My local Lee paper, where I worked for nearly 28 years, has been "designed" by people in Lincoln, and now Madison, for the last 18 months or so. It absolutely sucks. No consistency in design; far more errors than in the past (stories ending mid-sentence, cutline screwups, etc.), agate on the high school stories has been reduced to virtually nothing, and we now don't get late scores because deadlines have been moved up because the whole process takes longer. I don't blame the local guys, they are doing what their bosses tell them they have to do, and it's actually more work, not less.
Lee Enterprises was a great outfit to work for when I started in 1979 at one of its heartland papers. But it just got cheaper and cheaper through the late 1990s and 2000s as the poor management decisions continued to pile up. Stock dividends were eliminated, matching to the retirement fund disappeared, the staff kept shrinking and shrinking, and the benefits plan got costlier and harder to use (luckily I was covered elsewhere), while upper management continued to rake in big annual bonuses. I did very well with the stock; luckily I'd sold most of it by the time in absolutely tanked and I got out of the 401K plan as soon as I left the company.
Lee sucks. The local paper abandoned the downtown building where I worked about two years ago for an office in a strip mall. The old building (like the company) is now an empty, deteriorating wreck, awaiting demolition. How apropos.
