The Poughkeepsie Journal in New York will be printed and distributed by The Journal News in Westchester -- 64 miles south -- starting in early January, Publisher Barry Rothfeld told employees today in a memo forwarded to me. The 45 jobs eliminated are separate from the 10% staff reduction announced last week.
Poughkeepsie's deadlines will be moved up after the switch; given the 128-mile round trip between the cities, it'll be interesting to see the impact on final sports scores and other late news. "Logistical details about printing in Westchester are being worked out," Rothfeld's memo says, "although you should know that Westchester has good experience printing other daily newspapers, produces quality products, and I expect good cooperation between the two units."
Thursday, November 06, 2008
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Not that it's sports section was anything to write home about ever anyway, but when Ithaca moved to Binghamton to print, anything that happened outside the Eastern Time Zone might as well be a mythical event; indeed, even a fair bit of Friday night sports action now gets held over to the Monday edition.
ReplyDeleteJim - while I have no particular knowledge of this situation, do you think the round-trip distance is relevant. I'd guess the page images would move through the network between the sites.
ReplyDeleteI think I can answer this one. It's not getting the negatives to the press, but shipping the papers back once printed that would force the earlier deadlines.
ReplyDelete12:54 - the question is whether the round trip distance is relevant. Won't the page images move electronically to White Plains in a few seconds? Only the physical product needs to travel on the highways - right?
ReplyDeleteThis is the first step towards the merger of the two papers.
ReplyDeleteComments about the effects on the sports section are right on. Readers who depend on Poughkeepsie for national sports info will be greatly disappointed. Late-breaking local news coverage will also be hampered. Of course, the savings will be huge, and it's better than going out of business right now. That's really what's at stake here. A merger? Probably not. How can you merge papers that are hundreds of miles apart? The future of the paper will depend on its new-found profitability after this draconian move.
ReplyDeleteYeah, you lose an hour or so, due to the extra time to ship the papers back. Of course, also, printing of that out-of-town paper has to be worked around the printing of the local paper, and I suspect the in-town paper is going to get preference as far as deadlines. Otherwise, both papers' deadline suffer.
ReplyDeleteWow. Poughkeepsie got new presses in 1993 (or so). Which seems like a long time ago, but in press years means they're merely middle aged.
ReplyDeleteThat can't be good for readers in Pok -- deadlines will be so early as to make the paper worthless for anything that happens much after 9PM Eastern time.
Poughkeepsie still has a really good editor going for them.
ReplyDelete@1:56 said: How can you merge papers that are hundreds of miles apart?
ReplyDeleteWell, Poughkeepsie becomes a bureau.
Keep in mind that the papers' market areas are contiguous to one another.
ReplyDeletePoughkeepsie Journal is in Dutchess County, which is north of Putnam County-- where the Journal News has coverage, albeit with limited penetration these days.
Any kind of joint venture with Westchester will hurt Poughkeepsie. Westchester is a poorly run operation and has a toxic work atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteI've seen this done before at Gannett, and the cost benefit is sizable. Gannett, with its aversion to bad PR, won't make Poughkeepsie a bureau anytime soon. This could make the paper profitable again, which I assume isn't the case now. But of course a whole bunch of pressroom people go out into the cold. Nice.
ReplyDeleteAs for the deadlines, you'll lose more time than you think.
This is nothing new folks. We've been doing this in Wisconsin for almost a decade. Ten dailies printing at three production facilities. It works fine.
ReplyDeleteDutchess County is larger and more mountainous than Westchester and Putnam combined. If there's a snowstorm or ice storm along I-684 and I-84 you won't see the Journal on your doorstep 'till afternoon.
ReplyDeleteWhy would they print in White Plains? There's a Journal News plant in West Nyack, 20 miles closer, isn't there?
ReplyDeleteWow ... pretty amazing. I remember the roar of the Journal presses, both the old letterpress and the newer German (or Dutch or whatever it is) model. You'd always know when the press was running because the building would rumble a little bit. Gannett will probably sell the press and get back some of the investment.
ReplyDeleteIf they're losing 45 jobs then that's more than press people -- it's all those inserter jobs and whatnot. Man, I am shocked by this. All those people are really good, salt-of-the-earth people. This is really the end of an era.
Journalism is dying. So sad to see it go like this.
What a sad day. I remember working election nights at the Journal, staying until the press would start and grabbing a copy of the paper with all our hard work as soon as they started rolling off the belt. They'd still be damp with ink, and the smell was intoxicating. It was the smell of newspapering! It was the smell of shoeleather reporting! What do we have now but pixels and bits that blink on and off in a series of 1's and 0's -- lifeless and cold.
ReplyDelete@3:33 said "Poughkeepsie still has a really good editor going for them."
ReplyDeleteYou got that right. He's a good man.
west Nyack plant was closed several years ago.
ReplyDeleteah OK on the West Nyack plant. I was there in the 90s and I think they printed USA Today regionally there.
ReplyDeleteThree things ...1. If the Poughkeepsie Journal delivery ends up being any later as a result of printing in Westchester it will just drive down circulation numbers more. 2. Why didn't Gannett consider moving things to Poughkeepsie instead of vice versa when this all started? The difference in wages alone would have saved the company millions. 3. How can it be cost effective to keep the Poughkeepsie Journal building up and running with so few employees when the building's utility bills alone have to be enormous considering the age of the building, the size of the building and the many things that are in disrepair.
ReplyDeleteEveryone who works in Poughkeepsie is wondering what will happen to their jobs but some also wonder about the future of the Journal building - a Poughkeepsie landmark.
@10:57 PM Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete"3. How can it be cost effective to keep the Poughkeepsie Journal building up and running with so few employees when the building's utility bills alone have to be enormous considering the age of the building, the size of the building and the many things that are in disrepair. Everyone who works in Poughkeepsie is wondering what will happen to their jobs but some also wonder about the future of the Journal building - a Poughkeepsie landmark."
Stay tuned: It'll probably be put up for sale (yes, in a depressed real estate marked) and the remaining folks moved into rented space. After the Daily Record in New Jersey started printing in White Plains (yes, the better part of an hour away in good weather), it announced plans to do just that.
9:14, I too get nostalgic for the old printing press roar and smell of ink. Our presses were silenced over a year ago and then dismantled for scrap. It was the end of many folks' livelihood and ultimately mine even though I wasn't in production.
ReplyDeleteUSA Today was the first newspaper I joined that didn't have presses somewhere in the building. (All the presses are out in the field, and around the world.) It never seemed right to walk in the office, and not smell paper and ink.
ReplyDeleteIn the Friday November 7, 2008 edition of the Poughkeepsie Journal on 1-B of the Area News section, it has a headline and article about the shifting of the printing to Westchester...and above the headline is the dateline "Thursday" November 7, 2008.
ReplyDelete10:27 -- that paper doesn't publish an "Area News" section and hasn't for 15 years. Thanks for being the accuracy police. Next time, be accurate.
ReplyDeletePOK is an hour from White Plains, a distance I drove many weekends when I dated someone from there. My point is that it's not an easy drive in good weather under calm conditions so imagine drives on either the Thruway or the Taconic every day to deliver the physical paper. The POK Journal building is a landmark in Dutchess, and if the two papers do merge what will happen to it?
ReplyDeleteThe Rockland plant in West Nyack was mothballed about three years ago. That would have been the better move, keeping west Nyack open and printing rockland and poughkeepsie there.
ReplyDeleteThe Daily Record was pulled out of White Plains back in October. Something about printing legal notices out of state. That opened the window for Poughkeepsie ti brought to White Plains.
ReplyDelete