Telegram lays off longtime columnist McFarlane, several others
Photo | Grant Welker
The Telegram & Gazette offices on Front Street in Worcester
The Worcester Telegram & Gazette laid off a longtime columnist and several other employees Tuesday roughly a week after its parent company announced a potential agreement for a major acquisition to create by far the media industry's largest company.
Clive McFarlane, who said he was a Telegram columnist for 26 years, posted on Facebook he had been let go.
"I was unceremoniously shown the door today by Gatehouse, deprived even of the long-established protocol of allowing a columnist to bid farewell to his readers," McFarlane wrote. "So I’ll say it here. It has been a long, rewarding trip, during which my life was made richer by so many of the people I’ve had the pleasure to write about."
Roughly six people were laid off in total at the Telegram, including in advertising and pre-press operations.
The newspaper also let go of Peter Cohan, a business author and Babson College lecturer. Cohan wrote a business column once or twice a week for the Telegram for about eight years.
Other newspapers under Telegram parent GateHouse Media had layoffs, including at the Cape Cod Times, The Herald News in Fall River and The Standard-Times in New Bedford, according to the industry nonprofit Poynter Institute.
Wheeler Cowperthwaite, a Cape Cod Times crime reporter, posted on Twitter he was laid off, and a copy editor at the Taunton Daily Gazette said The Herald News let go a sports editor and a photographer. The Fall River newspaper now has no full-time photographers on staff.
GateHouse Media, which also owns the MetroWest Daily News, Milford Daily News, Worcester Magazine and others, announced on Aug. 5 its plans to buy Gannett, the publisher of USA Today and daily newspapers scattered across the country. The deal, if completed, would create the largest owner of newspapers in the industry.
The deal would likely lead to more layoffs in an industry decimated by cuts forced by declines in advertising and subscription revenue as well as a consolidation of more papers under fewer owners. GateHouse, a public company based in New York, said last week it hopes to see up to $300 million in annual savings by buying Gannett.
Gannett only has one newspaper in New England, the Burlington Free Press in Vermont.
GateHouse has already had several rounds of layoffs this year, including in May, when six Telegram employees and two at Worcester Magazine, longtime editor Walter Bird Jr. and writer Josh Lyford, were cut. In July, the Telegram began running Worcester Magazine as a weekly insert to replace its arts and entertainment section.
GateHouse, which owns most daily newspapers in Central and Eastern Massachusetts, last year bought Worcester Magazine, The Gardner News, the Holden Landmark, baystateparent magazine, the Grafton News, the Millbury-Sutton Chronicle and the Leominster Champion.
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Paul Provost is running a clown show at the Telegram & Gazette. First, Dianne Williamson ... Now, Clive McFarlane - among others. Two of many reasons I no longer subscribe to the print edition of the T&G - including the Sunday Telegram.
Gatehouse is ruining what was once a great Central MA newspaper. The quality and quantity for that matter have dropped off dramatically since Gatehouse has bought this publication. And what a slap in the face. It's going to spend big money for another company, yet it lays off it's current employees that create the product they are making money off of. It's a disgrace. The owners of Gatehouse should be ashamed. But they are not- because people like that care about only themselves.
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