Cox, Gannett plan deal to print three Ohio newspapers
Company says readers should experience no differences.
Cox Media Group Ohio newspapers will be printed at an India- napolis production facility under an agreement in principle with Gannett Publishing Services, the company announced Thursday.
About 75 full-time and 60 parttime employees who work at the CMGO Print Technology Center in Franklin will be affected by the change.
The daily delivery and appear- ance of the company’s three daily newspapers — the Dayton Daily News, the Springfield News-Sun and the Journal-News — will not change, said Rob Rohr, Ohio market vice president and general manager of Cox Media Group Ohio.
The company’s headquarters in downtown Dayton, 1611 S. Main St., and offices in Spring- field and Northern Cincinnati will not be affected.
Delivered newspapers will arrive on customers’ doorsteps at the same time each morning, seven days a week, unchanged in appearance and size, and driven by the same local journalists and advertisers whom readers already see each day, Rohr said.
“For the overwhelming majority of our customers, there will be no changes,” Rohr said.
The company’s weekly publications, including the Journal-News Pulse, will also continue to be published in their current format.
Affected employees will receive severance packages and job-placement assistance, Rohr said.
Cox will honor notice and bargaining obligations tied to production functions, and
the transition is expected to happen over several months beginning in the third quarter of 2017.
The change is necessary because the print side of the newspaper business has not been growing.
“The digital portion of the business is growing,” Rohr said. “This is a trend across
the country and within Cox.” Newspapers that make this change are able to use capital freed by outsourcing printing to invest in digital operations and brands, Rohr said.
Other regional newspapers have taken this route. For example, the Cincinnati Enquirer is printed in Columbus.
“Our core focus is providing this community with outstanding journalism while serving our advertisers and delivering content to custom-
ers across digital, mobile and print, this move will allow us to continue to invest in the people and platforms driv- ing the future of the business,” Rohr said.
Rohr said the Print Technology Center land and building at 5000 Commerce Center Drive, off southbound Interstate 75, offers attractive development potential. Those possibilities will be explored in time, he said.
Denny Centers, mayor of Franklin, was disappointed by the news.
“It’s a big loss to the city of Franklin, and it’s employment in the area that we’d
like to keep here,” Centers said.
The mayor said he under- stood from an economic perspective why Cox made the decision.
“We want to keep jobs in this community, but I understand why the com- pany made the choice,” Centers said.
Israel Castro, president of the Graphic Communications Conference/International Brotherhood of Teamsters District Council 3 — which represents 22 PTC employees — said his next steps include negotiating with CMGO management to see if the move can be averted.
“It’s a really great group of employees,” Castro said. “We wish this wasn’t happening, and we’d like to keep the work if at all possible.”
The C MGO p ortf o lio includes the largest media brands in southwest Ohio, serving the region with print,
digital, TV and radio content. Since 1898, the community has been served by Cox products and the company reaches more than 94 percent of the Dayton metropolitan area each week.
This year, CMGO raised nearly $600,000 for local charities and obtained more
than $1.25 million in Cox Foundation grants for local projects, including the new Children’s Hospital Tower, the company said in a release announcing the printing changes.
The company also provided local non-profit organizations with more than $1.4 million in advertising and promotional space.
You can learn more about Cox community investments at www.coxcaresohio.com.