I can't really confirm this is true, but I've heard -- and some anonymous messages on a Yahoo message board say the same thing -- that the Journal Register Co. closed some weeklies near New Haven today and laid off about 20 employees.
One post on the message board says that "the Pictorial Gazette, Main Street News, Shore Line Times, Branford Review, East Haven Advertiser, and Clinton Recorder have been shuttered."
"A lot of very good and loyal, longtime employees were showed the door this afternoon," it said. That fits with what I heard thirdhand.
If it's true, it would mean that my former editor, Bob Pollack, who wrote such a nice column about The Bristol Press recently, is probably out of a job tonight.
Merry Christmas, Bob.
By the way, we're talking about papers whose combined circulation each week exceeds 200,000, This is big time stuff for those communities.
Here is another story about the closings.
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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
6 comments:
It's going to be a bloodbath.
Sympathies to the 20 or more poor souls who found themselves out on the street today. What a way to run a railroad.
Thank you for telling people the news. I don't know why nobody else in the JRC shows any courage in reporting the truth about what this company is doing. I'm glad you're willing. You are showing yourself to be a real reporter.
Realize that JRC is not the only company putting people out of work. Nearly every newspaper company is making massive layoffs ... 10 in Waterbury last week, dozens in Hartford before that. You speak of "what this company is doing" like it is setting out to torture people. It's the same business decisions that are being made all over the place.
To anonymous 12:19:
You write as though you have not been on the receiving end of the JRC's treatment of its employees.
Of course other companies are laying people off.
But the JRC has a special talent for eroding morale, demoralizing people and generally showing contempt for readers, employees and the communities they are trying to serve.
No one else in the JRC has the kind of courage that Steve is showing because this ruthless corporation has shown in no uncertain terms what they do to employees who don't tow the party line. It's fear, plain and simple, from years of corporate terrorism.
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