Halifax again: cut 1/4 of newsroom, the non-compete BS again and no blue jeans!

Worcester Telegram & Gazette employees get fucked again. Halifax bought them, chopped out 20 of 80 newsroom employees and did some of their other stuff.

Not much detail yet on the non-compete, whether they're trying it for all the employees, or if they're just going to do it for any new hires. Oh, and there's a dress code now.

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/mass_roundup/2014/06/telegram-gazettes-new-owner-cuts-one-fifth-of.html?page=all

Seriously, you've just cut a bunch of people. Your remaining employees feel like shit, and you pull a dress code on them? What does it take to be a newspaper executive again?

 

"You are your own brand," tweets a guy who was his own brand before going back to newspapers and getting laid off yesterday.

 

The non-compete in particular is bullshit. Employees should ignore it, it isn't going to hold up.

As for the rest ... newspaper biz sucks. Big story there.

 

I thought this was in reference to the paper in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

 

Yep, the Halifax forerunner that owned the paper I worked at for a couple years was big on the dress code. Reminds me of the wise words of a departed poster: If you want to pay me like a professional, then I'll dress like one.

 

What bugged me about the dress code for theses guys is the timing of it. You've just laid off a whole bunch of your employees' colleagues and friends. And now you're worried about what everyone is wearing? Get the priorities in order.

And not that I'd expect it to happen, but it would have been awesome if everyone showed up to work in jeans, just to tell Halifax what they thought of them.

 

Telegram deal also didn't include the union contract and was an asset sale. Another way the rank and file were screwed.

 

Used to work for an editor who is now a bigwig inside Halifax. The dress code he put in was the least of our issues.