Plainfielders may well wonder if Gannett is shrinking the Courier News to the vanishing point as the parent company struggles with sagging profits and advertising sales.
In an online report at MyCentralJersey.com on Tuesday, a total of 206 positions were being eliminated in the chain's six New Jersey papers (see here).
According to Jim Hopkins' Gannett Blog's paper-by-paper list, there were 23 layoffs reported as of Thursday at the combined Courier and Home News operations.
Shrink the staff. Shrink the paper. Shrink the staff again.
Where will it end?
There is yet another possibility for Gannett -- shrink the publishing week.
In Westfield-y Royal Oak, a Detroit suburb, the Daily Tribune (see website here) has reacted to the changes in the newspaper industry by reducing its printed paper to four days a week -- Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Its website is updated constantly, seven days a week.
Coming soon to MyCentralJersey?
Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, Advance, the parent of the Star-Ledger has taken a different tack.
Besides gutting its Newark operation, the paper closed down its Washington bureau. The Advance chain is now turning to up-and-coming Politico.com (whose stories you see I often link to in CLIPS) to supply its coverage of Congress, the White House and national government (read more here).
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3 comments:
Dan: I don't believe the CN staff (such as it is) was hit hard by this latest round of Gannett bloodletting. (You can't amputate a limb that isn't there.) But the cuts at the HNT hinted yet again that physical consolidation of the two print papers is not far off. They included:
Executive editor Chuck Paolino
News editor Lois DiTommaso
Breaking news team editor Jim White
Community editor Deborah Loftus
The (once-)separate management staffs of the two entities look more like a single unit with each passing day.
Thank you, 6:59 AM --
The Gannett Blog didn't have a breakout, but combined the Bridgewater/E. Brunswick numbers.
But the HNT cuts surely indicate what you're saying about consolidating.
Rupert Murdoch's biographer was interviewed the other day and he said Murdoch believed there would always be newspapers, even if his was the only one published. And that if it got to that point, he would regard himself as 'the' victor.
Maybe Gannett's reading his playbook...
For all intents and purposes, they are a single unit now.
Losses for those presently housed in Bridgewater are mainly in circulation, classifieds, and ad production/composition.
Losses for those housed in East Brunswick, aside from the above names, include two news clerks (one who was there only a few months) and the business editor (who was also doing other stuff). They have several positions that were kept vacant.
Funny thing about Gannett Blog -- earlier in the week there were a lot of posts about the managing editor's penchant for pet photos. I know I didn't know that! And lo' and behold, today's Courier had a story on pet photos on page one.
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