With so many writers and editors having been ousted, or accepting buyouts, in the first zillion rounds of newspaper downsizing, the common cost-cutting (and quality-lowering) strategies have shifted to the production arena. You don’t hear so much about these victims, because they tend not to have columns and blogs and such with which to spread their discontent to hordes of readers. But these are longtime, hard-working career journalists all the same.
A couple of weeks ago, Matt Ford, Production Manager of the New Haven Advocate, was let go. The three papers in the Advocate/Weekly chain now have just one full-time Production staffer. (The extremely nice Peter Uus, who’s been with the chain since the early ‘90s.) I worked closely with Matt for years, and while he didn’t always do the things which I tried to browbeat him into doing, he was always amusing about it. He also had “alternative” values that were needed at the paper—a taste for Z-grade horror flicks, local bands and social media that really enforced the Advocate atmosphere. I made Matt a regular contributor to the the short-review “Advocations” column I edited.
Some months ago, the Advocate/Weekly chain had most of its production duties taken over by workers in another part of the country, at a daily owned by same corporation which owns the Hartford Courant (which owns the Advocate/Weekly threesome). With Matt’s layoff, the papers—which have endured pinch after pinch, and now subsist at the lowest page-count and lowest amount of editorial content in the chain’s 40-year history—are in yet another phase removing them from the robust, interactive, community-based team-sport which these publications distinguished themselves as just a few years ago.

Meanwhile, next door to the Advocate’s old (1990s) offices near Long Wharf, New Haven’s equally hardhit daily, The Register, has announced plans to close its pressroom and outsource the printing of the paper to—hey, wow!—the Hartford Courant. Then the Register will sell its landmark highway-abutting headquarters at 40 Sargent Drive. The editorial operations will move downtown, where the Register hopes to start a community-friendly “open newsroom” along the lines of its sister paper The Register Citizen’s Newsroom Café in Torrington.

This is stunning news for those of us who remember the days when two separate dailies (the morning Journal-Courier and the evening Register) were still being created at 40 Sargent, not even 25 years ago. There are massive advantages to the move, including a new mobility for Register reporters. I recall when the New Haven Advocate offices moved downtown, and suddenly we could see whether there was big doings at the courthouse just from looking out our window. I once saw a protest marching down Church Street and was able to catch up with it within a couple of minutes. I watched the wrecking balls take down the old Hallock’s building through the window at my desk. It’s intoxicating to report on a city from the center of it, and I wish the Register reporters the best of luck in their (as yet undetermined) new location. The Register’s always been about “Community rooms” at their old place and “What should we cover now?” on their website, so they should be a great addition to whatever neighborhood they turn up in.