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John, We Hardly Knew Ye
Ad sales down, Shields out as Register publisher
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Business New Haven
4/2/2001
By: Michael C. Bingham
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New Haven Register publisher John L. Shields was here barely long enough to be named to the boards of the chamber, the symphony, the hospital, etc. before he had his head handed to him.
Beware the Ides of March: Shields was demoted on March 15 from his post as publisher of the “flagship” daily of the Trenton, N.J.-based Journal Register Co. (JRC) and sentenced to the wilds of Taunton, Mass. (population: 50,697) to head the Taunton Daily Gazette.
In a press release from JRC President, CEO and Chairman Robert M. Jelenic (un-bylined in the March 16 Register, as the company does not trust its own reporters to “objectively” cover news about the company), Jelenic announced that Shields would be replaced by Thomas E. Rice, the company's senior vice president of operations.
In addition to his responsibilities for Register ad sales, Rice will run the Minuteman newspapers, Elm City weeklies and Shore Line newspapers. He in addition becomes president of Connecticut's County Kids and the North Haven-based Imprint Printing.
Rice was previously general manager of the Suburban Newspapers of Greater St. Louis, which the JRC sold last year to pay down debt.
The tremors rippled down the JRC food chain. Exiled to the Taunton gulag, Shields replaced Michael F. O'Sullivan, who in turn was pushed down to head the Southern Rhode Island Newspapers, based in Wakefield, R.I., and the West Warwick, R.I.-based Hometown Newspapers.
The executive O'Sullivan replaces is Judith G. Lepre, who was voted off the JRC island.
Shields' crime: declining ad revenues. For the most recent reported period, the five weeks ended February 4, Register ad revenues were down 1.8 percent over the previous period.
In business circles, the heavily debt-ridden JRC and its autocratic ayatollah have earned a reputation for its mastery of the black art of parsimony. JRC routinely posts margins of 35 percent - more than seven percent above the industry average.
In a March 5 article headlined “Cheapskate Journalism,” Forbes magazine described a JRC culture where odometers in reporters' cars are routinely checked against expense reports, and noted that, “Family owners of targeted newspapers have shied from selling to Jelenic for fear he'd bleed the new acquisitions. Even behemoth Thomson Corp. is said to have taken less than Journal Register offered, instead selling the Connecticut Post and other properties to William Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group, which is hardly shy about cost cuts.”
The private equity firm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus assembled the JRC in 1990 from the remnants of Ralph Ingersoll II's newspaper empire, which was drowning in junk bonds. Warburg tapped Jelenic, son of a Canadian nickel miner, to salvage its investment.
Since then, Jelenic has acquired 13 dailies, 129 non-non-dailies and three printing companies, including Imprint. Over the most recent 12 months the company posted revenues of $464 million.
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