Gannett is a huge firm: they’ve gobbled up a LOT of local and regional newspapers, gutted them of anything of substance, run muck and woke and political destruction articles, and now, it’s coming back to bit them. Yes, the owners of USA Today and so many other papers is about to trim another couple of hundred editors and journalists, etc. Gannett had already fired approximately 400 employees in August and froze/cancelled many open positions. The company is expected to end the year (or very early 2023) with a net 10-25% reduction in headcount. Gannett owns the Cape Cod Times.
The Washington Post will shutter it’s Sunday magazine this month, and cut jobs.
CNN is laying off company-wide – including tossing out Robin Meade, host of their morning show.
CBS and others, same thing – freezing or firing.
Even NPR is bracing itself.
NBCUniversal (NCB New sand MSNBC) are expected to follow-through with cuts in January. ABC News is expected to suffer the same…’
MEANWHILE More than 1,100 union employees at the New York Times are set to strike for 24 hours on Dec. 8, 2022 if they can’t reach an agreement over pay, health insurance, and retirement benefits.
MASSACHUSETTS:
The Herald is a gutted shadow of its former self.
Gannett had shuttered the Grafton News and Millbury-Sutton Chronicle earlier this year. The Grafton News dated back to 1958. The Landmark (Holden, Paxton, Princton, Rutland, and Sterling, Mass.) was also shuttered earlier this year. The Leominster Champion went out of print, surviving only as a website. Others in Mass. were also affected, and the coming riffs look damning.
Gannet constitutes absolutely ‘woke’ sludge but when it owned regional Massachusetts newspapers at least those papers retained editors, and maybe even a reporter or two, who would attend, IN PERSON, some municipal board and committee meetings, AND some regional school district committee meetings, and report on those proceedings– BUT NOT ENOUGH TO KEEP LOCAL CORRUPTION AND MISMANAGEMENT UNDER COMPREHENSIVE SCRUTINY. Just before Gannet sold The Landmark, Holden, to CherryRoad Media, The Landmark revealed that the Wachusett Regional School District had overspent its record FY 2022 105 $million budget by $1.6 million (this despite the fact that in the past few years the WRSD has lost 907 enrolled students, the equivalent of AT LEAST 30 empty classrooms). A week later, after the Cherry Road Media purchase, that article was scrubbed from The Landmark’s website. By the way, when it comes to WRSD overspending and mismanagement, WHERE THE HELL ARE THE MASSACHUSETTS INSPECTOR GENERAL AND STATE AUDITOR??? ANSWER: MIA. Municipal and regional school district officials know that they can get away with overspending and corruption wherever local newspapers disappear. The same will now happen in the region covered by The Item, Clinton, also sold by Gannet to CherryRoad Media– https://www.telegram.com/story/news/2022/10/25/the-item-cherryroad-media-gannett-sale-finalized-november-1/10587438002/ CherryRoad Media peddles superficial fluff.
It is now up to citizen-observer-writers in many swaths of Massachusetts to act as investigative reporters and establish their own blogsites to expose and report on local and regional government cronyism, fraud, waste, and abuse.