Why it Matters Who Owns The Daily News

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by

John Giordano

The Townie is an opinion website. The views expressed in this piece belong solely to the author, do not represent those held by The Townie, and should not be interpreted as objective or reported fact.

The excellent documentary film, Tiananmen Tonight, chronicling Dan Rather and the CBS News team’s coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student uprising, screened recently at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival. Interestingly, the film’s timely local screening not only offered our community a view of courageous journalism in action, it also served as a warning for why we need to have a much more watchful eye on our important hometown newspaper, The Daily News.

CBS News was relentless in getting footage of the student pro-democracy movement to Western audiences by satellite feed and video tapes sneaked out of China. The film punctuates the dedication a US media company showed in reporting on the events of the student uprising, hunger strike, and eventual brutal crackdown in China. 

Tiananmen Tonight is a reminder of the days when the big three networks were serious players regarding the way the public formulated its views via the nightly news. We have come very far from the time when network news, and the consensus it tended to build, really made a difference. The film’s screening in Newburyport was intended to be about courageous news coverage in a moment of political turmoil, but it amplified the ways in which that same news organization has recently abdicated its responsibility to the public.

During the Q&A, I asked the film’s co-director Bester Cram and CBS producer Peter Schweitzer what they thought about the recent takeover of CBS by the Larry Ellison family, a major play by another right-wing billionaire to take over influential news and entertainment media, including Tik Tok. In the case of CBS, satirist and Trump critic Stephen Colbert was fired and the network settled a spurious lawsuit with Donald Trump just before the government approved Ellison’s purchase. A controversial conservative former opinion writer without experience heading a newsroom, Bari Weiss, was then named head of CBS News.  

Schweitzer cleared his throat and hemmed and hawed at my question, but Cram cut through the obfuscation when he said: you need to know who owns any media you consume. 

So what does this have to do with Newburyport and its quaint local newspaper? Well, our paper isn’t as local as we may wish it were. The Eagle-Tribune Publishing Co., which published The Daily News and other local Massachusetts newspapers, was sold to Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. (CNHI) in 2005. CNHI owns newspapers, television stations, and websites serving about 150 US communities. A major financial backer of CNHI was the Retirement Systems of Alabama. CNHI was then bought by Raycom Media in 2017, which then sold it outright to the Retirement Systems of Alabama in 2019.

What does this mean for news reporting in Newburyport? The “Fourth Estate,” that is, the news media, has always been the unofficial fourth branch of government designed as another cog in a system of governmental checks and balances. While that is true, newspapers are also historically profit-seeking arms of political parties and their interests. And not only does the ownership of a newspaper signal a profit motive, but also a political orientation.

But this should only matter if the owner of The Daily News puts its slant on the news, right? Since the days of the Eagle Tribune Publishing Co., The Daily News has reduced its number of reporters and drifted away from news coverage of critical local issues to include filler national stories with a rightward lean that one would assume are run in CNHI’s daily newspapers around the country. The surprisingly out of context ads the paper runs for golfing outings in Alabama make more sense in light of its ownership. We have to ask if the increasingly scant amount of news we read, and the op-eds that actually make it into the paper, come with a political agenda. And we have to wonder if the issues that do get covered are subject to maximizing profits that come with the pressure of putting money in the pockets of Alabama state pensioners. 

All this matters for the reason Cram said it matters regarding CBS. Your news is always going to be influenced by those who own your paper. 

Perhaps we need a fully-staffed local competing newspaper, composed of both professional journalists and citizen-journalists, a paper that prioritizes reporting on issues vital to the community over profits. Perhaps it’s structured as a co-op or nonprofit to avoid the pressure of profits altogether. It would function outside political party ideologies, and have a stake only in the greater Newburyport community: a paper for the people, by the people.  

Reinventing news media in response to the challenges of our times won’t be easy, but democracy depends on it. And preserving democracy seems to be pointing more and more to strengthening local communities. It has never been easy to move big ideas from ideal to reality, but taking charge of our local news is an idea worth thinking about.

John Giordano
Newburyport resident

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Comments

20 responses to “Why it Matters Who Owns The Daily News”

  1. Jared Hubbard Avatar
    Jared Hubbard

    The Newburyport Democratic City Committee (NDCC) is hosting a forum on local news on December 9th at City Hall at 7pm. We’ll have the Editor of the Daily News, as well the Townie, Local Pulse, and the Ipswich Local News on hand, and I invite everyone to attend and find out more on this critical topic.

