Gannett is slashing the workforce in half at its recently acquired North Jersey Media Group, which includes the state’s No. 2 newspaper, The Record.
Stunned employees learned during meetings on Wednesday that 327 editorial positions will be chopped down to 190 and all workers will have to reapply for posted jobs.
The cuts to other departments will be even deeper, resulting in the elimination of about half the NJ group’s 426 employees.
Gannett bought the 121-year-old Record and its sister papers and websites from the Borg family for an estimated $40 million in July.
Staffers on Wednesday were taken off site to The Terrace, a banquet hall in Paramus, where Gannett’s newly installed brass, including Editor Richard Green and President Nancy Meyer, delivered the bad news.
One insider described staffers as “shell shocked” and the mood as total “devastation.” The Borg family owned the paper for four generations, stretching over 86 years, and many employees have spent their entire careers at the paper.
Copy editors already had an inkling of what was coming as they were told recently that their jobs were going to be moved to the Gannett-owned Asbury Park Press.
There was trepidation among the rest of the staff when they were alerted Tuesday to the all-hands-on-deck meeting. Still, the scope of the layoffs came as a shock.
Laid off workers will get one week of severance for each year of service with a maximum of 36 weeks, sources said.
“It is painful to see a staff reduction,” said Green, who arrived from the Enquirer Media Group in Cincinnati two weeks ago, replacing Deirdre Sykes. “However, I am confident a new structure and content strategy will protect the award-winning sophisticated work this team produces and expand significantly our digital presence.”
In addition to the The Record that serves Bergen County, the NJ group includes daily The Herald News, along with 49 weekly newspapers and several magazines. Gannett will combine the staffs at the weeklies and close about 20 of those papers, sources said.
Gannett expects to complete the downsizing by mid-November.