Indiana's Newspaper Publishers

Newspapers boast of manufacturing a different product every day. The statement gives the impression newspaper publishing has always been this way -- an unpredictable, "what's new?" sort of business where:

Reporters ask why they went to college to train for positions with security no better than a line job in an auto plant.

Readers who once came home to their newspapers now find them on the doorstep in the morning.

Cities with two competing newspapers can predict how the game will end. It's just like the "Ten Little Indians": And then there was one.

Closures, mergers and sales of newspapers in Indiana silence voices and sadden journalists as much as the death of a friend. "It was in the same family for more than 100 years," an editor from a Gannett newspaper says with reverence, as if beginning a eulogy.

Indiana newspapers and Indiana farmland have a lot in common, Ned Bradley, president of Columbus-based Home News Enterprises, points out. "They aren't making any more of them." If John Cougar Mellencamp could change a few words in his songs, he could apply the callous-government theme to the newspaper business.

As newspapers are dying and paying taxes, none are being born. USA Today, the national newspaper founded five years ago, is the exception. Twenty-five years ago, Bradley's company started the Franklin Daily Journal. "Today, I don't know if you could do that," he says.

Because many newspapers in Indiana are privately held corporations, publishers reveal financial information rarely and reluctantly. A move on Jan. 18 by Central Newspapers Inc., which publishes The Indianapolis Star and The Indianapolis News, two dailies in Muncie, one in Vincennes and two in Phoenix, Ariz., threw an elbow into the ribs of industry pundits. Publisher Eugene S. Pulliam announced a public sale of non-voting stock.

"For many years, this stock has been privately owned by members of the Pulliam family and others," the announcement said. The stated purpose of the stock sale was to create a market for Central Newspapers' holdings in order to establish its value to owners and creditors. Pulliam said the stock will be sold over the counter and probably will not be listed on the stock exchange.

Yet, in keeping with the Pulliam penchant for privacy, the...