Steph Stuff

My newspaper was sold today for the second time in 9 months. It’s the weirdest feeling ever. I’ve never been through a takeover before, let alone two of them and it’s been quite the ride.

When GateHouse purchased us, along with 13 other properties, from Morris, it was like a bombshell announcement that took everybody by surprise. There was excitement mingled with a healthy tinge of fear. What does this mean? What about my insurance and retirement? How do we keep the site running with new tools? Aw man we *just* did a redesign and now we have to do it again?

But GateHouse was good to us. Right after I found out about the news, I blogged it in my personal blog, and not even a day later I had a lovely ‘welcome to the family’ message from Howard Owens. That right there went a long way toward making me feel pretty good about our new owners. GateHouse worked hard with all 14 Morris papers to get us integrated quickly. We had some battles and we tried hard to fight to keep our new design, but we understood the importance of maintaining a sense of uniformity among all the papers in the company – both from an administrative and branding perspective. once we got over ourselves, we could see the wisdom in it.

I’ve enjoyed meeting GateHouse peeps on Twitter. I love being a part of something as awesome as WiredJournalists (started by some GHS folk.) I haven’t known them very long, but they’re good people. I can just tell. And I’m sorry to be leaving them. They have the right ideas when it comes to online journalism and I hope they keep that enthusiasm for it.

At the same time, when the announcement was made this morning that the Omaha World Herald purchased The Independent and York News Times, I was, to put it mildly, floored. They sent pretty much every Very Important Person in the company to welcome us (and they brought juice and cookies! ) so there was a real emphasis on this being a great thing for The Independent.

Only time will tell. But I’m a glass half full kind of person, and I hope this means great things for my paper and this job I love.

So, thank you GateHouse, I learned so much in the brief time I got to work with you guys and I wish you all luck. You’re all wonderful people.

And Hello Omaha World Herald and Co. I’m looking forward to working with you!

Tags: buyout, Gatehouse, World Herald