Indy Star buyouts

The Indianapolis Star said Friday it will eliminate about 20 positions throughout its entire operation via voluntary buyouts. The newspaper also will be adding about 45 positions in a new regional photo-toning center in Indianapolis that will prepare electronic images for print production at multiple Gannett Co. locations. The buyouts and new hires should be complete by mid-August, said Ali Zoibi, senior vice president and general manager of The Star.

Fortunately, it's 20 positions across the whole building, so hopefully just 3-4 per dept. (newsroom, advertising, circulation, etc.)

Anyone know how many were in sports?

 

And along those same lines, the Star will now no longer have a Purdue beat writer.

Michael Pointer will return to the prep beat, which he touched on in a recent blog entry.

Instead, the Star will use copy from the Gannett paper in West Lafayette.

 

No Purdue writer at the Star? That's like no Michigan State writer at the Freep. The Purdue alums are going to be dropping subscriptions in a hurry over this one. Not sending Curt Cavin to Watkins Glen is bad enough, but to drop a major beat near and dear to readers' hearts -- that just blows my mind, as one who grew up reading the Star, and one who still knows some people there. Sheesh, Purdue is only an hour up the road! It's not like it's a plane ride away.

 

Fuck Gannett. They killed the Star a couple of years ago. Now they're just selling the parts.

 

I gather that Info Center thing they're doing is really turning the company around.

 

I think some of these decisions have little to do with Gannett and a lot to do with the philosophy of their sports section.

When you compare the space the Star has devoted within their section to collegiate coverage in comparison to comparable dailies in areas of major college interest like Kansas City and Cincinnati, to a name a few, there is no comparison.

For whatever reason, the Star has not prioritized collegiate coverage, which strikes me as extraordinarily odd given the huge interest in Indiana in its college sports, especially the Big Ten.

 

No excuse, but it would seem college coverage is made more difficult when no major colleges are in your city but are elsewhere in the state, and there are two pro teams in town. I guess Cleveland is in the same situation.

 

That's a shame. I met Mike for the first time last season and he kind of hinted this outcome was a possibility.

Seriously, why doesn't Gannett just replace all of its papers with USA Today. Just streamline it all down to one paper. I mean, isn't that what they'd want in the long run anyway?

 

You're right ... no excuse. Purdue is just over an hour up I-65. IU is about the same distance down Ind. 37. It just isn't that far for the state's largest paper to manage.

I'm not going to get into it beyond this, but when you look the resources similarly sized papers like K.C. throw at Missouri -- which is much further away from K.C. then either Indiana or Purdue are from Indy -- then factor in Kansas (admittedly closer to K.C.) and Kansas State (also further afield than IU/Purdue from Indy) and when you figure that K.C. has an equal amount of pro sports teams and an equal amount of interest in college sports, it makes you wonder.