Buyouts/layoffs at Asbury Park Press

Anybody know anything about this? I heard Joe Adelizzi was among the buyouts. But that they also didn't get enough volunteers and there would be layoffs also. Anyone?

 

With all due respect to the great people who have made that paper over the years -- they should have put the final nails in the coffin of it the day Gannett walked in and destroyed what was once a great paper bought it....

 

Is this not part of the Gannett purge at 4 of its 6 Jersey rags?

 

Had a friend tell me he knew of an opening there that he'd put my name in for if I was interested. I asked around, heard basically it used to be a good paper but had become a poisonous place to be.

Thankfully I never inquired further.

 

Skip Hidlay is a scumbag.

 

staggering how far downhill this once-mighty paper has gone

the REM of newspapers

 

It's the end of the world as they know it.

 

Gannett's whole New Jersey group has gone right down the shitter.

I'm hearing through back channels that at least one individual paper in NJ lost money in December and that the group as a whole didn't come close to goal the last two quarters. The goal has always been set arbitrarily high, but most papers and groups usually come close enough to making the "real" number.

The projected job reduction total for the group was around 165, and they only reached about half that total through buyouts. The rest will be through the layoffs that started last week.

There's more insight on Jim Hopkins' Gannett blog (http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/), though some of the numbers being reported there by various individuals might be a bit off.

 

Two things - this was a very good paper before the evil empire moved in, some great writers and unbelievable features almost on a daily basis (with sports in particular having a few very good editors - Joe Sullivan of the Boston Globe ran it for a while). And second, R.E.M.'s latest release is tremendous. Just saying.