The Desert Sun’s Parent Company Continues to be Awful; Recall News on Hoses, Ice Cream Bars–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: July 24, 2025

Indy Digest: July 24, 2025

It’s been another humdinger of a week for Gannett, the multi-billion-dollar parent company of The Desert Sun.

The Wrap reports:

Gannett Co. Inc., the largest newspaper publisher in the United States and the parent company of outlets like USA Today, is offering employees voluntary buyout packages.

“Given our static revenue trends, we need to adjust our organization to effectively meet the needs of our business today and position ourselves for sustainable growth in the future as we continue to use AI and leverage automation to realize efficiencies,” longtime Gannett CEO Mike Reed said in a memo to staff on Thursday.

And saying Gannett’s revenue has been “static” in recent years is charitable; the company’s annual sales decreased from $3.21 billion in 2021 to $2.51 billion in 2024, with revenue dropping each year along the way.

Eligible employees have until July 30 to decide—that’s six days from now—and must commit to working through Sept. 5, The Wrap reported.

I was unable to get details on how this could effect The Desert Sun before this writing. The fact that the newsroom is unionized has protected the reporters there from previous Gannett shenanigans, so it’s possible they may not be involved. As for the non-unionized Desert Sun staffers … who knows? If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.

While the reporters and editors at The Desert Sun generally work their butts off and do great work, their parent company is terrible, as I’ve pointed out in this space before. The aforementioned CEO, Mike Reed, makes millions of dollars a year while his company circles the figurative drain and endures steep revenue declines. Nice work if you can get it.

Gannett merged with another newspaper company, GateHouse, in 2019, taking on billions in debt. Since then, the company has cut its workforce in more than half, and has been selling off anything and everything it can to pay that debt—including The Desert Sun’s building on Gene Autry Trail. In 2020, the company shut down the printing press here, and since then, The Desert Sun has been printed in Phoenix.

In 2023, Gannett sold off that Phoenix-area print facility, and has been leasing back the space ever since. Well, it looks like that lease will soon come to an end: Earlier this week, Gannett announced it was closing it down and outsourcing all of its regional printing. Starting in October, The Desert Sun will be printed by the Alden-owned Southern California News Group in Riverside.

This mess effects the Independent, too. Gannett has printed our print edition since we launched in 2013. We were printed at The Desert Sun from 2013 to 2020, and have been printed in Phoenix from 2020 until now.

Where will be printed after our October issue? That’s a great question. We’ll figure it out—but ugh.

My sincere sympathies to the 117 people losing their jobs in October.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Trump is pushing his Labor Department to deregulate, deregulate, deregulate. Some of the proposed rule changes will be decidedly bad for workers. The Associated Press explains: “The U.S. Department of Labor is aiming to rewrite or repeal more than 60 ‘obsolete’ workplace regulations, ranging from minimum wage requirements for home health care workers and people with disabilities to standards governing exposure to harmful substances. If approved, the wide-ranging changes unveiled this month also would affect working conditions at constructions sites and in mines, and limit the government’s ability to penalize employers if workers are injured or killed while engaging in inherently risky activities such as movie stunts or animal training. The Labor Department says the goal is to reduce costly, burdensome rules imposed under previous administrations, and to deliver on President Donald Trump’s commitment to restore American prosperity through deregulation. … Critics say the proposals would put workers at greater risk of harm, with women and members of minority groups bearing a disproportionate impact.”

• Put Columbia University in the appeasement category, after it agreed to pay more than $200 million to the federal government, in exchange for the restoration of federal grant and research money. PBS asked Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, what he thought of the agreement. His response, in part: “Well, I felt like one must feel when you have paid a ransom in a kidnapping situation and the person who’s been kidnapped is returned safely. You think, thank goodness, the kid’s OK, or the person kidnapped is OK. But I wouldn’t (praise) the agreement that led to the liberation of the kidnapped person. And so, in this case, I was pleased that this particular moment of assault on higher education by the Trump administration has been resolved, at least for now, although who knows. These agreements come and go with this White House. I was and I am distressed that, in this country today, the executive branch of the federal government wants to be able to dictate terms to private universities, law firms, newspapers, TV stations. And so all of these things are evidence that the current administration is trying to erode support for institutions in civil society.”

• Yet another thing these cruel, random ICE raids are messing up: high school football. The Los Angeles Times says: “On the day immigration agents swooped through MacArthur Park in armored vehicles, wearing tactical gear and riding on horseback, Contreras Learning Center football coach Manuel Guevara said more than 20 of his players skipped summer practice. ‘Kids were messaging me their parents don’t want them to leave their house,’ Guevara said. The fear among families with students attending three downtown Los Angeles high schools minutes apart—Contreras, Roybal and Belmont—is real. ‘Everybody’s on edge,’ Guevara said. Players don’t know if their parents will feel safe enough to watch games from the school bleachers this fall.”

• Planned Parenthood has announced it’s shuttering five clinics in Northern and Central California. It could be a harbinger of more to come. The San Francisco Chronicle says: “President Donald Trump’s budget cuts to Medicaid have forced Planned Parenthood Mar Monte to shutter five clinics across Northern California and the Central Coast, including one in South San Francisco, the group said Thursday. The GOP-led federal spending bill that Trump signed into law earlier this month eliminated federal Medicaid funding for any type of medical care to organizations that perform abortions. Mar Monte is the largest Planned Parenthood affiliate in the country, with 35 health care centers across Bakersfield, the Bay Area, Stockton and Sacramento. The now-shuttered facilities also include San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Gilroy and Madera. The closures represent some of the first indications of how the recent federal budget cuts will have real consequences for health clinics across the country—particularly those serving low-income Americans.”

• A court has blocked a key California gun-control law. Our partners at Calmatters say: “The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down California’s first-in-the-nation law requiring background checks for ammunition purchases, another blow to the state’s gun control framework that has been pared down, case by case, since the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically expanded gun rights in a monumental 2022 decision. The California law that forced ammunition purchasers to pass a background check was passed by voters in 2016. Gov. Gavin Newsom, at the time the state’s lieutenant governor, championed the initiative and was its primary advocate. In 2018, before the law went into effect, a group of gun rights advocates and ammunition vendors sued to block the law. … ‘Given the fees and delays associated with California’s ammunition background check regime, and the wide range of transactions to which it applies, we conclude that, in all applications, the regime meaningfully constrains California residents’ right to keep and bear arms,’ Justice Sandra Segal Ikuta wrote in the 2-1 majority opinion.”

• Today’s recall news involves … ice cream bars! CBS News reports: “Rich’s Ice Cream is recalling 110,292 cases of frozen dessert products across 23 states (including California) due to potential listeria contamination, which can lead to serious illness. The recall, which was first initiated in June, was recently updated to a Class II threat, meaning the product ‘may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences,’ the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says. … Listeria infections are caused by eating food contaminated with the bacteria called Listeria monocytogenes. Symptoms can include headaches, fevers, changes in your mental status, difficulty walking and even seizures.”

• And, finally … hoses! The Associated Press reports: “About 3.6 million hoses are under recall across the U.S. because hundreds have burst while being used, resulting in at least 29 injuries, including reports of temporarily impaired hearing. The recall covers a range of HydroTech-branded, 5/8-inch ‘Expandable Burst-Proof Hoses’ that were sold at major retailers—including, Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot and Target—for garden, lawn care, car washing and other uses between January 2021 and April 2025. The company said the hoses can burst if the interior, plastic strain relief ‘breaks or becomes fully unthreaded.’”

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