Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Observer-Dispatch Deathwatch

Shares of Gatehouse Media, the Observer-Dispatch's corporate parent, reached a high of 75 cents earlier this week, but they've since slipped back down to 57 cents. You can keep track of the continuing saga at Google Finance.

As to the O-D itself, the departure of award-winning reporter Renee Gamela for the campaign of Richard Hanna doesn't bode well. She was a bright spot in the paper's line-up, consistently producing well written and researched pieces that transcended the OD's normally shallow work. There are still some solid reporters in the paper's stable, but at this point I don't think anyone is setting their expectations very high. On the bright side, they haven't fallen to the pathetic level of WKTV, where they don't even bother to re-write press releases before passing them off as stories

Update: A kind emailer suggest we're going to be seeing some more departures from the OD's lineup of talent, such as it is, in the near future.

Update: A story at Editor & Publisher includes this observation:

Morningstar repeated its judgment that the GateHouse Media Inc. (NYSE: GHS) is essentially worthless, assigning it a fair value of zero. Monday morning it was trading at 69 cents, down 2 cents, or 2.82%.