Numbers don’t lie, unfortunately

In the BJ article announcing Bill Albrecht as GateHouse Media’s publisher at Ol’ Blue Walls, I did some reading between the lines.

Out of the Beacon Journal’s 245 employees (165 full time), 216 received job offers from GateHouse. Some newsroom design desk

employees were told they will have jobs into September.

That means at least 29 were discarded.

So there are 216 in the building where 80 were part-timers before GateHouse. At my retirement in 1996 there were about 900 working at 44 E. Exchange Street.

Since newspapers nationally have lost 95% of their staff since 1990, the decimation continues. Sadly.

Those still at the BJ are my heroes. They are doing an admirable job under extremely difficult circumstances.

Kelly Tremaine, Northeast Ohio Group vice president for GateHouse, will add the Beacon Journa/Ohio.com to his duties. He is in charge of maybe a dozen daily and weekly newspapers in Summit and Portage counties for GateHouse.

Most of the advertising will be processed for the 150 GateHouse newspapers out of Austin, Texas. Those in the BJ’s advertising department before the Gatehouse purchase probably will be gone by September.