfully to serve our readers until the last copy of the final edition left our plant. They richly earned our gratitude and best wishes.
We announced this week that The Press is being sold to BH Media, part of tycoon Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. This sale is good news for The Press, its readers, advertisers and employees, and for the southern New Jersey communities served by The Press.
BH Media is a new company. Its 30 daily newspapers were acquired in the last couple of years. Starting and building BH Media at a time when other owners are leaving the newspaper business, and when many industry observers are questioning the future of the medium, may appear to be a risky venture. But Buffett has confidence in newspapers, like The Press, that provide good local news coverage in healthy markets.
Here is some of what he said about his newspaper investments in his 2013 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders: "Newspapers continue to reign supreme … in the delivery of local news. If you want to know what's going on in your town - whether the news is about the mayor or taxes or high school football - there is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job. …Wherever there is a pervasive sense of community, a paper that serves the special informational needs of that community will remain indispensable to a significant portion of its residents."
BH Media has quickly earned a reputation as an excellent publisher, employer, business partner and community citizen, and you can expect our new owners to be all of those things here. And it says something great about The Press and this southern New Jersey region that the most successful investor of all time just made a big bet on our future.
We need to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the Bitzer/Taylor family, who have owned The Press for 62 years. Their thoughtful stewardship of this newspaper is the reason that The Press today remains a strong and independent voice in this region. The people of The Press remember them as kind and generous bosses. I know them to be smart and highly ethical leaders whose principles and business practices should be a model for all business owners.
Another big change for The Press occurred earlier this month when we shut down our production operation and transferred the printing of the newspaper up the Garden State Parkway to the Asbury Park Press. This move reflects an accelerating trend in our industry, where the economics strongly favor consolidating production into fewer, more efficient sites.
We have succeeded in making this change invisible to our readers and advertisers, with a couple of exceptions. First, our color pictures are now sharper and more vivid thanks to the newer and better printing technology in Asbury Park. And to accommodate travel time from our printer back to Pleasantville, we now have earlier deadlines. Because we go to press earlier, some news, notably sports scores, is left out of the print edition.
Deadlines have always been a fact of life in our business. No matter when we started the presses, some news happened too late to include in the paper. For example, we could never get the scores of West Coast night ball games into the paper. But because we have a website that we update continuously, we can make news available to our readers whenever it happens. That is particularly true with sports scores, which feed automatically from our wire service directly onto our website. We update the website as soon as the Associated Press moves the scores. We quickly post other breaking news, too. For example, the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial was announced after our press deadline last weekend, but the website was all over the story the minute we got it. The combination of the print and digital products enables us to give readers more up-to-the-minute news than we ever could with print alone.
Finally, I want to thank The Press' production people, who worked faithfully to serve our readers until the last copy of the final edition left our plant. They richly earned our gratitude and best wishes.
BH Media To Buy The Press
The Press of Atlantic City will be sold to Warren Buffett's BH Media Group
The Press of Atlantic City will be sold to Warren Buffett's BH
Media Group by ABARTA, a private holding company based in Pittsburgh, Pa.,
interim Publisher James W. Hopson announced today.
BH Media Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway
Company, with headquarters in Omaha, Neb. The group now owns 30 daily and
weekly newspapers in 10 states.
The Press of Atlantic City is a 67,000 daily and 77,000 Sunday
circulation newspaper that serves Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Ocean
counties. The newspaper's Web site, pressofAtlanticCity.com , reaches 700,000 unique visitors each month. The Bitzer/Taylor
family, owners of ABARTA, has owned The Press since 1951.
Mark Blum will become publisher of The Press when BH Media takes
ownership, expected in August. Blum, who is now publisher of the Morning News
in Florence, S.C., was controller for The Press from 1989 to 1993.
"I couldn't be more excited about getting the opportunity to
return to Atlantic City and work with such an outstanding team of employees at
The Press of Atlantic City," Blum said. "The Press is one of New
Jersey's finest newspapers, and its digital presence is dominant. All of us at
BH Media are very excited to become associated with a newspaper and a community
like The Press and South Jersey," Blum said.
Blum added, "The South Jersey region is
a vibrant place to be right now, and we look forward to serving the business
community and continuing to be essential to readers. The Press' print and web
platforms are excellent, innovative vehicles to do both."
BH Media has been purchasing small- and medium-sized,
community-oriented newspapers since December 2011. The home page on its Web
site states 'A sense of community. That's what BH Media provides."
"We're delighted to have The Press of Atlantic City join our
growing family of newspapers," said Terry Kroeger, CEO of BH Media Group.
"We look forward to the opportunity to continue the tradition of
community-minded journalism carried on by the Bitzer/Taylor family for over 50
years. We also want to welcome the Atlantic City employees to our company and
are looking forward to working with them. We are pleased to have Mark Blum, who
has done a great job for us as publisher at the Morning News, take on this new
role as publisher of The Press of Atlantic City."
John Bitzer III, president and CEO of ABARTA said, "We are
very pleased that BH Media will be the new owner of The Press. Their sterling
reputation for journalistic integrity and astute business management should be
welcome by the market, and by the people at The Press. The Bitzer/Taylor family
is very proud of our long stewardship of The Press, and we wish BH Media every
success as we turn the reins over to them."
Hopson said, "BH Media is not only acquiring a fine newspaper
franchise, but also a great group of newspaper professionals who have shown a
willingness to adapt to the challenges of newspapering in a quickly changing
environment. This is a transaction from which the buyer, the seller, the
employees and the customers all benefit."
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
ABARTA To Sell The Press
Not An Easy Decision
After long and careful consideration, the senior executive team, with the approval of the board of directors of ABARTA, has decided to put The Press Media Group up for sale.
After long and careful consideration, the senior executive team, with the approval of the board of directors of ABARTA, has decided to put The Press Media Group up for sale.
As most of you know all too well, the newspaper industry is in the midst of a fundamental transformation, and The Press Media Group is no exception. That transformation has created significant growth constraints for stand-alone, family holding company newspapers like ours, and we have been unable to devise a business strategy to overcome those constraints. The Press Media Group will be much better served by either being part of a larger group of newspapers that can apply economies of scale and strategic leverage to the business, or by local ownership that can leverage its ties to the community.
We all have mixed feelings and a heavy heart about this decision. On the one hand, our family has proudly owned and operated The Press Media Group for sixty years. Four generations of family members have worked in the business over that time, and we have always taken our Fourth Estate responsibilities very seriously. On the other hand, I am absolutely certain this decision is in the best long-term interests of ABARTA and The Press.
Effective today, Jim Hopson will be the interim publisher and chief operating officer of The Press Media Group, reporting directly to me. Many of you will remember Jim as the publisher of the Press from 1989 to 1994. Jim has considerable experience in operating and in selling newspapers. His role will be threefold: 1) provide leadership for the business, 2) improve its financial performance, and 3) usher it through the sale process.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Keith Dawn for 16 years of significant contributions to The Press. We wish him well in what I’m sure will be a bright future.
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