I received conflicting reports about this last night. But in today’s Boston Globe, Chad Finn reports that Lenny Megliola, sports columnist for GateHouse’s MetroWest Daily News in Framingham, has been laid off, along with “at least a half-dozen employees.”
Megliola covered last night’s Bruins game.
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Non-essential employees in non-essential business. Just another step toward becoming more non-essential.
Laying off the only employee that people who don’t read the paper may have heard of. Brilliant.
They laid off three at The Patriot Ledger last night two, two reporters and a copy editor … The copy editor is considering an age discrimination suit, seeing that two junior copy desk people were “promoted” to management positions, leaving him exposed to the layoff …
Non-essential business? Without the local weekly, how are you going to learn what is going on in your town or suburb?The Somerville Journal has its limitations and problems, but our city would be much poorer if it suddenly disappeared.
Ron – you have a point. Your city is much better off with the Somerville Journal. However, if virtually everyone in town bought the paper and virtually everything in town was in the paper, it would substantially be essential.But, when circulation dwindles to 30% or less, when everything is not in the paper, everyone is not reading it, and there are problems and limitations, then there are options as exercised by the remaining 50% or more of the population. With appealing alternatives attracting much of the citizenry it is no longer essential, no matter how desirable or appealing for the minority. This is unfortunate.
I don’t think it’s ever been true that ‘virtually everyone in town’ bought the Journal or other similar suburban weeklies.Their readership (as opposed to paid circulation) is probably quite a bit higher than it once was, thanks to GateHouse’s generally intelligent use of the Web.