Lorain County Printing and Publishing receives PPP loan

ELYRIA — The Gazette, as part of the Lorain County Printing and Publishing Co., was among the local organizations to benefit from the U.S. Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program. Publisher Bill Hudnutt said Monday that Lorain County Printing and Publishing received a total of $1,204,700 from the first round of the program in late April. The company's newspaper operations — The Chronicle-Telegram and The Gazette — received $945,800 of that total, while the company's radio operations of WEOL, WKFM and WLKR received $258,900. "The intentions for the funds were exactly what they were intended to be used for, primarily to keep people employed and avoid eliminating positions and eliminating jobs," Hudnutt said. "... It really seems to cover a lot of overhead plus your payroll." Designed to help businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic, Paycheck Protection Program loans incentivize small businesses to keep staff employed by providing funding that can be fully or partially forgiven if all employees are kept on the payroll for eight weeks and the money is spent on the qualified expenses of payroll, rent, mortgage interest and utilities. No less than 60 percent of the loan forgiveness amount must be spent on payroll costs, an amount that was reduced early this month along with other changes when President Donald Trump signed the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act. Hudnutt said obtaining the loan was crucial for the company. "It helped us in the immediate term because when the economy was essentially shut down, advertising revenue just evaporated," he said. "Without that, we probably wouldn't have been able to keep a full staff." Looking forward, Hudnutt believes the ways the company has adapted to work during the pandemic will prove beneficial. "I think we've made a lot of adjustments in being able to work remotely, and we've come up with digital products that can be sold that allow for the lifestyle that is materializing out of this," he said. "We're just going to keep adjusting as we move forward, as we can. Being an independent company, family-owned, we have the ability to do that with much more ease than others." Today is the final day to apply for a Paycheck Protection Program loan. Since the $669 billion program first began in April, millions of jobs have potentially been saved. The latest numbers from the U.S. Small Business Administration, representing loans approved through Saturday, show that 138,286 Ohio businesses have been granted more than $18 billion in funds. Nationally, nearly 4.8 million businesses have received more than $518 billion in loans. Contact Dylan Reynolds at (440) 329-7123 or dreynolds@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @drey1357.