Who owns the Oshkosh Northwestern?
I don't mean: Who owns the company? I mean: Who owns the name?
It turns out that the name Oshkosh Northwestern is not owned here in Oshkosh, and it isn't owned in McClean, Va., either, which is the headquarters address of Gannett Co. Inc., the country's largest newspaper owner and the parent of the Northwestern.
No, the owner of the Oshkosh Northwestern name is Media West - GMP Inc., a firm that is based in Reno, Nev. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Media West applied for a trademark on the name in 2003 and got the trademark a year later.
So why does a Nevada company own the name of our local newspaper? From all appearances, it's part of Gannett's strategy to avoid paying corporate income taxes.
Here's a comment that appeared in Forbes magazine a couple of years ago:
All of this makes an interesting backdrop for today's editorial in the Northwestern complaining about how average taxpayers are hurt by unfair corporate tax strategies.
One would have to be very cynical, even more cynical than I, to think that Gannett has developed a strategy to get it both ways--make populist pleas in the newspaper as a way of attracting readers and then burn those same customers by using fancy tax schemes to maximize profits.
Or maybe not....
It turns out that the name Oshkosh Northwestern is not owned here in Oshkosh, and it isn't owned in McClean, Va., either, which is the headquarters address of Gannett Co. Inc., the country's largest newspaper owner and the parent of the Northwestern.
No, the owner of the Oshkosh Northwestern name is Media West - GMP Inc., a firm that is based in Reno, Nev. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Media West applied for a trademark on the name in 2003 and got the trademark a year later.
So why does a Nevada company own the name of our local newspaper? From all appearances, it's part of Gannett's strategy to avoid paying corporate income taxes.
Here's a comment that appeared in Forbes magazine a couple of years ago:
While editorials in Gannett Co.'s flagship USA Today criticize corporate tax breaks, the nation's largest newspaper publisher has cut its effective state tax rate over eight years by a third, adding maybe 10 cents to 2004 per-share earnings of $4.92. One ploy: Gannett set up Media West, a subsidiary in state-corporation-tax-free Nevada that, federal trademark records show, owns names of dozens of Gannett properties nationwide. Gannett doesn't deny its papers pay Media West "royalties" to use their logos, cutting taxable income in their higher-tax home states.
All of this makes an interesting backdrop for today's editorial in the Northwestern complaining about how average taxpayers are hurt by unfair corporate tax strategies.
One would have to be very cynical, even more cynical than I, to think that Gannett has developed a strategy to get it both ways--make populist pleas in the newspaper as a way of attracting readers and then burn those same customers by using fancy tax schemes to maximize profits.
Or maybe not....
posted by Miles Maguire at 8:02 AM
1 Comments:
Well I guess I'm more cynical than you... that sounds exactly like what they are doing. Now if the Northwestern were to do an in depth story and include in that story that even its parent company plays those same games, maybe I'd change my mind. It certainly is an issue worth exploring but who is going to do so since I believe all the "main stream" media are owned by large corporations doing the same thing!
One question I have is why is there NO public outrage with regard to this? Plenty of complaining about salary and benefit packages for our city employees yet if a major corporation pays $0 in corporate income taxes not even a whisper, why is that. Do people not realize that if corporations aren't paying and the wealthy aren't paying the burden shifts to the middle class. I wonder if our employees' benefits are so much better than they were 25 years ago or if it is really that the tax burden has shifted to the middle class because of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy?
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