A memo from David Ledford to NJ reporters, editors and other staff went out with a list of the new job descriptions that NJ employees need to fit into (see below). You’ll recall that NJ employees are going to be required to re-apply for their jobs, re-interview I suppose, and convince whoever is in charge of this business that they should still be around. After reading the memo and the Job Descriptions (see below), this is just an odd thing. It certainly looks like they are using this exercise to orient themselves to the web and it looks like they are going to reduce positions. It isn’t immediately clear that some of the folks on the editorial page would fit into this order. Which (even though they make me mad sometimes) seems like a waste of knowledge. I understand that some of the NJ folks have already decided that they will not re-apply and are walking away. Over the past year, that’s quite the exodus of local knowledge.
I don’t quite get the business of re-applying for a job. You’d think that the editors of this paper might know enough about the people who work for them and enough about their new mission to be able to match up skills with needs. There’s something incredibly mean about this, as if to outsource any blame for staff reductions by saying that the employees who are gone did not fit. Even if the goal was to reduce overall staff numbers in the first place. As was pointed out to me, if these editors don’t know enough about the skills and capabilities of these folks, then maybe *they* are the ones who should be re-applying for jobs.
Another thing I don’t get is what this is meant to accomplish — other than even more staff reductions. (Seriously, how heartbreaking is it to see that there is more coverage of entertainment and “cool ideas” than for Wilmington and NCCo.) I’ve heard that Gannett’s paywall strategy has been a dud and why not? If the NJ is any indicator, they provide readers with less product and they charge more for it. Where’s the value to consumers for all of this?
Still, there’s more change to the NJ coming folks. And the question is how much less of a paper can this be before everyone abandons it?
h/t Anonymous Source