    Reply
  2. Peter Fitzsimmons Avatar
    Peter Fitzsimmons

    John, I’ve known for sometime that the paper is owned by the Alabama Retirement folks. However, I have no problem with the Alabama golf ads. I train myself to avoid looking at all ads whether newspaper, internet or the most repulsive of all, television. It’s their newspaper and it’s just another ad. But I have noticed the plethora of stale Associated Press stories they now include in the paper.
    Having followed the paper for the last 50+ years I don’t see it as more right-wing, I think it’s actually more liberal/progressive. I’m not sure why perhaps they figure they hold more readers in a state/community that is so overwhelmingly one party. If they went real right-wing they would be out of business.

    Reply
    1. John Giordano Avatar
      John Giordano

      Good points. I imagine the try to walk a careful line in being appealing tot he community and reflecting the owners love of golf (that last part was a joke).

      Reply
  3. Amy H Avatar
    Amy H

    I appreciate your diligence in tracking down the owner of the Daily News, especially as more and more national mainstream media sources are gobbled up by right wing voices.

    I have been reading the Daily News for about 40 years. My dad and I used to sit at the dinner table in the 80s and read the paper together and I am still a subscriber. I also have a master’s degree in journalism (from the olden day when journalism was a respectable profession).

    I don’t see a right wing slant in the Daily News at all. I think Dave Rogers is a thoughtful editor and most reporters seem to be giving us straight local news in the old tradition. I agree that we should keep our eye out for tone of the national stories, which Rogers may have less control over. I’m not sure a competing newspaper is the answer in such a small town and an era where “print is dead” (God rest her soul), but I like your idea of citizen journalism on some scale. I feel like nobody cares about local news reporting anymore so thank you for bringing attention back to it.

    Reply
    1. John Giordano Avatar
      John Giordano

      Good points, Amy. What I imagine has more of a web presence plus one monthly printed paper. Why cut down all those trees when most people consume ideas online anyway.

      Reply
  4. John Grohol Avatar
    John Grohol

    As anybody in publishing can tell you, print is dead. The costs of running a newspaper were always largely borne by advertisers, not subscribers. But advertising dollars have dried up for print (and their accompanying websites) publications in the past decade.

    It’s all fine and good to remind readers that their local newspaper hasn’t been owned by locals for more than two decades. But it’s a fallacy to suggest that some company in Alabama has nefarious purposes in purchasing a group of small, community newspapers, especially if you’re not bringing any receipts.

    Who owns and runs this website? The About page doesn’t say. You’d have to go and research it and see that Eben Diskin is the Editor (or at least was in 2024), but it says nothing about who the publisher is. Why are advertisements not labeled as such on the website?

    You see, the game is easy to play. But you have to do better than to just say, “I’m JuSt AsKiNg QuEstIOns!” or suggest a new, competing publishing business without an accompanying business model.

    It would’ve been more helpful to have added some context — that over 3,300 small, local, community newspapers have closed up shop in the past two decades. That wasn’t for political reasons. That was because the business of publishing has become brutal. Advertisers don’t advertise. Subscribers don’t subscribe. People consumer their news wildly differently in 2025 than they did in 2005.

    That’s nothing to be ashamed about or try to rally to recreate old, dead-tree businesses. Instead, we should embrace the change and find new ways of engaging the community in places where they’re at — like online. (But yes, you still need to figure out how to fund it, because people’s time & effort is not free.) Good luck and I hope you can help people better understand issues like this are not black and white. Someone owning something from a different state doesn’t mean they don’t have the same care and passion for the business they’re running.

    Reply
  5. John Dodge Avatar
    John Dodge

    Excellent commentary, John. I started my journalism career in a very robust Daily News newsroom as an intern in 1976-77. Those days are long gone. The newspaper then was part of Essex County Newspapers and was sold to Ottaway (part of Dow Jones) in the 80s, so sayeth Google. But I think that’s correct. Essex County Newspapers was four daily North Shore newspapers as I recall owned by Phillip Weld, a local businessman with an appreciation for good journalism. Ottaway also had a solid journalistic tradition. Ownership is a key factor, but coverage boils down to resources. One editor several editors ago told me The News was quite profitable, but wouldn’t give him more resources. Indeed, a lot also depends on how much ownership leaves the newsroom and op/ed sections alone. Today the News is largely filler with reported coverage trailing meetings or incidents by days. It’s often said to me that we are lucky to have a newspaper at all. Maybe. I told Eben if he ran obits, I’d consider dropping my Daily News subscription (it’s in my wife’s name). He has the commentary base covered.

