Sizeable buyouts in IN

I heard through the grapevine that The Truth in Elkhart, IN, is offering everyone on staff buyouts equal to two years' salary.

I don't know if anyone out there can confirm this, but that seems pretty big to me.

I would totally take that if it was offered to me.

 

So if everyone on staff is offered this and everyone takes it, who puts out the paper.

Two years' severance???!!! If they have that much money on hand, why are they in trouble? Seems like a contradiction.

 

I imagine it's two weeks pay for every year of service.

 

IIRC, The Truth only has a circulation about 25K or less. And I think it's still privately owned, by Truth Publishing (unless someone took that over and kept the name).

So I'd guess the two years severance isn't exactly correct.

 

Wow, I've been through Elkhart a thousand times and never knew they had a newspaper.

You learn something new every day.

 

It is privately-owned, and they have some people who've been there quite a while. So, who knows. Buyouts there may be generous. But they couldn't have more than 15 reporters. At least that's what they had when I lived in the area a few years back.
There are actually two daily papers in Elkhart County, The Truth (which may be the best name for a paper I've ever come across), and a small PM in the county seat of Goshen, Ind. Plus South Bend Tribune attempts to cover it, though not as much as they used to.

 

Peculiar.

You don't hear many small papers doing layoffs. Turnover's usually pretty brisk, at least among the reporter gigs, that one would think most just tighten through attrition.

Good luck to anybody/everybody if this is true.

 

Can you imagine, if this is true, having a severance of two years worth of salary offered to you, applying for it and then being told, "No, we've got enough people, you have to stay"?

Freaking morale killer if ever I heard one.

If the two years' pay is accurate, why in the world wouldn't management offer it only to as many people as it needs to shed (assuming that it won't shed 100 percent of the staff)? Don't get enough, extend the offer to a few more. Otherwise, that's like telling your three kids you're going to take them out for ice cream, then telling one, "No, you stay home."

 

Sounds too good to be true, Joe. And you know what they say about things in that category.

 

One of my good friends actually works at The Truth. I know she went there originally to operate its Spanish-language paper, but they outsourced her and moved her over to working at sports. If I find out any more information on it, I'll pass it along but I was just talking to her yesterday and she never mentioned anything about a buyout.

 

They cover Notre Dame football as a real beat - travel, daily stories, the works. Be interesting, if they're in trouble, to see if that continues, since travel is usually the first thing to go.