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Paper Cuts: When private equity firms control local newspapers

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Newspaper 2014 Schedule 2023 Schedule
Bloomington Herald Times Daily Sunday - Friday
Clay City Times Wednesday Out of business
Ellettsville Journal Wednesday Out of business
Mooresville/Decatur Times Wednesday and Saturday Wednesday
Martinsville Reporter Daily Tuesday - Saturday
Paoli Republican (merged w/ Springs Valley Herald) Thursday Thursday
South Bend Tribune Daily Sunday - Friday
Spencer Evening World Monday - Friday Wednesday
Bedford Times Mail Daily Tuesday - Saturday
Springs Valley Herald (merged w/ Paoli Republican) Wednesday Thursday

These are the days the print newspaper was published in selected prior years and is published in 2023. Two of the newspapers are no longer published at all, and four previously separate newspapers have been merged into two newspapers.

Staffing numbers representing full-time equivalents came from former and current editors of newspapers, as well as numbers provided by The Herald-Times to the American Society of News Editors for its 2014 and 2018 diversity surveys. In some cases, two newspapers share the same staff. — Chart by Katy Szpak and Jainish Shingala

These show Gannett owned properties in Indiana. Former Schurz properties are shown in blue; properties owned before the purchase by GateHouse/Gannett in 2019 are orange.

The content was counted on microfilm from September 2014 and September 2018, and on the Herald Times E-Editions online for September 2023. Three areas were counted. Stories with bylines of staff writers is listed on top. Locally written opinion pieces is listed in the middle; this includes editorials, columns, guest columns and letters to the editor. Stories without bylines (listed on the bottom) include obituaries, columns such as area briefs and police beats, calendars, sports roundup stories, sports agate packages, and stories by non-staff members whether or not they had bylines. The briefs columns, calendars and similar items received a count of one for the entire collection of short items.

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Officials at Gannett would not talk to WFIU/WTIU for these stories. They sent a statement attributed to Jill Bond, news director of The Herald-Times.

Paper Cuts The reporting is supported by a grant from the Poynter Institute, a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Fla., and the Omidyar Network.

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