![]() ![]() The end game of the Consolidators is not yet clear. The most famous Consolidator is Warren Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway owns 30 daily newspapers. The strategy of the Consolidators is to buy up small-city newspapers, fold them into a large corporate entity, cut staff and merge operations of the newspapers (as Halifax did when it bought The New York Times Regional Media Group). Much has been made over the past three years of high-profile wealthy people buying major metropolitan dailies: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, greeting card company owner Aaron Kushner bought the Orange County Register and John Henry bought the Boston Globe (and the Worcester Telegram, which he sold to Halifax). But there is another kind of ownership buying up financially struggling newspapers these days. The Telegram’s editor, Leah Lamson, who had been at the paper for 36 years, resigned for “personal and professional reasons.” That’s a significant loss in the number of professionals who gather, write, edit and package the news for the Telegram and its website.Īll day Monday, Telegram staffers were tweeting details of the layoffs using the hashtag #SupporttheTelegramStaff, and from those tweets we have a partial list of the newsroom workers let go by Halifax. Of course the layoffs at the Telegram will “impact” the paper’s news coverage significantly and in the most basic way: There will be far less quality local news in the Worcester Telegram.Īs Jon Chesto of the Boston Business Journal reported Monday, that means about 20 of the paper’s 80 news employees were laid off - although the exact number remains unclear. This is like your favorite local restaurant laying off a fifth of its waitstaff and reassuring you service won’t be affected in the least. In a press release gussied it up to look like a news story, Redding said, “This will not impact our news coverage in any way.” When Florida-based Halifax Media Group took control of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette on Monday, Halifax CEO (and major investor) Michael Redding promptly laid off a fifth of the newsroom staff. Facebook Email That the new owner said, “This will not impact our news coverage in any way” is an insult to the people of Worcester and Central Massachusetts. ![]()
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