Wow. Just this morning, I left a comment at Rich Miller’s site about how I was worried that by not replacing workers who leave, GateHouse Media was making it harder to practice newspaper journalism at the Peoria Journal Star.
Now comes this news at one of the Journal Star’s sister papers:
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) – Springfield’s daily newspaper is offering a voluntary severance program to nearly half its staff. The State Journal-Register cites the need for flexibility as it adjusts to rapid changes in the newspaper industry.
The company says it sent letters at the end of last week to 149 full-time employees who are not in the union and have been with the newspaper for at least a year. It’s also negotiating with its collective bargaining units to be able to make the same offer to 47 union employees.
Publisher Sue Schmitt says the program gives the paper flexibility to meet its 2008 budget.
By “47 union employees,” I’m guess that means mostly reporters who are members of The Newspaper Guild, the pressmen, mailers, composition room, drivers or perhaps advertising staff.
They wouldn’t be offering early retirement to people they plan to replace. So this means more beats won’t be covered (or will be covered poorly as workloads increase). It probably means earlier deadlines because fewer people will need more time to get their jobs done.
Tags: GateHouse Media, Journal Star, journalism, Rich Miller, springfield
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
The Springfield newsroom is non-union.
There are two really odd things about this buyout offer — or at least what we know about it:
1. The huge number of people involved. One wonders how many buyouts they are really willing to accept. I can’t believe it’s all 149. There appears to be a rather extensive (but not revealed) list of reserved positions. For example, if every copy editor or every photog quit, that would be a problem.
2. The short service that makes an employee eligible for the offer. None of the dozens of newspaper buyouts I have read about in the past year or so has been offered to employees with only one year of service.
It’s an odd one. One can only guess at how overstaffed the bean-counters think the place is.
Does this mean Gatehouse is attempting to “slash and burn the(ir) Statehouse bureau” after all?
It’s all about the Benjamins. It’ll get better but only after it gets far far worse.
The State Journal-Register is a great example of quality journalism. They have been putting out a great daily while their resources are dwindling to the very lowest. I can’t see how they can take away so many talented staffers. Gatehouse will ruin the newspaper industry and turn it into one giant advertising product.
One person who had better NOT quit is their online editor, Jason Piscia. He does a better job of moderating and keeping extreme nutcases off of the sj-r.com comment boards than do some other Central Illinois newspapers. I’ve noticed that he often doesn’t allow comments at all on some stories (e.g. the Danny Dahlquist tragedy) that are likely to attract comments offensive or unfairly accusatory to the families of the persons involved, or to degenerate into race-baiting.
So it’s good that he blocks people from commenting? That’s your position. Why not attack the people who make idiot posts?
Gaffer, if you enjoy wading through a dozen or so uninformed and insulting posts to read one or two that actually have something new to say, and like to add more fuel to the fire by attacking them so they can attack you back ad nauseam, and can’t wait a few days after someone dies tragically to comment on whatever role you think bad judgement, racism, poor parenting, et al. had to playdeath, stick to the Journal Star or Pantagraph websites. There is still plenty of room for ignorant rants on SJ-R, by the way; there just seems to be more moderation by the online editor.
That should read “whatever role… had to play in THEIR death”
Billy, it sounds to me like they might have borrowed some ideas from you regarding how newspapers should transition from print to online
My suggestions for transitioning to online focused on making the online version superior to the print version, raising the price of the print version for both ads and circulation, charging a nominal fee for online (but making it far, far, far less than the cost of home delivery) and naming the date when the newspaper version goes away forever. The only job reductions come when there is no longer a print version.
Your Step 1 was:
“Hold a meeting of all employees. Tell them that effective immediately, their paychecks are coming from an online news organization. Tel them that job of print-only reporter/editor has been eliminated. Tell them they all have jobs as reporters for your Web site, if they are willing to commit to it.”
Well, upon reading this more closely, it does seem the SJ-R neglected to include that (very important) last sentence in its plan. My bad
This has nothing to do with “meeting its 2008 budget.” This is Gatehouse’s greedy death spiral approach to newspapers, which is to cut, cut, cut to prop up profit margins of 20-30 percent because ad revenue and readership is down, which is because the quality of the product is suffering from the cost-cutting, which results in less ad revenue and fewer readers, which means more cost cutting …
After they’ve ruined the product and the paper and they can’t possibly make profits of 20-30 percent any more, they’ll sell the paper. The newpaper industry must either accept lower profit margins like everyone else (Starbucks makes about 7 percent net profit annually, for instance), or at least use part of the larger profit margin that still exists and reinvest capital to move to a Web-based platform. They won’t because of the need to service the huge amount of debt they willingly incurred during their glut of acquisition and the need to prop up the share price of the corporation to keep stockholders happy.
Testify, Joel, testify.
Bill should go into newspaper management. After all, he’s solved the problem that has had hundreds of others all worried. Good thing he’s in Peoria and people are actively seeking his opinion.
Your mouth to God’s ear, Gaffer.
If I’m not mistaken, Copley sold the PJS, SJ-R and other Illinois papers to GateHouse because the Copleys got socked with huge inheritance taxes on Helen Copley’s estate after she died. Yet another example of a well-intentioned soak-the-rich tax that backfired
They are only offering 1 weeks pay for each year of service. Who would take that lousy offer!!!!
I once got let go from a job I’d had for 14 years, with only two hours notice and a week of unused vacation pay. I’m sure this is not uncommon in the private sector. Fourteen weeks of severance pay would have looked pretty darn good to me!
I have heard that Gatehouse is currently in contract negotiations with The Newspaper Guild, which represents most newsroom and inside circulation employees at the Journal Star, Contract was to have expired last month but was extended.
Sam, The Guild represents newsroom and OUTSIDE circulation employees at the Journal Star.