Sports reporter, Paducah (Ky.) Sun

Compared to some of the really shitty companies, Gannett's wonderful. Just ask any of our members who have braved Black Newspapers, Thomson Newspapers, CNHI, Paxton, Boone, Ogden or (God forbid) the Journal-Register Corporation.

As just one example of what's wrong with Paxton, let's look at what they did when they took over the Herald-Sun in Durham ...

The first thing they did was fire the senior managers. The next thing they did was to fire 76 more people, for a total of 80 out of 350 then employed there. One of them was Harold Moore, the newspaper's 70-year-old photo editor and a 50-year veteran of the Herald-Sun who was just a few months away from celebrating his retirement. They barely gave him a chance to say goodbye to his coworkers and he and the other 79 firees weren't given a chance to retrieve personal belongings from their work areas.

The paper's editorial columnist was let go despite just having won a major award and despite he and his wife having their second child on the way. The severance package was one-half week of pay for each year of their first four years of employment, and one full week of pay for each year after four years.

And since then, circulation has plummeted.

 

And that has happened at other Paxton papers as well. Quality has gone down, and with it goes circulation.

 

Couldn't happen to a nicer group.