The day the BJ music died

The beginning of the BJ newsroom decline began in 2001, when buyouts removed 492 years of experience.

The Beacon Journal was 175 years old on that sad day.

The horrific numbers:

Tom Melody, Jan 3, 1961                 40 years
Art Krummel, Sept. 10, 1962        39 years

Sandy Levenson, March 14, 1966  35 years
Mickey Porter, June 20, 1966      35 years

Joan Rice, Feb. 14, 1966           35 years

Bill Bierman, June 26, 1967       34 years

Diane Lynch, Nov. 4, 1968             33 years
George Davis, Nov. 24, 1969      32 years

Tim Hayes, Nov. 29, 1971             30 years
Bill Canterbury, July 12, 1971    30 years

Bob Hoiles, Jan. 8, 1973             28 years

Dennis McEaneney, Jan. 15, 1977 24 years

Mark Braykovich, Aug. 30, 1998  3 years

Barb Mudrak Galloway, Jan. 16, 1978      23 years
Steve Love, May 29, 1979          22 years
Jim Quinn, June 29, 1981           20 years

Laura Haferd, Feb. 22, 1982        19 years
Terence Oliver, Feb. 18, 1991    10 years

   Total               510 years 

As it has in newspapers all over the nation, the newsroom reductions, by whatever name you want to give them -- buyouts, layoffs -- continued.

In 2006 more than 40 said goodbye to Beacon Blue.

In 2008 another 350 years of experience walked out the door, packaged with a 15% across-the-board pay cut for those who remained.

This month the BJ notified the Guild that it wanted to pare five more newsroom bodies through buyouts.

In the Features Department alone, no longer do David Bianculli, Mark Dawidziak, Joan Rice, Jane Snow, Polly Paffilas, Don Rosenberg, Bill O'Connor and John Olesky show up. Only their ghosts remain, to chat across the room with icons Fran Murphey, Pat Englehart and Harry Liggett.

In what once had been a newsroom with maybe 250 dedicated workers, if you included reporters, editors, interns and secretaries, the total will be perilously close to 60 once the March reduction is put into place.

When Bluefield, West Virginia native John S. Knight died, his newspaper empire was worth $1 billion and his personal wealth was $200 million.

Today, looking at what has happened to the Great Depression era in-debt newspaper that he expanded into a newspaper chain, JSK may be setting the record for grave revolutions per minute.