8 chains own 1,100 newspapers in America

Eight companies own about 1,100 newspapers, daily or weekly, in America.

There were only 1,331 daily newspapers in 2014, probably fewer now since there were 1,408 dailies in 2008.

If the owners of those eight companies sat in the same room and decided the identical wording of a story today, what would that do for informing America’s citizens?

Just like an octopus that controls America’s newspapers, the eight tenacles are:

GateHouse Media, the largest newspaper chain in the country with nearly 450 papers in the U.S. including the Akron Beacon Journal.

Gannet, the second largest newspaper chain with more than 220 newspapers

Digital First Media owns more than 170 papers nationwide

Kentucky-based Paxton Media Group owns nearly 60 papers nationwide

Ogden Newspapers has 50 newspapers

Newhouse’s Advance Publications owns newspapers in 25 cities and towns across America and is the country's largest privately-held newspaper chain.

Rupert Murdoch family controls 120 newspapers across five countries.

Warren Buffett, as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, owns about 70 dailies today.

And most of the newspapers that survive have skeleton staffs since newspaper employment went from 458,000 in 1990 to 25,000 today. That’s an astounding loss of 433,000 jobs . . . a 95% freefall.