Gannett Company

Gannett Company, Inc. is a publicly traded media holding company headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, near McLean in Greater Washington DC. It is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher as measured by total daily circulation. Its assets include the national newspaper USA Today and the weekly USA Weekend. Its largest non-national newspaper is The Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Arizona. Other significant newspapers include The Indianapolis Star, The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, NY, The Des Moines Register, the Detroit Free Press and The News-Press in Fort Myers.

In 2015, Gannett spun off its broadcast and internet media divisions into an independent publicly-traded company called Tegna.

History

Gannett Company, Inc. was formed in 1923 by Frank Gannett in Rochester, New York as an outgrowth of a newspaper business he had begun in Elmira, New York in 1906. Gannett, who was known as a conservative, gained fame and fortune by purchasing small independent newspapers and developing them into a large chain, a 20th-century trend that helped the newspaper industry remain financially viable. By 1979, the chain had grown to 79 newspapers.