Eleven copy editors were laid off from the Detroit Free Press this month and their work was outsourced to another Gannett property in Kentucky. Lou Mlzecko, a former Detroit News reporter and Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame member who finished his career as head of the Detroit Newspaper Guild, wrote this in response to the layoffs.
By Lou Mleczko
Gannett has been a plague on good journalism ever since it was invited in by the family that owned The Detroit News and sold the paper in 1985 to these corporate jackals.
Gannett quickly conspired with Knight Ridder, then the owner of Free Press, to apply for a Joint Operating Agreement---effectively ending competitive journalism that benefited Michigan citizens for more than 100 years.
The Guild and the other unions fought this terrible merger, but after a four-year legal fight, lost on a 4-4 vote with one abstention by the Supreme Court.
Then in 1995, Gannett triggered a five-year strike/lockout in a brazen attempt to destroy six unions, including the Guild.
Gannett eventually settled with the unions, but in 2007 bought the Free Press while retaining 95-percent financial control of the the News.
Now Gannett continues its assault on the paper's viability by gutting the local copy desk and outsourcing this vital work to clueless editors in Kentucky.
Here's one example in today's Free Press where a local copy editor would have caught an error: A photo cutline on page 5-A has the incorrect spelling of a freeway. It should be Davison freeway, not "Davidson" freeway.
And Gannett executives and their puppets here in Detroit can't understand why readership and advertisers continue to leave in droves.
