Where did the Buffalo News Go?

You won’t read about it in the Buffalo News, but here’s an online piece by Bruce Jackson. You can find his complete story by clicking on the headline.

By Bruce Jackson
Buffalo, NY - In the next few months, the Buffalo News will announce that it is planning to kill its evening editions and terminate as many as 370 full-time employees, plus the jobs of all the kids who deliver those evening newspapers on their bikes and the older guys who deliver them from cars. People around the News know what's about to happen and they're miserable about it, but you knew nothing about it because the News's editors decided to permit nothing about that major unemployment story to appear in its pages.

The News is also about to shut down two of its three suburban bureaus: Northtowns and Southtowns. Only the Niagara Falls office will remain open. Those bureaus provide reporters and area residents quick and easy access to one another. When the bureau reporters are shifted to jobs at what they call "One Snooze Plaza," that access will be lost. That major change in coverage hasn't been noted in the newspaper's pages either.

Neither has the News permitted coverage of its own long-term labor dispute: the Buffalo News's Guild members have been working without a contract since last July 31. The News wants Guild members to give up significant portions of their health benefits. Guild members are resisting, saying they've sat still for 2 percent pay raises for years in exchange for the promise of exactly those health benefits the publisher now wants to peel away.
(You can get the latest on this at the Guild website: http://buffalonewspaperguild.com).