GateHouse Media preparing to hire designers for Boston-area plant

GateHouse Media is trumpeting the hiring of 70 employees for its Boston-area plant that will design all of its newspapers with under 5,000 circulation, including The Carthage Press, Neosho Daily News, and Pittsburg Morning Sun.

Earlier, the company announced it would be hiring 65 employees for its Illinois design center, which will handle all of the duties for newspapers with more than 5,000 circulation.

What the company is not saying is that workers will be laid off at every newspaper it owns to achieve these savings. And just as importantly, it removes the local design and copyediting function and puts it in the hands of people in the eastern part of the United States who know nothing about this area.

Combined with the news that the editor of the Leavenworth newspaper is going to be in charge or providing "regional content" for newspapers in three states, the days that local newspapers will be local newspapers in anything but name seem to be a thing of the past.

As a final kicker, this quote from a Gatehouse Media official about the Massachusetts hirings:

“Locating the desks in communities where we have established newspapers means we have greater opportunity to retain local talent, one of our top goals in building the desks in states where GateHouse owns nearly 200 newspapers,” said David Arkin, vice president of Content & Audience. “It also means that we’re reinvesting in communities where we own newspapers.”