More bloodletting in Durham

Owensboro is going to do all those papers as well? Holy crap. That's crazy.

 

No

Not yet -- I'm in Lenoir, and we've heard nothing about the pagination/copy editing being moved ... yet ... same with High Point and the other small papers (we print Forest City and Monroe) ...

 

Another thing, if they're adding staff in Owensboro to handle the additional workload, they're being awfully quiet about it interally ... usually, all openings at other Paxton papers are posted at the other papers, but I've seen nothing coming from Owensboro about paginators ...

 

The idea that Paxton would ever ADD staff seems like an oxymoron.

 

We see fewer and fewer full-time guys on the NASCAR beat because of the print implosion, but this, NASCAR Scene and National Speed Sport News are the ones that really bring it home.

I was sitting here, thinking about the Herald-Sun staff when I was there, which was just after the papers merged:

Jimmy DuPree, Craig Holt, Lee Montgomery and Joe Mustian on the desk, Pott-Pott with the Bulls, Al Featherson on the Duke beat, Eddy Landrith with UNC and golf, Frank doing columns, Lee handling State and NASCAR, Jemal Horton on NCCU, Elson Armstrong on community sports, Jim Furlong doing UNC soccer and preps, I can't remember the other man's name who did Durham high schools (funny man who loved food), Joe Johnson on agate and I did IceCaps and filled for Mike at the DAP when he needed a break.

That seemed like the right size staff for a paper with that many key beats. To imagine them putting out a daily paper in Durham now with as many guys as I had at the Rocky Mount Telegram blows my mind.

And yeah, Frank was a trip. He pretty much had no idea who I was when I was a lowly desker at the Herald. But when I started covering N.C. State for the Telegram, he'd come up and talk my ear off like I was his best friend ever.

 

If they're NOT adding staff to handle the additional papers, then they're setting themselves up for the same thing that's happening with the Media General operation in Hickory -- namely, constantly having to hire and train because people either get fed up or can't handle the workload ...

 

Hickory is definitely a mess. I haven't talked to Chris Hobbs lately but he can't be too happy about it.

 

And yet when you talk to the suits and try to point out the problems with these centers, they claim they're all raging success stories.

 

Lone star, sad but true. I once worked for a Paxton paper so I speak from experience. One time these four suits swept in from Kentucky to pay us a visit. It looked like a scene out of the Godfather.

 

In the Godfather, I doubt they were firing the guns at their own feet.

I hear that the Herald-Sun will in fact hire a replacement for the UNC beat writer (whose last day is today). But if they've advertised the opening, I haven't seen it.

 

They had the opening posted at the other Paxton papers (however, they had the year wrong in both the posting date and deadline date) ...never saw anything on the jobs boards, though ...

 

I stand corrected about them hiring. It still baffles me that Joe Johnson was let go when they knew about the other departures, which, at the time, brought the number of full-time sports people to three.