Lee Enterprises Inc., a once-obscure media
company based in the Quad Cities, is poised to become a major force
in shaping Illinois news coverage when it completes the acquisition
of St. Louis-based Pulitzer Inc.
The Davenport, Iowa-based company on Sunday
announced a $1.46 billion deal to buy Pulitzer, which owns more
than 100 weekly newspapers and 14 dailies, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Once approved, the deal would make Lee the
seventh-largest U.S. newspaper company in terms of total
circulation, operating 58 dailies in 23 states. Lee’s
combined daily circulation will be 1.7 million, and Sunday
circulation will total 2 million.
In Illinois, Lee will also add the Pantagraph in
Bloomington and Daily Chronicle in DeKalb to its empire, which already boasts daily
newspapers in Carbondale, Charleston, Decatur, and Mattoon. The Quad-City Times in
Davenport also circulates in northwest Illinois.
“Lee’s geographic presence will
now include the entire state,” says Charles Wheeler III,
director of the public affairs–reporting program at
University of Illinois at Springfield.
In Springfield, the deal may cause a shakeup
of reporters covering state government at the Capitol, according to
Lee spokesman Dan Hayes.
“There could be some consolidation,”
says Hayes, adding that editorial changes at Lee papers would be
discussed after the deal is finalized in June.
Currently Lee’s statehouse bureau
includes just one reporter — down from three last year
— and a pair of interns from the UIS public-affairs program.
Their reports are circulated among all of
Lee’s Illinois dailies.
Pulitzer’s Post-Dispatch and the Pantagraph also have reporters assigned to the
statehouse.
Mike Lawrence, who served as Lee’s
statehouse-bureau chief from 1979-1986, says he is hopeful that the
company will increase, rather than reduce, its Capitol reporting
staff.
“Lee has an opportunity to become a
major force in the coverage of state politics in Illinois,”
says Lawrence, now director of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.
“We need to wait and see how Lee responds to that
challenge.”
Some media analysts say they were surprised by
Lee’s purchase because the Post-Dispatch, with a daily circulation of 286,310 and Sunday
sales of 449,845, is significantly larger than Lee’s other
holdings.
Others say they were stunned by the Pulitzer
family’s decision to sell off its flagship paper, which has
been under its control for three generations starting in 1878.
“The Post-Dispatch was synonymous with the name Pulitzer,” says
Taylor Pensoneau, a New Berlin resident and former
Springfield-based correspondent for the Post-Dispatch. “I never
thought I would see the company sold.”
Lee’s acquisition of Pulitzer continues
the national trend toward media consolidation; fewer than 20
percent of the country’s daily newspapers are now
independently owned and family-operated.
“There’s been a gradual erosion of
independently owned newspapers that has been going on for many
decades,” says David Bennett, executive director of the
Illinois Press Association, which represents 600 newspapers.
“The same is true for a lot of
businesses, from banks to retailers. Newspapers are no different
than any other industry.”
This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2005.
