Newsroom
employees at the State Journal-Register are being offered buyouts, with the prospect of layoffs on the horizon.
The
buyout offer from GateHouse Media, the paper’s corporate owner, was made
Wednesday, with employees told they have until Monday to volunteer to be let
go. Under a newsroom collective bargaining agreement, employees who accept a
buyout would be paid one week of pay for every year of service, to a maximum of
15 weeks.
The
buyout offer, also extended to employees at the Peoria Journal Star and Rockford
Register Star, papers also owned by GateHouse, comes just six months after
the last GateHouse buyout offer made last August. Reporter John Reynolds accepted the offer and was the only newsroom
employee who departed then.
There aren’t many reporters left to cut. City hall
reporter Crystal Thomas is leaving the paper on Friday to cover the Missouri
legislature for the Kansas City Star.
Her departure will leave the SJ-R with five news reporters, including Doug
Finke, Dean Olsen, Brendan Moore, Bernard Schoenberg and Steven Spearie. Fifteen
writers, editors and photographers have left the paper in the last six years
without being replaced.
Wednesday’s
buyout offer was extended to 13 newsroom employees, including photographers, reporters,
sportswriters and clerical staff. In an email to staff at the newspapers, Paul
Gaier, GateHouse group publisher, said that the company has been working “to
adapt to changes brought on by the challenges of our changing business model
and current economic environment.”
“Although
our efforts have been successful by a number of measures, additional
adjustments are needed to properly align our costs with operating expenses,”
Gaier wrote.
GateHouse
acquired The State Journal-Register in 2007 and went bankrupt six years later after a string of acquisitions. It
now owns 146 newspapers, making it one of the largest newspaper publishers in
the United States. After emerging from bankruptcy in late 2013, the company acquired
dozens of papers across the country and began operating under a holding company
called New Media Investment Group, with stock initially trading for $14 a share
in February, 2014. After peaking at more than $25 a share in 2015, the stock
has been in decline and closed at $12.33 on Thursday.
Bruce Rushton is a former SJ-R reporter. He can be reached at brushton@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Mar 7-12, 2019.
