Nine newsroom employees in St. Louis
will be laid off as Lee Enterprises shifts its news and editorial layout and
design for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to the Lee
Design Center
in Munster , Indiana , the paper reported.
The new arrangement starts May 2.
The layoffs include eight union-represented
workers, the paper reported.
“Such outsourcing inevitably weakens the
newspaper, since editors with little knowledge of the St. Louis region will be
editing copy, writing headlines and designing pages of the Post-Dispatch,”
United Media Guild President Jeff Gordon said in a statement.
“But our remaining members will do their best to maintain the P-D’s high
journalistic standards and keep serving the community.”
The Post-Dispatch is currently looking for
buyouts by March 4 from 15 workers who are at least 50 years old and have at
least a decade on staff, the paper said.
Lee also recently sold the Post-Dispatch
building. The newsroom will relocate to a nearby building later in 2019, the
paper says.
The Post-Dispatch was among the last larger
chain-owned papers to keep its design and editing jobs in-house, Gordon points
out. The paper is profitable, Gordon says, but with falling revenues and
“another challenge”: “Dissident shareholder Carlo Cannell has been highly
critical of Lee’s management while urging a makeover of the company’s board of
directors. His effort could draw the interest of vulture capitalist firms like
Alden Global Capital, which is buying up and stripping down newspapers across
the country,” Gordon writes.
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