GateHouse New England cuts

If that is true, that sucks. There are some once-very-awesome papers already bleeding from unfilled staff positions, and now they can't use stringers?

 

They're doing it to their Ohio papers as well. Talk about a company which bit of WAY more than it can chew.

 

Dear Moddy: As a Bostonian, I say, Yikes! My town is covered by a Gatehouse weekly, but as far as I know, Lexington sports is covered by a staffer. Guess I'll find out.
As a would to be a newspaper person again, I weep. Here is what newspaper owners say they want, information on which they have a monopoly, and they're cutting it out to save maybe $250-500 bucks a week for 12 weeks a year? There IS no place else to find stuff out about Lexington cross-country than the Minuteman. Why doesn't Gatehouse cut to the chase, just assume it has a local advertising monopoly, and drop all editorial content from its papers? That appears to be the business plan.

 

Lexington paper still has an SE; what it means (provided it's true) is that he hits one football game a week for one paper, and his other papers rely on phoners. Not the way to cover high school football, in my book.

 

look at gatehouse ownership and their history. these kind of tactics shouldn't be all that surprising.

 

The same is true at GateHouse Illinois. We've been told to cut our expenditures by 10% for the month and we've also been told that our part-timers futures are shaky as well.

 

No, Liberty personified suckage. Problem now is that they own some formerly big-boy dailies in the Boston area, and there's already pissing matches going on, from what very little I've heard, between the staffs.

Now this shit happens.

 

gatehouse has a long track history, my friend.

 

At some point, publishers are going to come to the conclusion that reader submissions is the easiest and cheapest way to cover high school and recreational/community sports.

Then the shit hits the fan like tubgirl at a pep rally.

 

your publisher and my publisher would meet over lunch in an effort to find a way to qualify tubgirl as a friday night stringer for both papers. then both would write the one lunch off on their expense accounts.

 

If they could eat while talking about tubgirl, they deserve a free lunch.

To be fair, my publisher, from what I know, doesn't feel this way, and I work at a cluster of non-dailies. But I can see that day coming across the industry. Think about it: the whiniest parents get their stories in without that irritating objectivity getting in the way, the paper doesn't have to pay anyone, and if anyone complains, then just send your own photo/story! Everyone wins! Except for, you know, the professionals that used to fill that section, but they're expendable anyway (as opposed to the poster expednable).