This week, the Buffalo Newspaper Guild joined other unions at newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises in a public awareness campaign. #LeeUnionsRaisingAwareness
Lee Enterprises, in its latest move to drain resources from one of its properties, has gotten rid of our award-winning news design desk at The Buffalo News. You may have noticed if you’ve seen the pages of the newspaper lately.
The last of the local workers whose job was to create gorgeous, eye-catching newspaper pages lost their jobs as of two weeks ago.
Lee took their work and moved it to a corporate hub.
Because of this cutback on local jobs, The News’ pages are put together for “efficiency” by workers who do the same work for multiple other publications at the same time. So our readers are left with the boring, plain and uninspired pages we see today.
This change is NOT because the actual printing of the paper has moved — at least not yet. Lee wants to move the printing of The News three hours away to Cleveland. The company plans to shift printing to Cleveland by Oct. 1, putting 128 employees out of work.
These aren’t the only ways Lee has disinvested in operations in Buffalo and Western New York, moves that hurt News readers and subscribers, the community and its own workforce.
Lee previously outsourced customer service work from Buffalo. Two photojournalist positions were cut last year. In February, in response to imposed cuts in the newsroom, three veteran Guild journalists took buyouts in order to spare others from losing their jobs. The News will soon be outsourcing its accounting, bookkeeping and credit department.
We stand in solidarity with the Unions of Lee Enterprises as we highlight the destructive actions of our owner.
Since Lee bought the News, the message has been clear. We’re left to wonder how much cutting will be enough for Lee.
We want them to invest in The Buffalo News. To invest in Buffalo. To invest in us.
We shared this message on Twitter and Facebook. Please consider sharing our posts.
We also heard from subscribers and readers asking what they can do.
Let Lee Enterprises know how you feel.
- Kevin Mowbray, president and CEO, kevin.mowbray@lee.net
- Jason Adrians, VP/local news, JAdrians@madison.com
- Nathan Bekke, VP/audience strategy, Nathan.Bekke@lee.net
- Paige Mudd, East region news director, PMudd@timesdispatch.com
Buffalo Newspaper Guild CWA Local 31026 