Sad Fort Worth and BJ news

McClatchy, which once owned the BJ for 87 seconds, has trimmed its Fort Worth Star-Telegram newsroom editors from 8 to 5. And labels Texas as part of the Midwest.

Editorial control has been ceded to McClatchy editors who don’t live in Fort Worth, much like Gatehouse is wiping out the Ol’ Blue Walls advertising department and turning the job over to folks in Austin, Texas.

Mike Fannin, editor of McClatchy’s Midwest region, slapped the “Midwest” label on Fort Worth. Mike apparently was absent during geography classes.

McClatchy reported a first quarter loss of $38.9 million.

With 95% of newspaper staff nationally gone since 1990, it can only get worse.

My sources tell me that, since Gatehouse took over the BJ’s assets, advertising vice president Vanessa Koper and ad rep Sue Lindeman are gone and the rest of the ad staff will disappear by September so that Gatehouse can handle all 150 of its newspapers’ advertising from Texas.

In the newsroom, I’m told, Kim Barth, Bob DeMay and Dave Helmick are gone.

Bob is a former BJ Guild president and a BJ photo assignment editor and head of the Ohio News Photographers Association.

Kim was Bob’s treasurer with the state photography group.

Which brings to mind these words of wisom from the late Harry Liggett, founder of this blog, in a 2009 article in the BJ Alums blog:

“Thanks be to God we still have guys like Bob DeMay struggling in the trenches.”

Not any more, Harry.

The silver lining is that, I’m told, those rehired by Gatehouse at the BJ still are getting the same weekly paychecks that they had before the assets sale. The only change is from a 37.5-hour to a 40-hour workweek. 

That’s easier to live with than the 10% pay cut forced upon the BJ staff in 2010 by Black Press, which owned the BJ after McClatchy and before Gatehouse, in case you lost track.

It seems like eons since John S. Knight walked into his corner office at 44 E. Exchange Street at the newspaper he rescued from the Great Depression and built into a 33-newspaper empire with far more staff members than there are today.