Sixteen area newspapers have bitten the dust, and 21 reporters and editors are out of jobs.
Employees of the Journal Register Co. received that pre-Christmas surprise late Thursday afternoon at a meeting at the main New Haven Register plant on Sargent Drive in New Haven.
General Manager John Slater informed those assembled that the company is immediately shutting down the eight weeklies in the company’s Shoreline divisions and the eight in its Elm City chain, according to employees.
The papers affected include the Branford Review, Hamden Chronicle, Milford Weekly, Stratford Bard, North Haven Post, Shelton Weekly, West Haven News, Wallingford Voice, Clinton Recorder, East Haven Advertisers, among others. (Find the full list here.)
“It’s like, ‘Merry Fucking Christmas,’ you know?” said one employee present at the meeting. Not that the announcement was a total surprise: “We’ve been in such flux for so long. They consolidated us. They moved us to New Haven. The writing was on the wall.”
Management did give employees signing confidential agreements two weeks’ severance pay for each year of employment.
Thursday’s announcement was just the latest in a wave of layoffs hitting area news organizations and companies in general in the face of the recession. Workers at the New Haven Register, flagship of the Journal Register Co. chain, are bracing for yet more possible layoffs next month upon the expiration of a debt-holders’ forbearance plan. Journal-Register has also announced it plans to close two Connecticut dailies, the Bristol Press and New Britain Herald, as well as the 11 weeklies in its Imprint chain if no buyer is found by Jan. 12.
The weekly Branford Review began publishing in 1928 and has played a central role in the town since. Click here for a recent article on the paper by Marcia Chambers.
A few of these papers cost 50 cents.
shoreline Times mails papers to entire towns for free. I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner.