Gatehouse offering buyouts

Um, did you read the thread title?

 

Years of the occasional freelance assignments for a paper with no trouble at all...purchased by Gatehouse recently and no check for my latest work. No return emails from the Gatehouse crew on repeated status requests.

 

The buyouts are reportedly designed to entice folks who have longer tenure at their respective outlets, aka the people making the most money. So Gatehouse is most likely offering buyouts as legal cover for when they lay off any older folks who don't take the buyout

 

Interestingly, several folks at the local Gatehouse paper took the buyout option ... but were then told they were not allowed to do so. One who went through it said it felt like Gatehouse was doing a loyalty test.

 

My Gatehouse shop pays stringers once a month instead of every other week like it does for regular staff. I don't know why they do this because it turns off reliable, talented stringers.

 

I believe that is company wide thing that changed earlier this year. And yes it does in a very big way because people who do work Week 1 of the high school football season don't want that money arriving in Week 6 or 7.

I think they do it to hold on to the money longer for accounting purposes or its in an account that gets a good interest rate or something.

 

"In a final slap to the face to readers who have watched as they criminally mismanaged their community newspaper over the last two decades, GateHouse Media's message to readers in the final edition of the Carthage Press today was a simple one.

"Readers can maintain loyalty to GateHouse because Carthage news will now be covered by the Neosho Daily News... as if those two communities have much in common, and as if the Neosho Daily News even has the staff to cover what is going on in Neosho."

The Turner Report: GateHouse Media to Carthage readers: The Neosho Daily will cover your news

The paper's closure wasn't even the main article on the front page of its own last edition. It was a sidebar.

 

Readers of the weeklies in central Arkansas didn't even get to read the final edition online. They've already redirected the sites to the Pine Bluff Commercial's site.

 

The Press' website is still up. One of the statements they made suggests that there will be an online presence but I won't believe that until I see proof.

 

What are you considering? I've thought a lot of about leaving the business for something less stressful, with better work-life balance, but I can't seem to find anything as exciting.

I haven't seen a single one in action. This sounds like the same crap tronc preached when the company came out. Remember "from pixels to Pulizers?" What a joke.

 

Except I'm still trying to get paid for an assignment from mid-May

 

Wow. Do you have any legal options?