The (Everett) Herald’s relatively new owner Carpenter Media Group has laid off over half of its news staff in a gutting of local journalism.
The Herald’s layoffs cut across all sections, including two top-level editors. Reporters, photographers, the digital media producer and a page designer received layoff notices, the newspaper confirmed. The Herald’s Executive Editor was let go immediately.
Among them is the Herald’s managing news editor, Caleb Hutton. Hutton rose from being an acclaimed investigative reporter to take over for retiring managing news editor Eric Stevick in summer 2021.
Carpenter initially set the Herald staff layoff dates at July 1 but now it is indicating early July, said the Herald’s newsroom union, the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild.
However, Guild president Kaitlin Gillespie said these must go through union bargaining. Gillespie said a date to start bargaining talks hadn’t been set as of Thursday, June 20.
Ten union members were laid off. Editors are not eligible for the union because they have manager duties.
The layoffs leave the Herald’s newsgathering side with six full-time news reporters, one photographer, two sportswriters and two news editors.
One reporter who was laid off described that colleagues were led into a room one-by-one, “execution style.”
Gillespie affirmed the layoffs did not go strictly “first-in, first-out” by seniority. Seniority was just one factor. She understood another deciding factor was the quantity of stories produced. From material she was given, she said she also thinks it’s possible a third factor was how many clicks each reporter’s work generated in internet pageviews, which is a performance measure frowned on by most journalists.
The Herald’s staff unionized in 2022, but do not have a signed binding contract. Even without a contract, federal law requires bargaining sessions for major work changes because the employees are under a union, Gillespie said.
On Monday, June 24, the news staff who are union members conducted a one-day walkout strike in protest of the layoffs. The strike continued Tuesday, June 25.
Meanwhile, a widely spread Herald news story reporting its own layoffs, first published online late Wednesday afternoon and into Thursday’s print edition, was deleted off the internet Thursday mid-morning. The Tribune understands Carpenter ordered the removal, causing a second wave of attention on the Herald’s newsroom layoffs.
A softened version using the same reporter bylines which reframes that Carpenter needed to cut people “to ensure long-term success of the (Herald)” came out Thursday afternoon.
Some staff were ready to walk if something wasn’t put back online acknowledging the layoffs, Hutton said publicly.
In the same stories, the Herald’s publisher Rudi Alcott was quoted as saying operations wouldn’t change. “The readers won’t notice,” Alcott was quoted as saying.
Dominic Gates, an aerospace reporter at The Seattle Times, said on social media that Alcott’s comment insults the readership.
U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen chimed that readers already had noticed.
Alcott did not respond to an emailed request from the Tribune for further clarification about what he meant with what he said in the Herald.
The Herald’s story on the layoffs by Carpenter also were the top headline of an email newsletter from “Editor & Publisher Magazine” that is distributed industry-wide.
Carpenter Media, headquartered in the South, obtained The Herald by way of buying the paper’s parent company Sound Publishing in the wake of the bankruptcy of Sound Publishing’s prior owners Black Press.
It’s cutting beyond Everett: 50 are being laid off at papers across the region within Sound Publishing. Overall, 62 people will be laid off.
Carpenter Media has been buying multiple news media outlets recently, especially in the West.
Earlier in June, Carpenter made cutbacks at Oregon papers after buying news outlets there.
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For the record: The Tribune is not a Sound Publishing entity. We’re owned by Pacific Publishing Company.