    Reply
    1. John Giordano Avatar
      John Giordano

      John, I think this is the central problem. Others are fairly suggesting the DN doesn’t lean right. But how many stories do we never read because reporters have been let go. Therefore, how many issues are we in the dark about? I appreciate the more detailed history of ownership of the DN.

      Reply
      1. John Dodge Avatar
        John Dodge

        I live in West Newbury and we have zero coverage by the DN and rely on a couple Facebook communities. We had a well known and hard working correspondent, but she was let go, I believe. As for the rightward lean, that may come from the Lawrence Eagle Tribune, but I don’t detect it in local opinion or coverage. I do think the coverage of the present mayor has been overly favorable and I find the columns by the present editor gratingly talk down to the reader. That said, accusations of bias in reporting sometimes (just the facts, ma’am) spring from the conspiratorial mentality. I’ve been on the receiving end of that. If you go way back, The News was owned by one Fred Smith who I believe was also editor. Fred’s son, Talbot, was a lifelong friend of my father, Allen. I’m not sure who sold the News to Phillip Weld in 1952, but it may have been Smith or his family. Weld was a fascinating character and very committed to good journalism. His middle name was Saltonstall. Need I say more. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/11/07/Philip-Saltonstall-Weld-Sr-a-former-newspaper-publisher-who/8792468651600/

        Reply
        1. John Giordano Avatar
          John Giordano

          I think you’re suggesting elitism and newspaper ownership go hand in hand. I’d like to see a local news source that gets around the pitfalls of the owner’s viewpoint and the profit incentive.

          Reply
          1. John Dodge Avatar
            John Dodge

            For better or worse, newspapers have almost always been owned by the elites: Hearst, Taylor, Graham, McCormick, Murdoch, Scripps, McClatchy and Ochs to name a few.

  6. Walt Thompson Avatar
    Walt Thompson

    https://thelocalnews.news
    It’s a non-profit
    Sent to all residences in Ipswich and Rowley.

    Reply
    1. John Giordano Avatar
      John Giordano

      This is what emerges in news deserts where no local newspaper exists. Great model. We should assume that because we have a local paper, it reflects the best model for local news.

      From The Local News website:

      “Editorial Independence Policy

      We subscribe to standards of editorial independence adopted by the Institute for Nonprofit News:

      Our organization retains full authority over editorial content to protect the best journalistic and business interests of our organization. We maintain a firewall between news coverage decisions and sources of all revenue. Acceptance of financial support does not constitute implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions.

      We accept gifts, grants and sponsorships from individuals and organizations for the general support of our activities, but our news judgments are made independently and not on the basis of donor support.

      Our organization may consider donations to support the coverage of particular topics, but our organization maintains editorial control of the coverage. We will cede no right of review or influence of editorial content, nor of unauthorized distribution of editorial content.

      Our organization will make public all donors who give a total of $5,000 or more per year. We will accept anonymous donations for general support only if it is clear that sufficient safeguards have been put into place that the expenditure of that donation is made independently by our organization and in compliance with INN’s Membership Standards.”

      Reply
      1. John Giordano Avatar
        John Giordano

        Sorry, we shouldn’t assume…

        Reply
  7. Warren Russo Avatar
    Warren Russo

    Back when it was really a daily paper, the Daily News printed my weekly political column, for which this holder of dual Journalism degrees received many compliments from readers.
    I didn’t mind writing my unpaid column as a hobby, but two years ago, a trio of despicable locals took issue with my exposure of local wrongdoing. Lacking the intellectual ability to properly express their opposition, they demanded that the current editor remove my column, and so he did.
    Remember, Freedom of the Press includes the freedom to silence criticism, and therein lies the flaw in that “Freedom.”
    Fortunately, the business skills that have enriched me far beyond any of Newburyport’s pompous asses do not depend on the publication of my column, which is just a hobby for me.
    The compliments I regularly receive from local residents who read and remember my columns are worth far more to me than money.
    The not-quite-daily Daily News may not always print my column, but the Boston Broadside does!

    Reply
  8. Charlie D Avatar
    Charlie D

    I see significant bias in The Daily News coverage of City Hall, though not so much of the “right wing” bias the author suggests is associated with a corporate parent in Alabama.

    I think what most determines Daily News coverage is a lack of funding to hire a higher caliber editor and invest in a modern publishing operation.

    In a detailed overview of Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. (CNHI), UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media reports that in the late 1990s, public pension fund Retirement Systems of Alabama ($30 billion assets under management in 2024) identified newspapers and broadcasting operations in non-competitive markets as a worthwhile investment.

