Developer taking back championship golf and Daily Sun
 

I'm amazed that after two days, this hasn't been posted on this forum.

From the online news:
Developer taking back the reins at golf division, The Villages Daily Sun
November 18, 2018

"The Developer has taken back the reins at two major entities in The Villages – the golf division and The Villages Daily Sun.

"The Developer is once again the employer at the championship golf courses, after handing off that responsibility about a decade ago to Golf Management Solutions, a limited liability corporation formed by Ken and Timothy Creely.

"GMS employees were reportedly told they would have to go through orientation to remain on the job. However, it is interesting to note “The Villages Golf & Country Club Team” is inviting job applications on golfthevillages.com for “a variety of positions available,” including “indoors, outdoors, front line, and behind the scenes” jobs.

"At a recent meeting at the The Villages Daily Sun, it was announced that the Developer was taking back the roughly 300 employees at the newspaper.

"The Daily Sun employees were separated in 2012 into a private media management company, Villages Media Management Inc., headed by longtime Daily Sun Publisher Philip J. Markward. He served as the employer of the workers who produced the newspaper, while Mark Morse, Jennifer Parr and Tracy Mathews continued to own the newspaper’s masthead and printing press."

I have a friend who works for Golf Management Solutions. He had this to say:
1. GMS employees don't have to go through orientation. They just need to fill out new withholding tax forms.
2. GMS is always recruiting new employees.
3. The Developer is also taking back the golf cart stores and the Information Technology that does The Villages computer work.

Taking back
 

Agreeing with you that it is odd this announcement hasn't generated much public commentary. What's more, I don't expect the man behind the curtain will explain his decision. I hope it's not profit-motivated, leading to higher golf fees. As for the newspaper, I don't care, unless the plan is to convert it from a chest-thumping propaganda sheet to real news. Yes, I still believe in unicorns.

What does this mean for us

Nothing

Of course it's profit motivated....do you know any business that isn't? As for the newspaper, this is a local newspaper, not a regional or National paper. If you've lived in small communities that had local papers you shouldn't see much difference in the news content. I also believe that the "chest-thumping" propaganda you perceive is important to growth and subsistence of the lifestyle we enjoy and if the helps us let it continue.

If you are supporter of the developer = Maintain/Improve Quality.

If you are not a supporter = Money & Greed.


:popcorn:

Give this six months before deciding anything negative or positive. If I was making “book”, I would go with positive.

I'll go with positive. Negative is turning over assets to outside companies. Many times that signals a developer is through and moving on.

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Profit motive
 

Say what you will, my friend. However, as far as newspapers go, I've worked for several small community papers, and electronic media. Devoting so much coverage to enterprises owned and operated by the paper's owners (Villages Health, retail space lease-holders, etc.) was not and is not ethical journalism. Ignoring stories that reflect poorly on the paper's owner is not ethical journalism. Withholding or failing to report on issues affecting the community is not ethical journalism. Fortunately, most of us (but not all of us) know what we're looking at when reading the Daily Sun. Too bad the major Florida newspapers don't cover this city-sized community better.

Well, your experiences with community newspapers is different....mine has been with papers similar to the DS. As an editor once told me, the goal of our paper is to report the news, generate profitable revenue through our advertisers and to not put them in a position where that revenue is in jeopardy. Kudo's for you in finding outlets that don't have those issues.

Only time will tell...why Da Family is doing this. :shrug:

Agree 100%.

Please stay on topic; Several off-topic posts were removed that wandered into a discussion about media/journalism in today's world.

The topic is the developer's business decision to re-take control of the golf management and Daily Sun.

Moderator

I will have to see what kind of stories they have in The Villages Daily Sun in the future.

I used to skim through a lot of regional business magazines while an abstractor at Information Access Company when we were working on a product called the Area Business Data Bank.

Some of the stories I have read in The Villages Daily Sun remind me a lot of those regional business magazines.

I bet the reason these are being brought back to the developer is something innocuous. Perhaps there are grandchildren or great grandchildren in Journalism and golf course management school.