Coming soon (we assume), SE in Asbury Park, NJ

Whatever Skip's title is, he's the guy.

And the similarities with the trentonian stories I've heard are amazing.

Let's put it this way, you don't want to be the reporter who covers the town he lives in. They have a short life span.

 

thanks, sports scrub and digger. i've seen the trentonian mess but didn't know asbury was in the same situation. sad "state" of affairs.

 

from nearby Neptune. R.I.P. Scott Bigelow, 3rd place NJ state wrestling tournament 1979.

 

Neptune is, in fact, where the Asbury Park Press is now located.

And I hear no one is happier to be out of there than Mr. Henderson.

 

Skip screwed up Camden before moving to the Press. But in all fairness, the Press was kind of screwed up before his arrival.

 

Wasn't one of Gannett's big corporate recruiters the Executive Editor there before Hidlay? Rich Leonard, I think? I know he was at one of the Gannett papers in New Jersey before moving up to a corporate position.

 

Well, not really, not any more than most other places, at least. Every place has its quirks - the favorites, etc. Skip ratcheted up the level of screwed-upness from like a 2 or 3 to 9 or 10.

There wasn't a stampede out the door before he arrived, that really started 3 or 4 years into his reign.

 

The thing that has always puzzled me is that corporate sees people leaving in droves and no one questios what the hell is going on. And it's not like Skip has outstanding profit margins or circulation figures to back up tht he's doing a great job.

 

I think corporate wanted people out - long time people who, to them, were making too much money. Many of those people weren't replaced, or were replaced by someone much younger, and cheaper.

So from that point of view, his personality and way of doing things was perfect, achieving exactly what they wanted.

 

Was a piece in E&P in 2000 or 2001, a few years after the sale to Gannett, that talks about how the decline was beginning then.

Gannett did what it wanted to do, kill off the old-timers and imprint its own "corporate culture" on the place.

 

Right about the start of my career, I had a talk with a reporter for a local Gannett paper. He told me that the company basically treated reporters, copy editors and photographers as if they were equipment, just as interchangeable as a computer or notebook. I'm not sure that is true everywhere, but I have seen that attitude at many Gannett papers.

 

I believe that Kevin Steimle is going to be the new sports editor. I'm not sure if I'm happy for him or not, as he and his wife are both wonderful and talented people who frankly deserve to work at a better place than this.

I got this information third-hand, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I also heard that Greig, who was basically a lifelong APP employee (his mother was an icon as the society writer there) left because the dispute between the sports staffer and Skip pretty much destroyed him.

BTW, I used to work there and as an ex-JRC guy, I may be uniquely qualified to comment on the situation. When I left the Trentonian, I was so fucking happy to be out of there that I was in a state of total bliss my first few months at the APP. But then I started to realize, you know, this place sucks, too.

It didn't suck as bad as the Trentonian and it didn't suck in as many ways, but in a way, it was much more disappointing. Because I, too, could remember the time when the APP was considered a great paper and a major player. It looked fantastic and, at a minimum, it gave the Star-Ledger a run for its money as the best paper in the state. When I got there, it was already in decline -- Gannett had cut 40-50 jobs in editorial already....I don't even want to know how many more are gone since.

I was there for three years and the most remarkable thing about the place is that it had an uncanny ability to kill people. I'm serious about this -- in that three year period and the two years after I left, about 6-7 men had heart attacks or ministrokes and one woman killed herself.

The former executive editor, W. Ray Ollwerther, was a talentless, spineless loser who mercilessly slashed and burned because he was scared shitless of his Gannett overlords. We thought he was the worst goddamn editor on the planet. Then Skip Hidlay came in, and everyone loved him. For about two minutes. You see, he actually had a pulse.

Then we realized that there was something worse than being a talentless, spineless loser who's scared shitless of his Gannett overlords: an editor who actually was a Gannett overlord.

The paper has been totally cannibalized now; it's a joke.

When you think about the moves that have been going on lately, with Collins' rather sudden "ease into retirement" and the investigation into the complaints about Skip along with basically destroying the Courier News and all of the stock problems...well, you have to think they are preparing everything for a possible sale.