    After many years of staff reductions to reduce costs in its newspaper holdings, the CNHI president and CEO said in 2018 that they had cut staff to the bone and would look at further reducing the number of pages in their newspapers or cutting print editions.

    Readers have observed these dynamics with the Daily News.

    Fortunately, a non-profit news model is thriving in Massachusetts. There are a half dozen newspapers that effectively cover school sports, community events, opinion and obituaries.

    Brookline.News stands out for journalism – with consistently excellent coverage of town government and budget, police and crime, public education.

    Reply
    1. John Giordano Avatar
      John Giordano

      Charlie, maybe a more competitive market would encourage the DN to raise the bar a bit. Brookline.news is a great model for the future of local news in Newburyport — if it could work in a substantially smaller market than Brookline.

      Reply
  9. John Macone Avatar
    John Macone

    This was an interesting column, but I ‘d like to put the perspective of a true insider into this discussion.
    I was the editor of the Newburyport Daily News for 14 years – I started in 2002 when the Rogers family bought the paper, and was there when CNHI bought it in 2005. For the next decade I experienced the many ups and downs of CNHI ownership. It was never an ideal marriage – CNHI wanted to have high quality newspapers, but on a tight budget that met the impossible revenue goals of its parent company, the Alabama public employee pension fund. We wanted high quality papers and enough staff to thoroughly cover all 11 communities in our circulation area.
    But, it wasn’t a bad marriage either. CNHI had some faith in us and left our staff intact up until the 2009 recession, when revenues companywide plummeted. We lost almost 1/3rd of our staff to layoffs that year. Over the following years there were trims, and when Covid hit, revenues dropped again, and so did the staff. But we were luckier than others – take a look at what Gatehouse has done to hundreds of community papers across the nation. They have absolutely gutted and destroyed them. Proud and strong papers like the Providence Journal, Quincy Patriot Ledger and many others were demolished by the greedy execs at Gatehouse.
    I also want to make clear that CNHI never exercised any sort of control over NDN’s editorial content, nor over any of our sister papers in Massachusetts (Eagle-Tribune, Salem News, and Gloucester Daily Times). Quite the opposite, CNHI viewed our local papers as their most experienced newsrooms, and tapped several journalists from our papers to train and guide newsrooms at its other holdings in the south, midwest, and rural New York. If there are editorial slants that you perceive, don’t blame CNHI – that’s the local staff making all the calls.
    Lastly – the Newburyport Daily News was (and maybe still is? I’m not sure) an extremely profitable paper – it consistently had the best profit margins in the entire CNHI chain. But very little of that profit was turned back to the local newsroom for additional staff. Instead it was used to help buoy the company’s bottom line.
    This is an ideal city for a newspaper – it has all the demographics that a news business strives to have. My hope is that a “white knight” will buy NDN and invest in it. I think we can have both a robust paper and a happy owner.

    Reply
    1. John Giordano Avatar
      John Giordano

      Thanks for your comments, John. I appreciate the insider view. I don’t claim to have the depth of facts that you do, and I want to learn more about how ownership of a paper impacts what’s covered.

      My primary point is that the reduced reporting staff has a big impact on what issues make it to the public. And I worry that the responsibility of putting money in the pockets of Alabama pensioners may, if one connects the dots, impact editorial decisions. Perhaps the national stories don’t lean right, but they are generic and take space away from the very reason the public wants a local paper: coverage of local issues. When a gigantic ad for golf outings in Alabama is run in the DN, I ask if that space could have been used to run a story on our critical water quality issues in Newburyport. We can read USA Today-style pablum and look at ads for things most of us will never do elsewhere.

      My hat goes off to any editor trying to make a for-profit local daily work in this day and age, unless they become so desperate that we are served clickbait and nonsense to fit the sensationalistic times we live in.

      I believe the state of the country right now requires us to build a bulwark at the local level. Citizen input on what stories are covered, and who decides an editorial slant, are more important than ever. This is why we need a nonprofit local news outlet that is primarily web-based with limited paper issues. Just as science relies on passionate citizens to input data on important topics such as bird migration or radiation levels on the atmosphere near nuclear power plants, we need citizen journalism (mixed with professional journalism) to ensure the issues that most matter to the local citizenry are covered in detail without the excuse of budget cuts. Perhaps you want to jump back into the game.

      Reply
      1. Charlie D Avatar
        Charlie D

        Hi John – thanks for sparking an important dialogue. Can you say more about citizen journalism mixed with professional journalism to ensure the issues that most matter to the local citizenry are covered in detail?

        How do you envision something like that working?

        Reply

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