Several dozen staffers at CNHI’s 77 newspapers returned from the holidays to an unwelcome surprise: a mandatory four-week furlough with no pay. One of the affected reporters tipped me, and Bill Ketter, CNHI’s veteran senior vice president for news, confirmed it.
The furloughed group was 46 people, Ketter said, and included newsrooms and other departments. That’s roughly 3% of the company’s workforce. Beyond the continuing financial challenges of the current environment, he said, the furloughs were precipitated by a very “soft fourth quarter,” usually the best of the year for newspapers, buoyed with ads for Christmas shopping.
“Our ethos is to save newspapers,” he said, so quick action to trim expenses was prudent.
CNHI (which originally stood for Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.) is a mid-sized company, made up exclusively of smaller papers, with an average circulation of about 10,000. It is owned by the Retirement Systems of Alabama pension plan and based in Montgomery.
Are the furloughs a special case or a weather vane for industry trouble ahead? I’m guessing the latter. While the paid digital audience for news is expected to grow, I don’t detect indicators of even a modest overall turnaround compared to 2024, which was unquestionably a tough year.
More potential trouble is on the horizon. President Donald Trump’s promised tariff war with Canada, where most U.S. newsprint comes from, could drive prices higher. With skinny papers and shorter press runs, that would not be the catastrophe it once would have been. But it would still be a significant expense hit that newspapers can ill afford.
An earlier round of tariffs in 2018, The New York Times reported, was punishing for metro newspapers and drove some small-town weeklies under.
Dean Ridings, CEO of America’s Newspapers, a trade association with heavy representation of smaller outlets, agreed with my assessment. “Looser regulations may help overall business conditions, but I don’t think 2025 will be an easy year for local media,” he wrote, adding, “However, tariffs on Canadian newsprint would definitely make it worse.”
The CNHI reporter who got in touch with me said that she is worried the furlough is a prelude to losing her job altogether, especially since the letter that told her not to come to work said the four weeks might be extended. It came with “no warning,” she wrote, “and after I was looked in the eye by the president (recently) and told my job was safe … it is a huge blow.”
She was further irked that questions to human resources had gone unanswered. “I don’t know why they couldn’t tell us what they told you. … They are as closed as a clamshell.”
Furloughs, widely used during the pandemic instead of layoffs, typically mean that management wants the positions and people to return while trying to realize some short-term savings. That’s the case here, Ketter said, and the furloughs could be lifted earlier than four weeks.
CNHI has been proactive in industry affairs but has a very low profile. It was started with a large investment by Retirement Systems just before the turn of the century, and president and CEO Donna Barrett and Ketter have been in their positions almost all that time.
Ownership switched in 2017 to a television chain that said it intended to sell off all the papers. That didn’t happen, and the group reverted back to Retirement Systems. CNHI did sell 10 of its papers to Carpenter Media in May of last year.
If you’re looking for a silver lining here, it may be that upstart investors continue to buy up newspapers as they come up for sale, still seeing a potential for profit in the business.
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