After a nearly 40-year run, USA Today and its digital sites are about to undergo a major restructuring that will include the creation of digital marketing under the ponasive print edition.

The deal to acquire gannett, which owns US Today, will not be closed for at least another month. Nothing much will happen – or legally can happen – until then, and don’t look for this to be the first order of business for a new company. Winding the print can take several years.

But two knowledgeable sources, speaking on background, said the move away from the US today in print is part of the calculations for the new venture. This makes a lot of sense, given the deterioration of print circulation and minimal advertising.

Maribel Perez Wadsworth, US today publisher, commented via email:

“Gannett has no plans to discontinue the U.S. print edition TODAY, which remains an important part of our business. Gannett remains committed to high-quality journalism for the communities we serve and our ongoing digital transformation, and we are pleased to have found a like-minded partner at New Media. We believe the combination of our two companies will change the landscape in the print and digital news business, and once the deal closes, we look forward to delivering compelling benefits to audiences, customers, employees and shareholders.”

Already set in motion are moves to try out membership opportunities and marketing add-ons to increase revenue.

One Gannett editor, speaking on background, told me that new CEO Paul Baskobert was all hands on meeting regional Newspapers on the day his hiring and deal agreement was simultaneously announced.

“He ran for an hour and a quarter,” said the editor, “and there was never a single mention of print.”

“Digital transformation” is often promised and rarely delivered many times at Gannett – and in other chains. But even before the merger came together, the same editor said Gannett had moved into going WA-na digital: “Let’s face reality. We (still) have to radically transform .”

Baskobert, while silent publicly, has been highly visible and active in internal meetings with Gannett execs and visits to the largest of his 109 regional papers.

“He noted that he is not impressed with the U.S. today,” a source familiar with the meetings told me. “He said,” the Middle of the road is not a strategy.” (This can apply either to both sides of the matter of reporting and opinion pieces, or to the core position of the mid-market.)

As for business, the 109 regional paper sites that rely on the US today for national content are starting to ramp up the number of paid digital subscriptions. Those are worth 561,000, the company said in its latest earnings report, after a slow start.

And the company claims a monthly unique audience of 127 million for all of its sites.

This spring on large regional circulation, Gannett quietly dropped the standalone U.S. Today news section on its 35 largest Newspapers. The effort, codenamed Project Butterfly, was highly touted as a reinvestment in print when it began in 2013.

The move itself represents a significant reduction in printing, wiping out the distribution of hundreds of thousands of copies. The sections were just too expensive, another editor told me, compared to the revenue they generate.

USA Today’s main site remains free, monetized by a large amount of advertising with geo-targeted options.

Declining print circulation the figures paint a picture of why winding down a five-day print edition in an orderly fashion would be attractive to a combined company.

In its latest audit report on the circulation earlier this year, USA Today reported an individual circulation of 178,000 with another 342,000 hotel services (for which hotel chains pay a substantially reduced rate).

That 5,200,000 is a long drop from more than 2,289,000 U.S. Today claimed in 2007, when it ran neck and neck with the Wall Street Journal as tops in paid circulation.

Also, if you thumb through increasingly thin editions, it’s clear that most U.S. days Today in print carries little or no fully paid advertising.

There are no figures for the expenditure side. But think about the likely cost of printing and distributing across the country. The US Today can piggyback on plants on its regional documents in many places. In other places, however, it needs to conclude a contract for printing and delivery.

Government data, part of the Alliance for verified media’s second-quarter circulation report, shows that the newspaper is indeed fulfilling its promise to be available nationwide.

In all 50 States, readers can get a copy of USA Today in print. Totals range from a low of 266 in Montana to more than 49,000 in California.

A third ganett editor said :” I’ve been told that distributing the hotel print is still making money. But if it’s not, there’s basically nothing left .”

