Wednesday, December 19, 2012

GateHouse centralized layout plan a miserable failure

GateHouse Media's plans to centralize its layout and copy editing functions for its 400 newspapers at two locations have been a miserable failure.

The company, which planned to use the change to eliminate personnel, was already well into the process of cutting jobs right and left when it discovered that its new process, which was awarded to a company, Saxotech, which was brand new and untested, simply will not work.

Now, the changes, which had originally been scheduled to take place over a few weeks time beginning in August and stretching through early fall, have now been delayed until late next year

Meantime, scores of local papers, which have already eliminated layout and copy editors, are struggling to publish their newspapers on a daily basis.

The change to centralized copy editing and layout was an integral part of GateHouse's switch to a new management plan, which is under investigating by the SEC.

Under the centralized desk plan, all copy editing and layout work for larger newspapers was to be done in Rockford, Illinois, while smaller newspapers, including the Carthage Press and Neosho Daily News, were to be handled at a central desk in Massachusetts.


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