Romenesko: Top three execs quit at Springfield paper
At Poynter Online, Jim Romenesko reports:
Anyone with more insight is welcome to chime in with comments, but this sounds like a fairly big deal to me.The publisher, editor, and managing editor of Gatehouse's State Journal-Register in Springfield Ill. will depart Dec. 14.
Each cite personal and professional reasons for their resignations, and say they were reached independently. Publisher Sue Schmitt says: "We did not make this call because of an insider's view of something catastrophic just over the horizon."
The paper was acquired early this year by GateHouse Media from longtime owner Copley Press.
3 comments:
Yes SCAM -- based on my experience as a former reporter and my current residence in Springfield, I would say it is a VERY big deal.
For Sue Schmitt, who moved to Springfield from California little more than a year ago, to bail out this soon signals that something catastrophic IS just over the horizon, despite all insistence to the contrary.
What the story you linked to does not mention is that last month, the SJ-R offered buyouts to more than 150 people out of a total workforce of just over 300. Anyone who takes the buyout will get one week of severance pay for every year they have worked there, and get to keep their insurance for three months. This, of course, has the effect of encouraging the people with the most experience (and the highest salaries and benefit packages) to leave.
The deadline for deciding whether or not to take the buyouts is sometime next week. Rumor has it that pink slips will follow sometime in December for those people GateHouse wants to get rid of who did not take the buyout. Can you say "Bah, humbug"?
I worked for a smaller paper owned by GateHouse for 2 years and I could not wait to get out of there. They epitomize the slash-and-burn approach to media ownership: buy up lots of newspapers, run up huge amounts of debt in the process, then try to make up the difference and keep shareholders happy by cutting staff, pay and benefits. A lot of their Illinois management used to work for Conrad Black's American Publishing, so you can imagine what kind of corporate bean counting they learned.
Gatehouse now owns dozens of newspapers all over Illinois and has a virtual monopoly on daily newspaper coverage in many downstate areas. If this is any indication of what they plan to do at other papers, I believe this bodes very, very badly for the future of print journalism in this state.
The Peoria ME also pulled the rip cord this week with no apparent paycheck in sight.
I was especially touched by the level of candor offered in both bailout stories. Perhaps the departees are planning to run for office. They sounded much like the pols they like to slice and dice.
Perhaps GateHouse will offer CapFax a billion to be the publisher?
God forbid, JPZ!
The only thing preventing equally massive layoffs at the Peoria Journal Star is the newsroom's union contract... which did take months longer to settle than scheduled. And the reporters/members did have to settle for giving up their current retirement plan.
I predict that the next steps will be 1) closing down the Pekin Times and merging it with the PJS; 2) closing down the Lincoln Courier and merging it with the SJ-R; 3) maybe, eventually, merging the PJS and the SJ-R into one massive Central Illinois paper with zoned editions, extremely superficial news coverage and lots of ad-driven special sections.
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