Jonesboro Sun Layoffs

The Sun in Jonesboro, Ark., recently laid off all but one of its pagination staff, including Tony Manley who was the assistant sports editor and served as the lead paginator for the sports section. The Sun is owned by Paxton and I was told all pagination will be handled in Kentucky now.

I used to work at The Sun and knew Tony very well. I believe he had worked there for 15-plus years. Maybe closer to 20 years now. I feel bad for him and all the paginators on the news side too, some of whom I knew. In all I believe six were laid off, including the assistant managing editor and the community editor.

 

Seems like consolidation is the big fad now. Any new positions at the "hub" in Kentucky? Seems all they are doing is moving bodies around.

 

Depressing.

 

That corporate Kool-Aid ain't healthy.

 

I can sympathize with them, because I too was a layoff victim due to Paxton's move to a central production hub ... and I was the paper's sports editor ...

 

Did they offer you a position at the hub?

 

Nope ... no one at any Paxton paper who was laid off because of moving production to the hub has been offered a position there ... interestingly (and I noticed this in the months preceding my layoff), the positions at the hub were NOT being posted at the other Paxton papers, unlike other reporter/photog/editor positions ...

 

The corporate suits (re: the Paxtons and their kids) would rather hire recent college grads and pay them mid-20s (if that) and put up with the constant turnover ...

They've also made significant changes to page design at each of the papers produced by the hub, almost to the point (not completely, but it will probably happen in the next 12 months) where all the Paxton papers will have a generic look, with the only differentation being the masthead and page headers ...

I'm also hearing from my former coworkers that there have been significant technical and communication problems between the individual papers and the design hub -- and all of the problems are on the hub's end ... story budgets not being followed (or changed completely), page proofs moving late, a software package that was supposed to allow the individual papers to check the progress of the pages (and view what had been done) doesn't work, etc., etc., so on and so forth ...

I've been warning my former coworkers (all of whom I still consider close friends) not to be surprised if the next edict coming down changes the deadlines significantly ... maybe 11 p.m. (since this paper has the printing press, and does two other Paxton papers) or even earlier, with MAYBE a half-hour bump on high school football nights ... they didn't believe me at first, but they're not shaking their heads about it now ...

 

Ideas tend to get bastardized when they are copied, so this doesn't surprise me. I met with a couple of the folks from one of the design hubs at Gannett, and these are some of the things the team leaders and creative directors are working hard to avoid. I know the design hubs at Gannett are different from one hub to the next, but at least the one I took a look at seemed to try and get it right. Hopefully Paxton doesn't half-ass the concept, but it wouldn't surprise me if they do.

 

Paxton has made a habit of half-assing everything else. Why should design hubs be any different?

 

What lone star said. Paxton is bottom of the barrel.

 

The daily paper in the town I grew up in is a Paxton paper. They gave me my first chance to string for a daily. But I will never go back there to work. Not a chance in hell.