In this post from last week, Gannett Blog picked up on the fact that the Asheville Citizen-Times had a series problem at its printing plant and was forced to have the newspaper printed at its sister location in Greenville, S.C. Gannett Blog also noted that the Citizen-Times recently laid off the guy who directed the printing operation out at Sardis Road, Jim Burns.
The commenters at Gannett Blog started going back and forth about how good a manager Burns was. I didn’t work for him, so I don’t know. In the encounters I had with him, he appeared to be professional, friendly and he got the job done.
But the real question is — what does the printing problem portend for the future? My guess is that the Citizen-Times will close its Sardis Road printing plant and start having the paper printed in Greenville on a daily basis. It would save ton of money. And the Sardis printing press is getting old. I believe its about 20 years old, which is ancient in terms of presses. Finally, the overall print quality of the paper has never been great, so why not close it? The Hendersonville Times-News closed down its printing operation more than a year ago and has its paper printed at its sister location in Spartanburg, S.C.
It would be a sad day for Asheville to no longer have a daily paper printed in town. It would end a streak of more than 125 years of daily newspaper production in town. But my guess is that’s where things are headed.
2 Comments
20 years old is NOT old for a printing press. Many workhorse presses are WWII vintage and still going strong. Not digital, but reliable and high quality.
So here is my thought. What is up with Gannett? They let people go that in most cases pulled their own weight. The ACT has been so understaffed that those in charge of the departments were doing a lot of work to fill the gaps left by previous lay offs.
So you make the ship captain walk the plank you are sure to have a mutiny or the least sink when you run aground.
Is it true what I have read about Gannett selling off small newspapers in areas such as ours? That would be the best thing that could happen to the employees of the Asheville paper. A fresh new start and parent company, maybe without an Adverting Director and instead a Creative Director. How bout them apples.