Our Fight is RI’s Fight

The purchase of the Providence Journal by LMG/GateHouse threatens our livelihoods and a great Rhode Island institution – and we need your help.

22 of the Providence Newspaper Guild’s 160 members were already laid off and the new owners plan to lay off as many as 40 more in January and February.

Closing down the departments where the advertisements are put together and newspaper is edited, double checked and created will create a product that will be less accurate.
Outsourcing jobs to a “design center” in Texas will put the Providence Journal in the hands of people who don’t understand or care about our state. Pawtucket, Pawtuxet, Pawcatuck. We know the difference.
Outsourcing also takes jobs away from Rhode Island – further hurting our families and slowly recovering economy. We need more jobs, not less.
Not keeping longtime columnist Bob Kerr, for reasons they refuse to explain, shows this out-of-state ownership doesn’t understand Rhode Island, Providence or the Journal.
The 22 layoffs already created a newsroom that doesn’t reflect our great diversity. We now have one reporter of color and not one writer who speak Spanish fluently.
And there is no economic imperative for this. Reports are that at the time of the sale, the Journal was making around $10 million a year. These cuts are not about reinvestment. They are about corporate greed.

Support the Providence Newspaper Guild by writing letters to Kirk Davis, CEO, of Gatehouse Media, Bernard Szachara, Providence Journal Interim Publisher; and Ali Zoibi, Director of Labor Relations, GateHouse Media. Send them to 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI, 02902, and send a copy to us. Ask for a meeting with them. And call the union with other suggestions.

Providence Newspaper Guild, Local 31041

Betsy Regan, Administrator

png1@riguild.org • On Twitter: @We_ARE_Projo • 421-9466