Most of the reporters who worked at one of Tennessee’s biggest newspapers before its sale to father-and-son freight magnates Max and Craig Fuller in late July are gone less than a month later.
The Chattanooga Times Free Press let go two more news reporters and a sportswriter in a second round of layoffs Aug. 20. And those numbers will continue to dwindle; several reporters have handed in their notices in recent weeks. In total, the newspaper is on track to keep just five of the 15 reporters who worked there before the Fullers took over.
Arkansas-based WEHCO Media sold the Times Free Press, a daily paper that circulates throughout Southeast Tennessee, North Georgia and part of Alabama, to the Fullers on July 31. The day before, WEHCO, acting on behalf
of the new owners, dismissed dozens of Times Free Press staffers, including three reporters, three news editors and dozens of people who helped print and distribute the paper. Some were told to leave immediately, while others were told they’d be retained for 90 days.
The Times Free Press serves Chattanooga, Tennessee's fourth-largest city. It puts out a newspaper once a week and maintains a website that publishes on a daily cadence, reflecting the newsroom's roots as a daily newspaper.
Some of the staff reduction is part of a business strategy Craig Fuller has publicly compared to Elon Musk’s. It's driven growth in paper subscriptions, he said on social media.
"The haters would say that it's because everyone loves watching a train wreck," he said. But "(i)t's because we have reinforced local and bringing back community to the community newspaper."
In addition to the two news reporters and the sports reporter, 10 other staffers were let go in the layoffs Aug. 21.
The Times Free Press, which had about 12,000 subscribers prior to its sale, according to the previous and new owners, also is down two more editors since the initial layoffs. One of the editors helped develop the paper’s longer-form reporting, and the other headed up the liberal half of the paper’s dual liberal/conservative opinion section, a longtime feature of the Times Free Press.
Some of the people who've left the paper had worked there for a year or two. Others had put in decades. Its staffers − including several who've been laid off − routinely win statewide awards for their reporting and opinion pieces.
Before its sale, Times Free Press starts counting down from 15 reporters
Before the sale closed, the paper's new owners said they were diving into staff bios to figure out who to keep. The Times Free Press' local government reporter, Siena Duncan, and its growth reporter, Raymon Troncoso, both were cut amid the first round of layoffs, which WEHCO initiated on behalf of the new ownership. They received severance from WEHCO, according to Craig Fuller.
Then, the remaining reporters were asked to sign a new contract. One provision bars them from disparaging the company for 10 years if they leave the newsroom.
Mary Fortune Shaffer, who was an editor at the paper but quit after the sale, told Knox News the first contract staffers were asked to sign after the Fullers bought the newspaper would have prevented people who stayed from criticizing the company forever.
"From what I understand, the reporters got together and collectively bargained down a couple of the more egregious requirements to merely offensive," she said.
Two reporters quit instead instead of signing.
August layoffs followed resignations
Under Craig Fuller, who also owns lifestyle-centric Firecrown Media, the paper has dispensed with three news reporters since the first round of layoffs in July.
The paper's politics reporter, Ruby Rayner, was fired about a week after the sale went through, shortly before a statewide primary election. The paper’s education reporter, Shannon Coan, was laid off. So was Jules Feeney, the reporter tasked with covering the local impact of federal changes in the Chattanooga area.
Ben Sessoms, the liberal opinion editor, was fired.
"Our goal is not simply to operate a smaller organization," Craig Fuller said in an email to newspaper staff announcing the Aug. 20 layoffs, "it's to create a stronger one."
That could mean raises and other incentives for those who remain, he said, along with an end to major pay disparities between reporters.
There was too much national news in the paper before the sale, Craig Fuller said in a call with Knox News on Aug. 17. He said he hopes to expand the paper's local coverage and that the layoffs were a means to that end. The people who left voluntarily after the sale were offered buyouts, he said.
Craig Fuller said the Times Free Press has in hand five signed offers for new reporters and hopes to hire more. The newsroom will also expand its sports coverage, he said. The Times Free Press isn't profitable, he said, but he said he hopes it will be.
Before he and his father bought the news organization, Craig Fuller told Knox News, the previous owners told them that 12 people – the vast majority of the paper’s reporting staff at the time – focused on reporting about the "city." In newsroom parlance, a city beat almost always means covering city government. Many of the current and former reporters Fuller mentioned do not report on the Chattanooga City Council as part of their regular duties.
