(Updated 5:53 p.m.) The recession claimed 128 people’s jobs in New Haven, as a manufacturer announced it’s closing its doors and the city’s last daily newspaper laid off 20 employees and shut down an entertainment weekly called Play.
The double-whammy hit H.B. Ives in Wooster Square and the New Haven Register.
Five newsroom cuts are among 20 positions being eliminated today, newsroom sources confirmed.
Three of the five laid-off reporters and editors comprised the entire editorial staff of Play, the weekly arts and entertainment newspaper the Register publishes. That publication, which was formed to compete with the Tribune-owned weekly New Haven Advocate, is being shut down.
One of the two laid-off daily Register reporters was science writer Abram Katz, who’s been at the paper for decades. The fifth person laid off was a part-time copy editor.
Register Editor Jack Kramer discussed the layoffs with his staff at a solemn 2:30 p.m. meeting in the newsroom.
“Everybody felt bad about Abe,” said one reporter. The explanation given for his departure was that, with cuts needing to be made, management wants to focus on “nuts and bolts local news” as the paper’s core mission.
Staffers are bracing for another round of possible cuts in mid-January. Jan. 16 is the most recent of a series of new deadlines lenders have given the troubled Journal Register Co. under a debt forbearance plan, after which the company could be forced into default.
This is just the latest in a continuing wave of editorial layoffs. The newsroom has shrunk from an estimated high of 110 in the 1990s to under 70 today. (Those 70 positions include three employees of the Spanish-language stand-along Registro paper, which will remain publishing.)
The remaining 15 positions being eliminated Thursday were spread among other departments, including production, circulation and advertising.
The Register is owned by Pennsylvania-based Journal Register Co. Like most newspaper companies, Journal Register has been hammered first by the growth of the Internet, then by the current recession. It’s been hurt more than most, in part because of debt accumulated in a buying spree that included purchasing newspapers near Detroit just as the auto industry collapsed. The New York Stock Exchange has delisted the company’s stock; its shares now sell at around a penny. In the third quarter alone, the company lost $8.7 million and saw a 13 percent advertising drop from a year earlier.
Just this week the company announced it will probably close 13 papers it owns in Connecticut — 11 weeklies and two dailies, the New Britain Herald and Bristol Press.
In March, the company laid off the Register laid off its last state Capitol reporter, Greg Hladky, who was also serving as the Capitol bureau for other Journal Register dailies.
H. B. Ives, RIP
Meanwhile, H. B. Ives Co. announced it is closing for good some time in the second quarter of 2009. All of its 108 employees will lose their jobs.
Ives makes the products found in the “decorative house trim” aisles at Home Depot and Lowe’s like house numbers, kick plates, as well as chain locks and window locks. Some of the items are on display on a board inside the company’s main entrance on Ives St. (pictured).
Ives is owned by the Ingersoll-Rand company. Paul Dickard, New Jersey-based company’s spokesman, said employees will get severance packages and career packages. They’ll be able to apply for jobs at other Ingersoll-Rand facilities.
There may not be many of those jobs open: Dickard said Thursday that the New Haven shutdown is part of a company-wide restructuring, “one of those difficult decisions we have to make in a difficult economy.”
The Ives factory sits in the midst of an industrial area carved out by the administration of former Mayor Dick Lee during the urban renewal period of the mid-20th century. When the construction of I‑91 divided Wooster Square in half, the western half was kept residential, while the eastern side was devoted to building on the factory base that already existed there. Ives was in one of the newer, smaller, more modern factories added to the landscape. It’s now just the latest of the factories to empty out, the most recent previous case being the Simkins Industries paper recycling plant directly across East Street.
“It stinks,” said “Butch” (pictured on a smoke break Thursday), who’s worked at the plant 29 years. “It’s tough.” Asked if he thinks he’ll find another job in this economy, he replied, “I hope so.” Then he walked back inside: He and the other workers at the plant were under strict company orders not to speak with the press.
The remaining Register workers will now focus on growing the revenue stream with redoubled emphasis on coupon inserts, obituary sales and outrageously large type-face headlines, like:
DUNKIN' MUNCHKINS POPULAR, STUDY SAYS