I’ve been staying away from headlines of the spiraling business of broadcast and print journalism, but when they come from inside the Buckeye state they are hard to ignore.
By now most of you know about Gannett’s imposed company-wide, first quarter one-week furlough. While most of the headlines dealing with this story mention the company’s larger operations like the Cincinnati Enquirer, Gannet has a large presence in Ohio in the form of many small to mid-size papers.
In Ohio Gannett publishes daily papers in Bucyrus, Chillicothe, Coshocton, Fremont, Lancaster, Mansfield, Marion, Newark, Port Clinton and Zanesville. Its no secret that workers at these papers are not paid handsome salaries. A week without pay will be felt. Not a great position to be in. I doubt that any of these people will spend their week off in the Bahamas.
Late word Thursday was that Gannett broadcast properties were also to included. That would seem to indicate that employees at NBC affiliate WKYC-TV in Cleveland will also be on the outside looking in for a week. The one Gannett property immune from the edict is in Detroit where the Free Press is preparing for the three-day home delivery at the end of March.
While a week off without pay is not good news, it’s much worse for about 13 people at The (Ravenna) Record Courier who have been given pink slips. Two of those are ONPA members Timothy St. Hilaire and Lisa Scalfaro. By our knowledge of the operation that would leave photo editor Stephanie Krell as the only person left in the photo department. A daunting task to say the least.
This is sad to see in more ways than one. First obviously you don’t wish anyone to loose their job. Secondly, this is a paper which turned the corner from a photography standpoint in the last few years. Its not an easy thing to do at a small daily. There are many of them out there, and many of them have the look of a bad weekly. This was not the case in Ravenna and Stephanie, Tim and Lisa can be proud of the work they have done.
I’ve worked an environment similar to this when I started my career at the Nile Daily Times. Its amazing at how close the staffs are at these smaller papers. I’m sure they are all leaning on each other to get through this.
Record Publishing also produces eight weekly papers in the area. The Record-Courier has a daily circulation of around 10,000.