The information the Fullers got from WEHCO was minimal, Craig Fuller said. He said they'd received a spreadsheet with some employee information. "I show that there were 18 employees listed under "editorial-city" at the time of closing, according to the spreadsheet we were given," and 12 of them were described as reporters, he said in a subsequent email.
"We believed that 12 reporters doing city reporting was way too much for a city the size of Chattanooga and wanted to reduce that beat so we could invest in more business and community reporting," he said.
Reached by phone, Eliza Hussman Gaines, the publisher of WEHCO Media, referred to a press release WEHCO published when the sale was announced and declined to comment further.
In an Aug. 17 call with Knox News, Craig Fuller didn’t rule out further layoffs. A few days later, he told the Times Free Press' remaining employees that 13 − including the two reporters and sportswriter − people had been laid off "to better align the size of the organization with our current operations."
Chattanooga newsroom to shift coverage priorities
Craig Fuller has derided the newsroom's former leadership and approach to newsgathering on social media. Topics such as religion were too focused on conflict, he said in a recent social media post. That will change, he said.
So will the news organization's opinion section. Since two newspapers merged to form the Times Free Press in the 1990s, the opinion section has been split between two editorial pages − one written from a liberal political perspective, and one with a conservative viewpoint. The space devoted to opinion content in the daily e-edition and the Sunday newspaper has been cut since the sale.
Craig Fuller confirmed that Sessoms, the paper's liberal opinion editor, was fired. Before he was fired, Sessoms posted on social media a meme to criticize Fuller's position on a law related to Amazon workers.
The news organization's conservative editor is planning to retire. Neither of the opinion editors will be replaced, Fuller said. The newsroom will instead publish opinion pieces from a number of different people who are not paid staff.
Coan, Ryaner and Sessoms confirmed they were no longer at the Times Free Press but declined to comment.
Feeney, the reporter who covered how federal news affects Chattanooga until he was laid off, recently bought a home in the city. He was the Times Free Press' Report for America fellow, and he said he'd hoped to spend years with the newspaper. Report for America is a two-year program, though some stay for an optional third year.
"I had every intention of staying for two or even three years, if everyone was happy," he said. "I am committed to this community."
Business as usual or a bad sign for a big part of Tennessee?
The Fullers are new to the newspaper business. Max Fuller cofounded U.S. Xpress Enterprises, a shipping company, and his son Craig Fuller owns companies including Firecrown, a media company that publishes luxury hobby-focused reporting.
Their newness means on-the-job learning and a "chaotic" transition for the paper's employees, Craig Fuller told Times Free Press staffers before the sale.
Some of Craig Fuller's Firecrown employees have taken on managerial roles at the Times Free Press. An email to all Times Free Press and all Firecrown employees lists Firecrown staffers as points of contact for accounting, IT and legal questions. Human resources, according to the email and the Times Free Press' contact web page, is being handled by a Firecrown employee.
Stephen Hargis, who’s now managing editor of the newspaper, previously worked for the Times Free Press for decades as a sports reporter and sports editor. He said he’s seen major layoffs and company sales before. That wasn’t the case for everyone who’s left or been forced out in the most recent round, he said.
“I think we had a lot of younger reporters in the newsroom,” he said. “It’s the worst thing they’ve dealt with in their careers, and hopefully it’s going to be the worst thing they deal with in their careers moving forward.”
More perspective has helped him keep his equilibrium, he said.
Layoffs are common when there’s an ownership shuffle at local media companies, said Zach Metzger, who heads up the State of Local News Project at Northwestern University’s journalism school. But they often signal a shift towards national coverage, Metzger said, rather than the local reporting Craig Fuller's said he's aiming for.
"One of the most immediate effects I think that happens is you just get a lot less kind of diversity of news coverage and a lot of the sort of traditional beats of journalism − a lot of those start to disappear," he said, "whether that's education reporting, military-specific reporting, reporting around sort of specific sectors of the economy within that area."
The newsroom isn't part of a network that can provide other reporting to fill in gaps, he noted. That could leave the Times Free Press with the option of publishing more, not less, national news. And studies show less local news often means there is more corruption, higher taxes and lower turnout for local elections.
Mariah Franklin reports on technology and energy for Knox News. Email: mariah.franklin@knoxnews.com. Signal: mariahfranklin.01
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Chattanooga Times Free Press new owners continue to shrink the newsroom
