"During the next few Saturdays," writes Managing Editor Bruce Estes, "I will tell you about the problems your hometown newspaper faces, and the choices the Journal is making to solve those problems.''Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin Publisher Sherman Bodner, who also is chief of the three-paper Central New York Group, denies a merger is in the works. But some employees don't believe him, because Corporate has ordered the Journal and the other two titles to consolidate copy desk work 50 miles away in Binghamton, at one of the new page production hubs.
Binghamton's printing plant, opened just three years ago, also prints the Journal and the third title, the Star-Gazette in Elmira. That's also helped fuel employee worries the papers are to be merged, a possibility Estes may explore in next week's promised column called, "How we have reduced costs."
A Pulitzer Prize winnerThe Journal is older than The New York Times, tracing its origin to 1815. Frank Gannett bought it in 1912. The paper holds one of Gannett's coveted Pulitzers: It was honored in 1964 for meritorious public service; in a special citation, judges called the paper's Road To Integration project "a distinguished example of the use of a newspaper group's resources to complement the work of its individual newspapers."
The Journal converted to a morning paper in 1996. The new Binghamton printing plant opened in 2006 in nearby Johnson City.
Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green rail, upper right.
[Image: recent homepage screenshot]
Those were the days!! All the paper can do now is cherish the good old days and perish.
ReplyDeleteJim- Johnson City is near Binghamton, and is farther from Ithaca. The way you've written this piece suggests that Ithaca prints Bingo and Elmira.
ReplyDeleteIthaca paper is printed in JC where many a times, registration is worse then a high school year book!
ReplyDelete12:22 pm: Thanks; I've fixed that on a re-edit.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know .... it's one copy desk but still 3 papers, unless there's a surprise lurking somewhere.
ReplyDelete12:34 There is a surprise lurking..
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess we'll see soon enough. Until then, everything else is just rumor.
ReplyDeleteWhy not merge...is total cicrculation near 100,000k? What is their combined net revenue?
ReplyDeleteCuts in Ithaca and mergers with other area newspapers wound cut the soul out of the all the papers, making them irrelevant to readers. Just the continuing spiral of neglect. It is clear to me that Gannett can careless about communities. It is all about squeezing a nickel out of a dead dog.
ReplyDeleteThere is an another economic reason against mergers: the papers would lose the legal ads they currently get for being the leading newspaper in the cities where they are published. Legal ads are gravy for newspapers.
ReplyDeleteUnemployment is ONLY 5.8% in ithaca, yet that rag is still ablaze there?? This guy is another big fat kool aid jug just trying to appease the intelligencia of ithaca with his useless statistics and riding the pride of a pulitzer 40 years ago that he had nothing to do with. The building is still for sale, there is no sunday paper, there is no classified on mon-tuesday, and the ad director is now fanning the flames down in elmira too....keep your head up Bruce
ReplyDeleteKeep your head up, Bruce, as corporate is brewing more kool aid!!!
ReplyDeleteGo easy on Estes. It's not like he cooked up this plan.
ReplyDeleteIt's not about going easy on anyone. His freaking paper is in the tank in a rather unscathed market yet the jerk still tries to justify everything. Tell the fucking truth Bruce, quit blowing smoke up peoples' asses! How is that for take it easy, the hell with taking it easy, tell it how it is.
ReplyDelete