The Olympian and The News Tribune begin the consolidation Monday. What's left of the FOUR copy desk folks at the Olympian will move to the News Tribune offices. All that's left in the Olympian newsroom will be 16 people. That's down from 47 approximately 18 months ago.When The Olympian named a new publisher last month, I predicted his main focus would be continuing to move operations to The News Tribune.
The sections of the News Tribune and Olympian will have the same fonts, displays, etc. Should be interesting how Monday goes.
It was just a few weeks ago that the new publisher, George Le Masurier, told readers The Olympian was here to stay.
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14 comments:
My math is a bit fuzzy, but does this mean they'll have like, no one in the newsroom in six months?
Also, what became of the other 31 people?
McDonalds couldn’t have taken them all. But then they did start that coffee line to compete with Starbucks, so I guess ya never know.
The Olympian is really no longer The Olympian. Rather than just outsourcing production to Tacoma, McClatchy basically gutted the paper as it existed(laying off writers and replacing original content with AP crap and TNT content), handed almost all control over it to Tacoma(for example, Tacoma's production manager is now in charge of production of the USA Today in Olympia), and now The Olympian goes to print at 10:30PM, so it will rarely have final sports scores in it now. The start time has been moved up by an hour and a half since the TNT is planning on dropping down to one press and laying off a large chunk of the press crew in the near future. Of course, it's almost certain that the first ones to go will be the 3 pressmen who were convinced into pulling up their stakes and working in Tacoma. Way to go, Pruitt.
Wow that’s a 65% loss of staff.
And these aren’t recession type numbers!
But then MNI kept talking down the economy (teabagging) to got their boy in office.
So could this get filed under, a sort of, reaping what you sow kind of deal?
Anon 3:00:
Then does this mean that MNI news could be, at a minimum 24, maybe even 48 hours old, when their few remaining customers get their valuable product?
Why is this a surprise to anyone? They think by getting rid of all the employees they can, getting rid of all our benefits, cutting our wages, and not letting us buy one ink pen will magically bring them back up outta the red.....
So what do McClatchy papers do in cities where there is no tag-a-long paper to glob onto to?
Wait, The Olympian has a "publisher"? Why hasn't he shown his face in the newsroom?
Those of us who are being laid off as of tomorrow at least deserve to meet this so-called "publisher" on our way out the door.
Can't wait until major news breaks after those ridiculously early deadlines and the few readers left throw a fit. Threatening to drop the Olympian and get the TNT won't do much, huh? I imagine that's exactly what McClatchy wants.
Now where is my O2go mug?
In today's Star-Telegram, the front page of the feature section had a line ending with a hyphen, then the next line contained the period to end the sentence. No editors left, I guess, to catch that on the FRONT PAGE.
So what do McClatchy papers do in cities where there is no tag-a-long paper to glob onto to?
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That is easy. They steal several blocks of downtown property with the help of their friends in politics.Then they buy multi million dollar presses that can't be moved and pay 289 million dollars for a 5 million dollar glass aquarium to put on top of them. After that they put a for sale sign on it and make it conditional that the buyer must let them stay.
Who says we're not smarter than everyone else?
And another thing: this "publisher" that was installed at The Olympian is also "publisher" at The Herald and The Peninsula Gateway. Basically McClatchy's figurehead for their non-dailies in the area(which, along with the daily zero, weren't losing money like the TNT).
In fact, his letter in the Olympian's opinion section about the paper "being here to stay" is quite similar(word for word) to this one in the Gateway.
Life must be awful for the 16 remaining employees. The company asks you to give your all, while they smother you in bullshit.
"Note from the publisher":
Your 119-year-old community newspaper is getting a facelift.
We're unveiling a brand new design tomorrow that gives us a more modern, youthful appearance. The new look enables us to pack even more news about Olympia and Thurston County into our pages.
http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/story/825205.html
The TNT copydesk and a handful of folks from The Olympian who were transferred to Tacoma will be putting out both papers tonight back-to-back, with deadlines an hour apart.
Is there anywhere else - McClatchy or not - where one crew is producing two papers every night?
The Olympian has helpfully (and probably unintentionally) left an old version of their newsroom contact list on its Web site, so you can play Spot the Difference and see who's not there anymore.
Before: http://www.theolympian.com/html/services/newsroom/
After (but still listing the last four copy editors):
http://www.theolympian.com/newscontact/
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