Things may be more quiet than they were a year ago, but rumblings of dissension persist. Several anonymous employees sent this along, detailing some mighty nice bonuses top GateHouse officials paid themselves to publish understaffed newspapers run by overworked, low-paid journalists.
Leading the parade is chief executive Michael Reed, who got $500,000. Taking the silver, with $250,000, was president and chief operating officer Kirk Davis, a top GateHouse official in Massachusetts before decamping for upstate New York last year.
It’s an old story. Ordinary people work hard for short money while the folks at the top reward themselves.
GateHouse Media owns The Carthage Press, Neosho Daily News, and more than 300 newspapers in the United States.
4 comments:
and as a result everyone whom works for gatehouse in Herkimer/Yorkville is out of a job thanks alot fatcats
What kind of bonus did Gloria the Killer get? Was her's monetary or did she get to sacrifice some more careers?
Get out your calculators. In 2009, GateHouse lost 530.6 or 454.5 million (with a capital "M") dollars, depending on which report number you want to use. Losing almost a half a billion dollars in one year is staggering. As of March 23, 2010, Yahoo Finance reported GateHouse's market capitalization at $6.97 million dollars. Long term debt is reported at 1.195 BILLION dollars. Although principal payments are not due till 2014, the interest payments add up! The strategy for cutting expense laid out in the SEC report GateHouse filed at the end of last year, calls for consolidating as many administrative and management jobs as possible. Gauging from the comments in the SEC plan and looking at the total number of properties, I would predict 30-40% of Gatehouse employees will lose their jobs in 2010. The question is, can the company survive? It's an extremely big ship. Although water logged, the crew has time to do damage control. Personally, I think chances are slim at best that this company will stay afloat. My advice to any prospective job applicants would be to run away from this company as fast as you can.
On a recent "Washington Week" program on PBS, financial analysts predicted that a serious economic dowturn will impact our nation between the years 2012 and 2014. The consenus was uniform. This downturn will make our present economic woes look like a small bump in the road. The coming economic crisis will be precipitated by the US national debt. Our national credit may be downgraded in the coming days. If you were a GateHouse employee who was thrown overboard into the cold icy Atlantic, consider yourself lucky. You have time to get to a lifeboat. Although the bow is down only 5 degrees, the orchestra is playing, and the champagne is flowing freely in the first class lounge, the problems are dire below the water line. Basic math tells us that they are trying desperately to keep the ship afloat. If you were let go, it was not personal. Go find some people to work for who have a little more common sense and wisdom. Even with the vigorous measures taken by GateHouse management, they probably won't survive the next economic downturn.
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