The Tucson Citizen is scheduled to print its final edition tomorrow and lay off most of its staff after its parent company refused to sell Arizona’s oldest newspaper to interested buyers.
Saying it is “no longer viable” to keep the Citizen alive in print, the Virginia-based Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper chain, opted to fold the hard-copy edition of the newspaper and convert its website into a hub for local opinions, the parent company announced today. The shut down and layoffs come after Gannett reportedly turned down an offer from California investors to buy the newspaper for $500,000, an offer far below the company’s $800,000 asking price.
“Dramatic changes in our industry combined with the difficult economy — particularly in this region — mean it is no longer viable to produce two daily printed newspapers in Tucson,” said Bob Dickey, Gannett’s head of newspapers, in a written statement.
Gannett will continue to own a stake in a special partnership with Tucson’s largest newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, which is owned by Lee Enterprises. This means the company will continue to help the Star pay for certain costs of producing its own newspaper in return for sharing profits.
Jennifer Boice, the Citizen’s interim and final editor, put it this way in a column titled “Our epitaph” posted this morning on the newspaper’s website: “It was a sad moment when an executive from Gannett…informed us the Citizen was worth more to its parent dead than alive.”
Essentially, she wrote, Gannett has determined the Citizen costs more to produce than it is adding in revenue to the agreement.
Boice said about 65 employees are out of work because of the shutdown.
In January, Gannett, which also owns the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, announced it was putting the Citizen up for sale and would close it if no buyer was found. However, over the past several months, it became increasingly clear that the company would only sell the paper under highly specialized circumstances.
At least two interested buyers looked into acquiring the Citizen, according to previous reports. One of them, the Santa Monica Media Company, based in California, even offered $500,000 to purchase the newspaper and keep it alive, according to a report by the Citizen. However, the media company’s CEO said Gannett turned down the offer, instead deciding to level the newspaper’s operations but remain in the cost- and revenue-sharing partnership with the Star.
The Citizen is reporting the media company is now seeking a restraining order through the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to keep the paper alive as it continues to try to purchase it.
The Citizen was founded in 1870 and was bought by Gannett in 1976. In recent years, the afternoon newspaper has sunk to fewer than 20,000 subscribers, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Update (7:58 p.m.): The office of Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard filed a last-minute lawsuit today to stop the Citizen from closing. The story is developing, and you can follow the updates in the coming days here on Heat City.