Gatehouse Media has been slashing staff all over the place — mostly through attrition. The Journal Star recently lost its managing editor of 15 years. Now there’s this word from Springfield:
State Journal-Register’s publisher Sue Schmitt, editor Barry Locher and managing editor Robert Pope each announced their resignations this afternoon. Their last day will be Dec. 14.
In a memo e-mailed to newspaper staff, Schmitt said she, Locher and Pope made their decisions independently.
Wow! But that’s not all. As this breaking news story also reminds us:
The announcement comes about a month after the newspaper offered a voluntary severance program to nearly 150 employees. The newspaper has not set a target for how many employees they want to participate and no specific employees have been targeted.
No doubt others from within the organization will move up the ladder, with those who were on the lowest rungs not being replaced. Perhaps Gatehouse is experimenting to see how few employees it takes to run a paper.
And just when they were getting good at covering the 18th District Congressional Race!
C.J. — GateHouse doesn’t need to experiment. Many of their Illinois management are veterans of American Publishing Company, owned by Lord Conrad Black before he sold out. I assure you, they conducted that experiment on papers like the Canton Daily Ledger. These people really longed for the day in which NO reporters are needed.
[...] Hat tip to Marie and C.J. [...]
You are comparing the Canton paper to the SJ-R? Come on
I believe that CJ would be an excellent editor/publisher. Fair, honest and possessing excellent writing skills as well as the ability to sniff out the details of any story.
Send them a resume’, CJ.
CJ, your skills are great and you would make a great editor, but I wouldn’t bother sending ANY Gatehouse paper a resume… a lot of their papers including the PJS are not hiring replacements for anyone who leaves.
CJ’s a great guy but he’s never denied expressing his own opinion on issues. Do you really want a publisher to print only what he or she thinks is correct? Come on, is this what news is becoming in the modern age? Thank goodness for Bloggers?