GANNETT CEO MADE $5.8M IN 2004 — NOT INCLUDING OPTIONS Filings, Forbes list provide look at income, wealth of publishers, owners

NewsInc, March 14, 2005

Regulatory filings and a magazine article released last week give insight into just how much money top executives -- and the founders' heirs -- can make in the newspaper business.

At Gannett Co. Inc., Douglas McCorkindale earned $1.6 million in base salary in 2004, the same as he had in 2003. But a bonus and a stock award of $2.45 million and $1.6 million, respectively, said the company's Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, gave McCorkindale a combined income of $5.8 million in 2004.

Excluding stock options, of course.

The McLean, Va. multimedia company increased McCorkindale's 2004 bonus by $200,000 over what he got in 2003 and added $1.1 million to his stock award.

Also on Friday, The New York Times Co. revealed in a regulatory filing that former president and chief executive Russell Lewis -- who stepped down from those jobs at the end of last year -- will remain an NYT Co. employee through the end of 2006.

And, for the next two years his base salary of $1 million -- which he received in 2004 -- will continue.

And future paychecks may well reflect his $894,694 2004 bonus, nor his $414,120 in 2004 restricted stock awards, because the company said he was not only eligible for bonuses and awards, but that they would be comparable to those given to the new president and chief executive, Janet Robinson.

Earlier in the week, The E.W. Scripps Co. said that Gregory Ebel, the company's vice president for human resources, would retire at the end of the year, though he would only do the job full-time through April 15.

Thereafter, said Scripps' securities filing, he will "be available to perform special assignments for Scripps."

Ebel will not only receive his full salary for all of 2005 -- $281,000 a year -- but he will also continue to be eligible for a bonus, targeted at 35 percent of his base pay.

At the end of the year he'll also get a one-time lump sum that will be 1.5 times his 2005 salary and bonus, plus he will receive payouts from the Cincinnati-based company's pension plan of $600,000 spread across three years.

Any stock options Ebel has received during his stay at Scripps will become fully vested on Dec. 31, 2005 and Ebel will continue to receive family medical coverage until he reaches age 55.

Earlier in the month, Robert Decherd, the chairman, president and chief executive of Belo Corp., told the securities commission that he had "terminated" his personal trading plan, which had allowed him to sell up to 40,000 Belo shares three times a year for five years, which would have ended in November 2006.

The filing said Decherd had sold 400,000 shares of Series A Common Stock over a 40-month period. Belo shares closed Friday at $23.84.

Once you throw out the computer software and hardware gazillionaires -- as well more than a few non-Americans -- and everybody with the last name "Walton," the top 25 names on the Forbes World's Richest People list comes down to this:

Warren Buffett.

Ranked No. Two (right behind his close personal friend, Microsoft's Bill Gates), Buffett has a wide variety of investments ranging from insurance businesses (GEICO Direct) to upstate New York's Buffalo News. But Buffett isn't a passive investor in the News -- in last year's history of the paper, Buffett writes in the foreword of how he personally championed a Sunday edition in 1977. Buffett is also a significant investor in The Washington Post Co. and is said to be a close advisor to the company's controlling family, the Grahams.

The Cox sisters -- Barbara Anthony and Anne Chambers -- are ranked at No. 27, with a purported $11.7 billion each. Their empire controls not only newspapers (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), but also radio, TV, cable and an aggressive movement into new media (Mannheim Auto Auctions).

Somebody named "Keith Murdoch" is No. 49, with $7.8 billion. The picture is of the face of a fellow more commonly known as Rupert Murdoch. He only has one newspaper in the United States -- the New York Post -- but that still qualifies him for our list.

The Newhouse brothers -- Donald and Samuel Jr. -- are both ranked No. 60, with $7 billion each. Donald runs the newspaper group (Advance Publications, aka Newhouse Newspapers, The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., the Plain Dealer of Cleveland, et al.), while "SI" runs the magazines (New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair), the cable systems and other TV investments.

Philip Anschutz, the Denver investor in telecommunications, movie theaters, sports arenas and sports franchises, is No. 77 with $5.8 billion and gets a mention here because of his recent investments in free tabloid dailies called The Examiner in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Leonore Annenberg places 321st on the list with $2 billion. Her husband was once the publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, TV Guide and Seventeen.

The Hearst family falls in the mid-300s: William Randolph Hearst III -- the former publisher of the San Francisco Examiner who today is a partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers -- comes in at No. 355, with $1.9 billion. In the next rung are his relatives: his brother Austin, and his cousins David, George and Phoebe Cooke are all slotted at No. 366, with $1.8 billion each.