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Two days before the State
Journal-Register offered optional severance
packages to 149 nonunion full-time workers, the newspaper’s parent
company, GateHouse Media Inc., rolled out a contest to award $1 million to
any employee who comes up with an idea to generate $50 million in earnings
by the end of 2010.
The competition begins at noon on
Nov. 1, according to the contest rules. Employees are required to sign an
“idea submission agreement” and must be in good standing with
the company at the time of the payout.
Veteran media analyst John Morton
says he’s never heard of such a contest at a newspaper company,
although, he says, it could lift employee morale. A winning idea, he adds,
might not be difficult to implement. “Bear in mind that a lot of
the ideas that have proved highly successful are Internet ideas that
usually don’t require a lot of money,” Morton says. Fairport, N.Y.-based GateHouse,
which has been growing dramatically through acquisitions, carries a heavy
debt load and reported a loss in its second quarter, which ended June 30.
Its shares, which hit a 52-week high of $22.25 in October 2006, have traded
in the $12 range in recent weeks. SJ-R publisher Sue Schmitt says she doesn’t expect all 200
employees — more than half of the newspaper’s workforce of 345,
including part-time employees — to accept the buyout offer, which
comes as the company is putting together next year’s budget. Negotiations to make the same offer
are also under way with 47 union members, the paper reported on Tuesday.
Contact R.L. Nave at rnave@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2007.
