The Michigan Messenger

LANSING — When Gannett announced a wave of cuts to staff at newspapers around the country, it also eliminated some of the longest serving media representatives from local news outlets. And that has some in the news industry questioning where those newspapers will go from here.

At the Lansing State Journal, the publishers terminated several staffers from their entertainment department, including 34-year veteran reporter Mike Hughes. That move, combined with a buyout of Capitol Correspondent Chris Andrews, has competitor City Pulse asking questions.

Among the concerns expressed included the replacement of these senior reporters with less experienced, and there fore lower paying reporters.

“Clearly young people are great. They bring new ideas but they don’t know the players. They don’t know the history and as a result stories, even by Gannett standards, are shallow,” said City Pulse editor and publisher Berl Schwartz in a phone interview. “They are hurting already because it gives a little news hole to the paper.”

Former Capitol Correspondent for the Journal Chris Andrews, who took a buyout last year in order to retire early, echoed those concerns.

“It is a concern. I think it is harder, and more of a challenge to cover the community,” Andrews said in a phone interview.

And Hugh Leach, who also recently retired with a buyout from the company, said he too was concerned about the impact on coverage by the loss of institutional memory.

“I think the depth may be missing that might have been there before,” Leach said.”They might be covering the current event but as for what lead up to it, that might not be there to completely explain what is happening.”

But Lansing State Journal Executive Editor Mickey Hirten doesn’t want to discuss the layoffs or their impact on news coverage.

“I m not going to discuss the latest rounds of layoffs,” he said in a phone interview. “I don’t really feel like it.”

City Pulse’s Schwartz criticized Hirten’s response.

“A newspaper belongs to the community as much as it does to the owner,” he said. “Publishers of other Gannett newspapers wrote letters to readers explaining the recent round of layoffs. It’s disappointing that neither the publisher nor the editor of the Lansing State Journal sees the need to do so. Moreover, kissing off a 34-year employee like Mike Hughes, who is an institution in this market, with nothing more than ‘his column is no longer available’ is appalling, both in terms of community relations and common decency toward a very hard-working employee.”