(The Center Square) — Caddo Public Schools, Caddo Sheriff’s Office, Shreveport City Council and Caddo Commission have chosen The Shreveport Times as their official journal for the next fiscal year.
Gaining all four entities is a significant financial gain for the USA Today-owned company and could have a major, negative impact on locally-owned publications Shreveport-Caddo area.
Previously, locally owned weekly papers like The Shreveport Sun and The Caddo Citizen were the official journals. The Times is owned by Gannett, a USA Today billion dollar network with over 1,000 weekly newspapers.
The Caddo Citizen’s last edition was published on July 10.
The Center Square reached out to The Shreveport Sun about its possible closure, but did not receive a call back with verification.
Clerk of Council LaTonya Bogan told The Center Square that the funds for the journal expenses come from the city’s General Fund for the Shreveport City Council.
“The cost varies per publication and we’re not the only office that runs publications in the paper,” said Bogan.
The Times bid the City of Shreveport at 33 cents per agate line in the classified section, legals in the retail section at $7.70 per column inch, all other non-required ads in the classified section at $4.62 per agate line, non required ads in the retail section at $49.98 per column inch and affidavits provided at $20 each.
The Times bid the Caddo Parish Commission at 33 cents per line per day for standard line notices, display notices in the classified section are $4.62 per column inch and affidavits at $20.
The Times bid Caddo Public Schools at a full page of classified legals for $924, cost per line 33 cents, which is around 2,800 lines.
A six-month period ending March 31 shows The Times circulated 3,935 print/digital copies on Sunday, 3,548 copies Monday through Friday and 1,131 copies on Saturday. Its weekend paper costs $4.50 and daily costs $3.50.
Based on costs and figures, that’s around $2.2 million in six months made from The Times circulation. While the financial gain from city and parish publishing for Caddo Public Schools, Caddo Commission, Caddo Sheriff and Shreveport City Council doesn’t amount to figures like those, the gain will come from residents and those in the area possibly subscribing to The Times to gain access to this information.
A 2024 report shows Domestic Gannett Media’s digital revenue was $692.7 million while print and commercial revenues were $1.2 billion in 2024.
The Times, part of the USA Today Gannett network, stopped being locally published in 2017 after closing its distribution center. Gannett is owned by New Media Investment Group, which is managed by Fortress Investment Group based in New York.
Fortress is owned by SoftBank, a Japanese corporation and Mubadala Investment Company.
In total, Gannett owns over 100 daily newspapers and over 1,000 weekly newspapers in 44 states, one U.S. territory and six different countries.
Just in Louisiana, the billion dollar company owns The Town Talk in Alexandria, The Houma Courier, The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette, The News-Star in Monroe, Daily World in Opelousas, The Times in Shreveport, Thibodaux Daily Comet, Bastrop Daily Enterprise, New Orleans CityBusiness, and Beauregard Daily News in DeRidder.
