The "new Craphouse" whacks away

Yeah, yeah, the company is still called Gannett, but everybody knows the tail of Gatehouse, I mean Craphouse, is wagging the dog.

Well, the tail has started canning employees. And, please, media analysis websites like Poynter, these are firings, not layoffs.

Trump once claimed he could murder someone in Manhattan, on Fifth Avenue, and get away with it.

Well, he could now murder staff at Mar-a-Lago and it would go unreported.

New Craphouse whacked 10 editorial spots at the Palm Beach Post.

Meanwhile, Michael Reed, head of both old and new Craphouse, calling it the "integration plan," praised the number of jobs being whacked and other things.

At Nieman, Joshua Benton looks at the parts that Reed played down. Store sales dropped 10 percent over the year last year and the decline accelerated ... after the merger was announced. (That had jumped out at me in the info at the link immediately above, even before hitting Nieman.) And, digital and print advertising BOTH declined. Benton also noted that Reed turd-polished its digital marketing and events division, noting that other paper companies have also done this well in excess of reality. Having long lived near the Metromess, I can attest to this in spades with the Dallas Snooze.

The real ugly one on the job whack is the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader shit-canning its entire printing press. Beyond its own work, you can't tell me they didn't print small dailies or nondailies from places like Bolivar, Branson and Lebanon. And they're now going to print in Columbia, 160 miles away? Which surely has other papers it prints besides itself? 

So, Springfield readers? You'll have a paper that goes to bed before city council meetings are done, before high school or college sports games are done. In short, your print news will be day-old stale.

Given that Snooze-Leader PR staff have said the print paper will be delivered at "the usual time," stale news has to be the result. That paper has to go to bed by, what, 9 p.m.? Earlier yet?

And the corporate PR weighs in:

“As our industry continues to evolve and transform, we are forced to make changes that allow us to be competitive in the future marketplace. This is without a doubt one of the most difficult decisions we’ve had to make to date,” said Allen Jones, upper Midwest regional president. “We must strategically invest in quality, local journalism and the digital experience we provide our readers and business partners.”

Bullshit. It's not "most difficult decisions" for you. You're a regional president who maybe visits the Springfield paper once a year? Especially if you get performance bonuses as part of your pay, it's probably a delight for you.

I suspect this shit-canning is related to unionizing efforts by editorial staff. I don't know if the editorial staff recruited the pressroom or not (it seems like it did, per the announcement letter), but the news staff couldn't fire anybody anymore. A paper for a city of 160K, metro 300K or so and 17 staff?

So, how many $$$ will Gannett/Craphouse lose in Springfield from:
A. Further print subscription cancellations?
B. Advertisers dropping out of a crappier product that has fewer people reading?
C. No more job printing of other area papers, mags, etc?

Nathan Bomey, you're the brilliant biz reporter at the old/new Gannett/Craphouse USA Today. Instead of this:

"Print subscribers are highly profitable and would have to decline a lot" for the company to end print operations, Gannett CEO Mike Reed tells investors on an earnings call. "We don’t have any plans in the near future to do anything like that."

— Nathan Bomey (@NathanBomey) February 27, 2020

Wanna run some actual numbers for us?

And, you wanna ask Mike Reed why, if print subscribers are so highly profitable, he's so willing to screw Springfield ones in the ass?