One argument for staying in print, another editor told me, is its contribution to branding and supporting the impact of reporting and editorials on local Affairs. While the US Today is undoubtedly an established brand, a boon to trust with the national rather than the local, the audience is less obvious – and may just be too expensive.

Newspapers in the advance chain began flipping up to three days a week in print seven years ago, receiving a strong push from readers and local government officials. In New Orleans, Advance’s Times-Picayune was sold on may 1 to its rival, lawyer.

As I reported in January, the rest of the industry has not followed Advance’s lead. Since then, the move away from print has gained momentum. The Pittsburgh post-Gazette shifted to three days a week in print. McClatchy’s range of 30 works fall Saturday editions.

Gatehouse and Gannett executives promised $ 275 million to $ 300 million in cost savings “synergies” as justification for the merger. Eliminating, or even just scaling back the US today in print, would add up to a healthy advance on that goal.

Posasu out of print will undoubtedly lead to some reduction in the US Today’s news staff of 289 (according to the staff directory), many at the company’s headquarters in McLean, Virginia, others in bureaus across the country.

However, demand for much of the content in digital formats – especially mobile – will remain. Distributing national stories to regional Newspapers still makes sense, and those can be offered 260 GateHouse outlets.

Gannett and her USA Today Network gradually established a substantial 21-person investigative team, often relying on both regional newspaper reporting resources and a centralized data collection and editing team.

This structure won the USA Today Network, partnering with the Arizona Republic, a Pulitzer in 2018 for explanatory reporting for a series of stories and digital visuals on Mexico’s four-state border called ” the Wall.”

The latest of these projects focus on domestic violence in the NFL and the League’s response and abuse in reverse mortgages, as well as lobbying the Catholic Church and the boy scouts against stronger child abuse laws. 

Gatehouse is also engaged in the creation of an inter-local investigative unit, which includes 35 journalists. Look for the two to be together.

The editors of Gannett, with whom I spoke, had formed a positive impression of the new Director-General Bascobert. He is young (late 40s) with a strong digital and engineering background. Although not a journalist himself, he points to enthusiasm for the company’s journalistic ambitions.

It does not come from inside Gannett, as was the tradition, but from the wedding site, the Knot. There, he was part of a team of executives transitioning to an unconventional business model that allows involved couples to order services directly and charge providers from across the country to be listed.

The new Media-Gannett merger is still not a sure thing. Meetings of shareholders of both companies are scheduled for November 14. If approved, the company will retain the Gannett name, although New Media will respond.

About half of the $ 1.4 billion purchase price will be in New Media Shares. New Media shares have fallen 24% since the deal was announced on August 1. Still, Gannett’s management recommends approval, essentially saying the company doesn’t have the best strategic options.

GateHouse management would not comment on the US today changes or other elements of transition planning. Outside of carefully crafted data from the securities and exchange Commission, there is little they have a legal right to say while final negotiations are in progress.

USA Today, launched in 1982, was the creation of Gannett’s flamboyant and expansive CEO al Neuhart. Derided as “McPaper” for its many abbreviated news nuggets, the newspaper lost more than $ 200 million in its first five years before eventually turning a profit.

In the early days, USA Today admired its full-page color weather map, the format of many other documents adopted, but nothing more. Even well after the paper got more gravitas, for example, with strong stories about airline safety, the image of “news Lite” lingered.

It took a build-up from the investigative unit and stronger opinion and Coverage of Washington to earn wider recognition for what the US was doing journalistically today.

Neuhart was also the driving force behind Newseum, which moved in 2008 from several floors in the Gannett Premier real estate headquarters and spacious blocks on the Mall in Washington.

Mired in debt, the Newseum will close later this year, its exhibits scattered.

It can be said that the US today in print, Newseum and Neuhart itself are extravagant relics of the healthy newspaper industry of the 1980s and 1990s – but out of step with the digital imperatives and pressed finances of the present.

Rick Edmonds (Iya media business Analyst). C [email protected] he can be contacted.