1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

LVRJ sold?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Inky_Wretch, Dec 10, 2015.

  1. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    LVRJ editor Mike Hengel accepted a buyout. Word is the Adelsons have a front-page editorial running on Wednesday.
     
  2. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Mike Hengel, the paper's current editor, accepted a voluntary buyout offer from the R-J's prior owners, an offer that was also made to other qualified employees.

    A message from the new owners about the future of the Las Vegas Review-Journal

    So Hengel was offered a buyout by Gatehouse/New Media before the sale, the sale took place and the buyout was still on the table? Or did he accept the buyout but it wasn't announced until after the sale?
     
  3. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    Now today it comes out Hengel didn't know he was taking the buyout until he read it in the editorial the Adelsons sent.
     
  4. wicked

    wicked Well-Known Member

    So much for them remaining hands off. I suspect the agreement to let GateHouse still run things will quietly be terminated soon.
     
  5. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    LA Times:

    Get ready to write a story about this,” Las Vegas Review-Journal Deputy Editor James Wright told his two best reporters as newspaper employees gathered for a mysterious staff meeting this month.

    Sitting on folding chairs in a cavernous, largely empty brick building, the journalists, ad salespeople and executives listened for nearly 40 minutes as Publisher Jason Taylor droned on about recent hires, quarterly results and the new company polo shirts he wanted everyone to start wearing.

    What's the big deal? wondered business reporter Jennifer Robison, a diminutive 10-year veteran who had won awards for exposing the state's faulty healthcare website.

    Then Taylor introduced a stranger named Michael Schroeder and broke the news: The paper had been sold for $140 million, nearly $40 million above the price when it changed hands just eight months earlier. Schroeder, as a representative of an investor-backed media company called News + Media Capital Group, assured everyone they would have a “long future” with the paper.

    The newspaper's editor in chief, Michael Hengel, stood up. “So who are these investors?”

    “Don't worry about who they are,” Schroeder shot back.

    Stunned and demeaned in front of his staff, Hengel was speechless. Groans and sarcastic laughter echoed off the high ceilings.

    “It was chaos,” recalled a reporter who, like half a dozen others, spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity for fear of endangering their jobs.

    Even before Schroeder could adjourn the meeting, Robison and other reporters had begun furiously thumbing through their phones' Web browsers, looking for business records related to the Delaware-based News + Media Capital Group or the backgrounds of their new owners.

    “They look like they were registered just to buy us,” Robison whispered to Howard Stutz, the other business reporter tasked to cover the story.

    Stutz leaned over and whispered back one word: “Sheldon.”

    What followed is one of the most bizarre chapters in U.S. journalism in years, and it's still unfolding.


    Vegas newspaper stands up to its newly unveiled owner, casino giant Sheldon Adelson
     
  6. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

  7. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    This is starting to remind me of the time Abe Hirschfeld briefly owned the NY Post. The Post staff revolted and pretty much devoted every issue to ripping him until he sold the paper a few weeks later.
     
  8. dixiehack

    dixiehack Well-Known Member

    "Sir, the people are revolting!"
    "You said it, they stink on ice."
     
  9. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

  10. pseudo

    pseudo Well-Known Member



    Bravo.

    And if you can spare a few bucks for Youth Journalism International, as I just did, I'm sure they'd appreciate the help.
     
  11. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member


    He's worked for the guy since 2009, and has known since at least 2011 that the paper lacked ethics, but I'm supposed to applaud him for quitting now?
     
    studthug12 likes this.
  12. wicked

    wicked Well-Known Member

    I can't get too outraged over this.

    We're so far down the road to ruin that these crimes (using that word very liberally) against journalism rank about 1,752 on the list of sins committed in the past 10 years. Whole newsrooms, including a couple in big cities, have been wiped out. Staffs hacked to the bone, and beyond. The watchdog role we've served for the past couple generations ... ha! There's some stringer who flunked out of community college and who has no idea about municipal finances covering the local government board. He's not reading the budget summary, never mind the budget. The pigs are feeding at the trough. It's only going to get worse.

    Schroeder, like it or not, saved the New Britain and Bristol papers from going out of business. Maybe Adelson's cash helped, too. Prevented however many jobs from being lost. JRC would have been quite content shuttering the newsrooms.

    As far as I know, this is the worst they've done journalistically. I'm not excusing what happened, by any means. But it's like a homeless man spitting in the face of someone who invites him into his home for Christmas dinner, then bitching about having to eat prime rib instead of McDonald's. What the hell were you expecting? Did you think your joint was going to win the Pulitzer for public service next year? JRC was never one for ethics, you think they ran this place on the up-and-up?

    If you want to die on this hill and martyr yourself, go ahead. Do it. I think you're stupid as fuck for doing so, but to each their own.

    (In the print edition of the Connecticut papers, where did this wonderful piece of journalism appear? Context matters. Was it passed off as an opinion piece? Placed next to the opinion section?)
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page