Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Letter from the Head Publisher

MLive has a letter from Dan Gaydou that outlines the changes, with the appropriate corporate spin. In other words, no mention of layoffs, coming online fees, etc.

Update: Just received information that the circulation call center work is going to move to Florida and perhaps another vendor. Many more local jobs are gone, although there is little mention of that in the official releases.

The closure of the Flint office and printing facility will be huge for downtown Flint.

All the talk coming out of Booth/Advance in recent months has been how they have turned profitable, blah, blah, blah. Maybe it hasn't been a big enough profit, but can't imagine huge changes like this if they were really on the right road.

Here's a tidbit from Poynter on the changes.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanks for posting. jobs being cut michigan wide, including in Saginaw and Bay City

Anonymous said...

This is so sad. What happened in Ann Arbor was simply the canary in the coal mine for the rest of Booth. The Ann Arbor product is horrible; I expect that what we will see in the other cities will be similar.

Good luck to the Boothies (or whatever you are now to be called).

Former GR Press reporter

inky said...

Freep and News circulation are down 5 percent, according to an Audit Bureau report just out.

Not that I'd lump the quality of Booth reporting in with the Freep, but I fear greatly what will happen as "papers" shrink and die. Maybe there are just too many people wrapped up in Kim Kardashian to worry about local corruption and the need for watchdogs.

Gene Mierzejewski said...

What's really sad is I suspect the Mlive website will remain as lame as ever. It's the worst alleged news site I've ever visited.

North Oakland said...

Gene is right. Unless Mlive ups its game on the reporting front, they're going to have to upload porn to get readers to pay up.

Anonymous said...

Jim,

One community newspaper sales rep. was terminated today. I am not sure if any others have lost their job.

Anonymous said...

lots of newsroom people in the west were told today they would get layoff notices in the mail this week, followed by a severance offer and can apply for a job with the new company.

Anonymous said...

If there's no reduction in news head count, why sever people only to have them reapply? Why not just move them? Or do they have to reapply for a job with a much-reduced wage?