By David Gordon, associate editor
Christena O’Brien became the second long-time reporter to leave the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram in the past four months when she finished her final shift last week.
Both O’Brien and Julian Emerson, who left the paper last March, had been on the reporting staff for more than 20 years. Gary Johnson, the paper’s editor, said in a phone interview that a replacement has been hired to fill O’Brien’s position.
O’Brien and Emerson are only the latest in a string of veteran L-T staff members to depart. Since the paper was sold to Adams Publishing Group (APG) in 2017, at least four other experienced reporters have been let go or have left the paper voluntarily.
That total does not include turnover in the sports department nor does it include Dan Reiland, a photographer who lost his job shortly after the Adams takeover but who was subsequently rehired. It also omits at least two entry-level reporters who moved on soon after the L-T hired them.
Nor does it include the sudden departure of Pieter Graaskamp, the L-T’s publisher, some two months after he and his brother Dan sold the long-time family-owned paper to Adams. Dan Graaskamp is also no longer associated with the Leader-Telegram.
Newsroom casualties
The first newsroom casualties were Chuck Rupnow and Dan Lyksett, who were let go in July, 2017, at the same time as Pieter Graaskamp and Reiland. Those firings were reportedly the result of an edict from APG that one person in each of the paper’s 10 departments had to go.
Since then, Elizabeth Dohms left the paper to join Wisconsin Public Radio and Pam Powers moved from the L-T‘s Menomonie office to the public relations staff at UW-Stout.
Johnson said that, in the wake of Powers’ departure, the Leader-Telegram is cooperating with the Dunn County News, a weekly paper owned by Lee Enterprises, to provide coverage of that area. The two papers share the stories they cover, he said.
Journalism chair’s comments
Jan Larson, chair of the UW-Eau Claire Communication and Journalism Department, expressed concern “about the overall decline in numbers of journalists in Eau Claire and in newsrooms across the nation.
“Journalists are watchdogs, first and foremost,” she said via email. “With fewer journalists on duty, people in power have more opportunity to act with selfish interest rather than in the public good.”
Larson noted that the L-T’s website staff listing has multiple titles after each name and that the four remaining daily reporters can’t possibly do a thorough job of covering the region’s government agencies, schools, law enforcement, courts, health, businesses and industry and the nonprofit sector. This forces the paper to rely heavily on wire services and other non-local sources to fill its pages, she said.
“At this point, I’d call the L-T very close to being a ‘ghost’ newspaper in that it is the shell of its former self,” she said.
(Clarification: in an email after this article was posted, Johnson wrote that all reporters on his staff provide some coverage of daily events in addition to the specific beat assignments that are listed on the website. He added that, when O’Brien’s replacement arrives on Aug. 1, there will be seven reporters available for daily coverage.)
Life after the L-T
O’Brien is moving on to a job as communications manager for the northwest region of the state Department of Transportation. Emerson has worked on several freelance writing projects since leaving the Leader-Telegram in March and recently started a Facebook page dedicated to in-depth journalism.
Johnson said he wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly which newsroom positions have been left vacant and which ones have been filled, but acknowledged that some of the veteran journalists have not been replaced.
“You try to put out the best product you can” with the staff that’s available, he said.
About APG
Adams Publishing Group is based in Minneapolis. It has expanded rapidly since its founding in 2013 and now owns and operates 34 daily newspapers and more than 100 weeklies in 20 states, according to a recent story in the Leader-Telegram.
Five of those daily papers are in Wisconsin, with Janesville and Marinette the most recent acquisitions through Adams’ purchase of Bliss Communications.
Mark Adams, the founder and CEO of APG, spent 20 years with a Boston-based private equity firm specializing in media, according to his company’s website. He has also been a consultant for a number of publishing firms on various subjects related to their business operations.
He is the grandson of Cedric Adams, a long-time popular newspaper and radio-TV journalist in the Upper Midwest and for CBS.
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