Archives: Dispatches

Gannett Co., Inc. serves as America’s largest newspaper publisher by total daily circulation, headquartered in New York City. Founded by Frank Gannett in Rochester, New York in 1923, the company grew through aggressive acquisitions of small independent newspapers. Gannett owns flagship USA Today, the middle-market newspaper appealing to a broader audience, alongside major regional dailies including The Arizona Republic, Detroit Free Press, and The Indianapolis Star. In 2019, New Media Investment Group acquired Gannett in a merger creating the current entity under CEO Mike Reed. The company has faced significant financial pressures, implementing widespread layoffs and cost-cutting measures while struggling with declining print circulation and advertising revenues in the digital era.

Founded in 1889, The Wall Street Journal is an American newspaper based in the financial district of Wall Street in New York City. Now published under Dow Jones & Company, a division of the Murdoch-owned News Corp, the paper has more than 600,000 print subscribers, and one of the country’s largest digital subscription bases, at more than three million. The precursor to the current newspaper was the Kiernan News Agency created in 1869 by John J. Kiernan, who started out as a Western Union messenger boy. Kiernan’s hiring of young reporters Charles H. Dow and Edward D. Jones soon resulted in the launch of a news service, Dow Jones & Company. 

A division of the Murdoch-owned News Corp, Dow Jones & Company is a publishing firm founded in November 1882 by three young reporters for the Kiernan News Agency created in 1869 by John J. Kiernan — Charles H. Dow and Edward D. Jones. The company is often known for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), a stock market index of 30 companies listed on US exchanges. In addition to the Wall Street Journal, the company publishes Barron’s, MarketWatch, Mansion Global, Financial News and Private Equity News.

News Corporation, or News Corp, is an American publishing and mass media company with its headquarters in Manhattan. Starting as a small newspaper in Australia in the 1920s under Sir Keith Murdoch, the father of the previous chairman Rupert Murdoch, News Corp now encompasses many media and information brands, including Dow Jones & Company, The Wall Street Journal, The Sun, News UK, and News Corp Australia. The company also runs the book publisher HarperCollins. The current chairman of News Corp is Lachlan Murdoch, son of the founder Rupert Murdoch. The company has had a long and checkered history of dealings with China. For many years, from the 1990s onward, Murdoch worked concertedly to gain access to China’s budding media market — but was never successful. In February 2022, news emerged that China was suspected of hacking the accounts of several journalists at News Corp. In 2025, some commentators in Australia accused News Corp publications of pushing the “China threat” in its coverage.

Originally founded in 1849 as The Iowa Star, the Des Moines Register serves as Iowa’s flagship newspaper, founded under its current title through mergers in the early 1900s under the leadership of Gardner Cowles Sr., a banker in Des Moines, Iowa’s state capital and largest city. Gannett acquired the publication in 1985 amid declining revenues. The daily maintains outsized political influence through its Iowa Poll and first-in-the-nation caucus coverage of the US presidential elections — earning it national attention in the political cycle. The newspaper has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting, though circulation has declined significantly from its mid-20th century peak of nearly 250,000 daily readers.

The Los Angeles Times, founded in 1881, serves as the sixth-largest newspaper in the United States and the largest in the Western United States with print circulation of more than 100,000. Based in El Segundo, California since 2018, the paper has won over 40 Pulitzer Prizes throughout its history. Owned by biotech investor Patrick Soon-Shiong since 2018, the Times has undergone significant transformations including major staff reductions, with a 20 percent layoff in January 2024. The newspaper evolved from its early civic boosterism under the Chandler family dynasty to become a respected national publication, though it has struggled with declining circulation and financial pressures in the digital era.