By Joel Thurtell
[donation]
I didn’t need an updated personnel directory to find the 17 Freepsters leaving the paper in the latest round of cost-cutting buyouts.
They’re all old time Detroit Free Press people. Easy to find them on my ancient Free Press staff list.
Detroit Media Partnership, owner of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, logged 116 volunteers for its latest retirement plan. The additional people came from newspaper support operations outside the Free Press. They’re 34 short of the papers’ goal of 150 workers taking buyouts.
In a the Detroit newspaper buyout, workers receive two weeks of salary for each year of service up to a maximum payout of 52 weeks.
I don’t have names of all 116, but I’ve received a list of most and maybe all of the Free Press editorial employees taking the buyout.
They will be missed.
It’s adios to Susan Ager, Brad Betker, Cindy Burton, Pat Chargot, Cathy Collison, Tina Croley, Joe Grimm, Steve Grimmer, Marty Hair, Pat Hartley, Tina Lam, Barb Loth, Hank Shemanske, John Smyntek, Angelo Veneri, Barb Woolf and Theresa Wilson.
Eighteen of us left the Free Press back in November in the first buyout round. That makes 35 very experienced members of the Free Press editorial staff will have left the paper in the last roughly eight months.
Quality of journalism is in free fall at the Free Press right now, and the loss of these experienced hands will only contribute to the rapid decline — in circulation, advertising and overall quality — of Michigan’s oldest daily newspaper.
Last week, I predicted that the Free Press soon will convert from broadsheet to tabloid format and publish a paper edition twice a week. I’m hearing that’s more than a rumor — it likely will happen. It’s just one more of a series of self-inflicted injuries the newspapers have committed since the 1980s. Under the category “Future of Newspapers,” I’ve written about that dismal chronology of stupidity and mendacity.
But it’s the 23 percent shortfall from the goal of 150 departures that has me really concerned. You see, the bigshots threatened layoffs if that goal wasn’t met.
An insider told me the bosses “feel happy” with 116.
Is that reassuring?
What happens if they feel shitty?
Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
Although I’m not familiar with most folks named above, I do regret losing Ager and Symntek, for entirely different reasons. Susan was one of the strongest columnists, and John the master of snark. Best wishes to all for a brighter future.
The freep was dying a slow death before the newspaper strike. I stopped reading it July 14, 1995, agreeing with Molly Ivans: “I don’t mind watching newspapers die, but I can’t stand seeing them commit suicide.”
We make new friends and keep the old who maintained standards of solidarity.
Hale to you, Joel.
George Waldman
and good luck to you, Pat Hartley. I remember you as hard-working and caring.
Peace,
George
That is a lot of institutional knowledge, and readers and citizen of Michigan will be the worse off for it. Let’s hope the nation’s dailies find the solution to a new marketplace soon. We don’t need more information, we need more savvy, experienced people (like Joel Thurtell and many others who’ve fled) who know how to sift through it and make sense of it in a world where every jerkwad with a computer and a free weekend can set up his own soapbox.
Hugh says in part, “Thurtell and many others who’ve fled) who know how to sift through it and make sense of it in a world where every jerkwad with a computer and a free weekend can set up his own soapbox.”
Or, in my case, post comments at the Freep.com message board, leaving my weekend free to read military bloggers in Iraq and other places, telling us what the editorialists ensconced in offices are in no possible way of knowing firsthand. I cite Michael Yon in particular but Blackfive.net has access to many, many more (in and out of the military).
One detects derision and journalistic elitism here. Bloggers brought down traditional media. The entire dynamic is changing and hidebound commercial-based “dead tree media” are caught in a Hunter S. Thompsonesque “king-hell brew” of panic, trying to stay alive.
I do not think Joel considers his weekend setting up THIS site as ill-spent.