Last week's bloodbath at the Niagara Gazette and its sister papers, which left 27 people jobless, was preceded by a strange directive from management.
"Just prior to the announcement, everyone in the building was told not to talk to anyone from the Niagara Falls Reporter," one employee said. "I thought, we're supposed to be the leaders in this market, but management certainly isn't acting like it."
The reason for the directive became clear shortly afterward, when 27 workers, mostly in the production and circulation departments, received their pink slips. Many were long-term employees, some having worked for the company for more than 30 years.
"People were walking around crying," said a source at the Tonawanda News, where Greater Niagara Newspapers moved production of the Gazette, the Lockport Union Sun & Journal and the Medina Register several years ago.
The savage cutbacks came less than two weeks after the appointment of 45-year-old Wayne Lowman as publisher of the newspaper group by its parent corporation, the Alabama-based Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. But the business difficulties that led to the massacre predate Lowman's arrival.
Industry insiders say that mismanagement during the four years Steve Braver served as publisher of the group were ultimately responsible for the crisis Lowman is now supposed to clean up.
Braver was unceremoniously fired as publisher back in April, although, in its news columns, the Gazette continues to insist he left to pursue other interests. Currently, he is working as a public relations flack for the Seneca Niagara Gaming Corp. His fondness for grabbing the limelight through associations with local political figures and business interests was seen as problematical by many here.
"He spent a lot more time worrying about his positions with the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and the Chamber of Commerce than he did worrying about making the papers profitable," one source said. "I think what's happened is a direct result of that."
Braver was also blamed by his corporate masters for allowing millions of dollars in advertising revenue to be taken away by a revitalized Niagara County edition of the Buffalo News and the Niagara Falls Reporter, which began publication in 2000. The newsrooms and advertising departments of both publications are largely staffed by former Gazette employees who were fired or resigned during Braver's brief reign.
In fairness, the papers were struggling even before Braver's arrival four years ago. When CNHI bought the Gazette from Gannett in 1997, the company paid $22 million, despite the fact that the paper had been appraised at just $16 million. The debt service on that overpayment, amounting to approximately $500,000 a year, has made it difficult to operate the paper and still maintain the 30 percent-plus profit margins demanded by the corporation.
Lowman alluded to the pressure from Alabama in a news release.
"The local economy is improving, but not at a rate that could sustain our current operations and return appropriate value to our shareholders," he said.
In the case of the Gazette and its sister papers, the "shareholders" are members of the Alabama State Pension Fund, which ponied up nearly $2 billion to finance CNHI's acquisition of newspapers around the country.
While Lowman claimed in his press release that the 27 eliminated jobs represented just 12 percent of the company's work force, sources familiar with the operation were skeptical.
"Maybe they're counting the paperboys," said one former GNN executive. "I'd say it's a lot closer to 25 percent."
No corresponding cuts in advertising rates or the cover price of the newspapers were announced. But, perhaps as an indication of things to come, the Gazette mistakenly ran the same editorial cartoon on the day the job cuts were announced as it had the day before.
In his press release, Lowman said, "We remain committed to bringing local readers the very best community newspapers we can and delivering to our advertisers products, services, reach and results that are unequaled in our markets."
The statement had many familiar with the struggling franchise laughing out loud. Few in the community thought the papers were committed to those things prior to the most recent round of firings.
Repeated attempts to reach Lowman were unsuccessful. One call did get through to business reporter Pat Bradley, who politely adopted the Sgt. Schultz, "I know nothing" corporate line. "My instructions are to refer all calls about what happened here today to the publisher," he said.
Perhaps because they've already been slashed to the bone, editorial departments at the newspapers were left largely unscathed in last week's purge. At the Gazette, the number of reporters and editors has been reduced by more than 50 percent over the last four years. Additionally, many of the remaining slots have been filled by recent college graduates with little knowledge of the newspaper business and virtually none of the politics, history or geography of Niagara Falls.
Presiding over the gutting of the newsrooms has been Editor Terry Shaw, who was named to the newly created position of "associate publisher" last week. Despite the precipitous decline in the number and quality of locally written stories appearing in the papers, Shaw's star has risen.
Observers have noted his increasing interest in the business side of the operation in recent months. Prior to his promotion, Shaw chastised state Sen. George Maziarz for running an ad in the Buffalo News promoting the Canal Fest celebration and yelled at Niagara Wine, Food & Jazz Festival organizer Michael Gawel for advertising in the Reporter.
It is unclear whether Shaw's promotion means that Lowman will be an absentee publisher, sent here for the most part simply to make sure that the daily money transfer to Alabama is taken care of. But one thing is certain -- during his years in Western New York, Shaw has gained the reputation of being anything but a "people person."
If he has as much success alienating advertisers and vendors as he's had in alienating reporters and editors, business for the Gazette's competitors will only improve.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 8 2003 |