Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Gatehouse lays off more than two dozen newsroom staffers

About a week after announcing its merger with Gannett Co., GateHouse Media began another round of newsroom cuts.

"More than two dozen newsroom staffers were reportedly laid off from at least 10 papers, including the Providence Journal and The Oklahoman," Keith Kelly reports for the New York Post, citing a story from The Associated Press. "The two dozen new cuts are only a sliver of the 10,000-plus employees at Gatehouse, which publishes more 150 dailies and 500 weeklies mostly in small-market America."

Gatehouse already had two major rounds of layoffs this year; some journalists say they worry that more cuts are coming. "GateHouse doesn’t have a vision for growing revenue, only cutting costs, Andrew Pantazi, a reporter at the Florida Times-Union, a Gatehouse paper in Jacksonville, told AP. "Eventually, they’ll run out of costs to cut."

In public comments, Michael Reed, the CEO of GateHouse's parent company New Media Investment Group, said the merger would save millions, mostly from consolidating newspapers' finance, sales, digital services, and tech, but he hasn't mention newsroom cuts, Kelly reports.

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