Worcester Telegram Could Cut 20-30 Staff Members Under New Owners
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Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Nicholas Handy, GoLocalWorcester Contributor
The Worcester Telegram and Gazette could cut as many as 20 staff members in the wake of new ownership.
According to documents received by GoLocalWorcester.com, a strategy has been outlined by Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, examining the current staff of the Telegram against other similar sized newspapers. Dirks, Van Essen & Murray is the consulting firm hired by the Boston Globe to sell the Telegram to the new buyer Halifax Media Group.
The strategy calls for the Telegram to cut 20 fulltime employees in order for the paper to see a savings of $1.6 million annually. If the Telegram was to follow industry standards for papers of similar circulation sizes, the Worcester newspaper would need to cut 30 fulltime reporters and editors, according to the documents.
Decreased News Coverage
The Telegram currently has 81 fulltime equivalent positions in the newsroom, which the Dirks, Van Essen & Murray documents claim, is considered 40-percent larger than newspapers of similar circulation sizes.
Although currently considered “overstaffed,” cutting 20-30 fulltime reporters and editors could be detrimental to the newsroom. Having employees that have the ability to cover local news is the pride of any great local newspaper.
Losing this local coverage tends to create a hole in coverage, something that must be filled. Many newspapers with holes to fill turn to wire services like the Associative Press to fill the holes in news coverage. Although still giving their paying customers a plethora of news coverage, the loss of focus on local coverage creates a loss of identity.
“It is more of the same in the newspaper industry,” said Michael Scully, a Journalism Professor at Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI, “Every time an employee is fired in the newsroom you create a gap and with each firing the gap is further diminished. This gap has to be filled with AP wire copy. The city of Worcester will see less and less local coverage and more content from the Associated Press and other wire services.”
Collapse of Legacy Media
The Telegram has been recommended to make these cuts to save millions in bottom line costs.
According to the documents secured by GoLocalWorcester, the Telegram has lost more than 50-percent of its circulation has declined over the past decade. In addition, the Worcester-based paper has lost 25-percent of its advertising revenue over the past three years reported.
“The collapse of the traditional newspaper advertising model has led to sharply reduced revenues,” said Dan Kennedy, an Assistant Professor of Journalism at Northeastern University. “Totally aside from whether these particular cuts were necessary, newspapers in general cannot support as many journalists as they did 10 or 20 years ago.”
With an already high number of employees, these cuts were inevitable. While cuts were definitely seen, Kennedy hopes that the firings are a one-time occurrence, rather than the beginning of a series of layoffs and firings.
“A cut of that magnitude has to mean less coverage,” said Kennedy. “I just hope that it's a one-time reduction and not merely the first in a series of reductions.”
Related Slideshow: The Living History of the Telegram and Gazette
From contamination to a sale, and injunction to layoffs, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette has been through quite an interesting run in a very short time. Since 2012, GoLocal has been chronicling the goings on of Worcester's only daily printed newspaper. Take a look at our coverage:
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April 6, 2012
If the Worcester Telegram & Gazette was offering alternatives for the 64 employees it is laying off, Luis Lopez didn’t get the memo.
“I knew it was coming, but it’s hard,” the 37-year-old father of two girls said of being laid off Monday from the job he held for six years at the T&G’s Millbury printing plant. “When I came here, they promised me they would not lay me off. Now look at me.”
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June 22, 2012
The New York Times Company has sold a contaminated Worcester Telegram and Gazette building to a local development agency, leaving taxpayers on the hook for potentially up to $1.1 million in cleanup costs.
Before the sale, Telegram and Gazette publisher Bruce Gaultney publicly promised that the building was “not a brownfield.”
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June 27, 2012
The New York Times Company announced that they have agreed to pay for cleanup costs associated with contamination left at the former location of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette at 18-20 Franklin Street.
The announcement comes just days after a GoLocalWorcester investigative report that unveiled that the property was a brownsfield site, despite claims by the publisher that it was not. The non-profit Worcester Business Development Corporation, which bought the property, is receiving government funds to pay for the cleanup of the former newspaper headquarters.
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July 2, 2012
Two local unions are concerned about the health hazards at the former Telegram & Gazette building, after the NY Times Company sold the property to a local nonprofit and the building was declared a brownfield site.
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July 10, 2012
The NY Times Company is only committed to paying 10% of costs to cleanup the hazardous materials at the T&G building, leaving taxpayers footing most of the $1.1 million bill to clean up asbestos, lead, and other contaminants.
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July 11, 2013
Local taxpayers are demanding that the NY Times Company takes responsibility and pays for the T&G cleanup.
Thus far, the corporation has only offered to pay for 10% of the estimated $1.1 million cleanup costs to rid the building of asbestos, lead, and other hazardous contaminants.
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July 13, 2012
Massachusetts legislators, candidates, and councilors are calling for the NY Times to contribute more money for the cleanup of the T&G building contamination. Across the board and across the aisle, they say there’s a need for more corporate responsibility and taxpayers should not be stuck with the bill when a large company is involved.
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July 24, 2012
The Boston Globe and Worcester T&G are facing layoffs and buyouts, affecting a total of about fifty employees between the two markets. Both newspapers are owned by the same media group which is a subsidiary of the New York Times Company.
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February 7, 2013
Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray said that the brownfield site cleanup at the former home of the Worcester Telegram may still take some funding from the former owner, the NY Times Co. The building was sold by the news company after an estimated $1.1 million in cleanup costs to remove asbestos, lead, and other contaminants.
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February 20, 2013
The New York Times Company announced on Wednesday that the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Boston Globe and their related websites are up for sale.
The company has retained Evercore Partners to advise and manage the sales process of the two newspapers, along with the other related properties contained within the New York Times Co.'s New England Media Group.
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August 3, 2013
The New York Times Company has dumped the Boston Globe, Worcester Telegram and some other holdings for less than 6% of what they had paid for the combined assets over the past three decades. John Henry's sports and media group will pay approximately $70 million.
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August 5, 2013
On Saturday morning, August 3, at 3 A.M., the New York Times Company confirmed the sale of the Boston Globe, Worcester Telegram, and other New England assets to John Henry in an all-cash, $70 million deal.
Go Local reached out to top experts on media to get their perspective on the transaction, and insights as to what this means for the future of the paper, as well as industry as a whole. The Boston Globe, once the biggest force in media, has been in decline over the past decade, and now faces an uncertain future.
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August 18, 2013
The tectonic shifts changing the global media landscape are rolling through Southeastern New England, right on schedule.
The media empire of the Providence Journal’s parent company, Dallas-based A.H. Belo, has been coming apart for years, and now, with the sale last week of its Riverside, California, operation, the Press-Enterprise, down to just two main properties. The hope here is that the Projo will, too, be sold before long and end the chronic and debilitating cycle of downsizing for the newsroom and bonuses for the executive suite that has marked the Belo regime.
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October 23, 2013
For John Henry, the St. Louis Cardinals may pale in comparison to the challenges he faces with the Telegram & Gazette and the Boston Globe. In Worcester, he’s now dealing with a temporary restraining order that blocks his purchase of the two papers. In Boston, the Globe’s headquarters sit on land that is highly contaminated.
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October 24, 2013
Judge Shannon Frison of Worcester Superior Court has lifted an injunction blocking the sale of the Boston Globe, and affiliated Worcester Times & Gazette, to Red Sox owner John Henry. On Thursday afternoon, the judge ruled removed the order which was requested as part of a lawsuit filed by former Telegram & Gazette adult carriers.
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