Scuttlebutt from Freepsters suggests the Gannett-owned Detroit Media Partnership which operates the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press may be poised to axe several of the Free Press’ popular Sunday Community Free Press editions.
If these murmurings are correct, then the Plymouth-Canton-Northville CFP where I worked hard to build readership would be history.
Hope it ain’t so.
Purported reason: CFPs were designed to compete with the suburban Observer & Eccentric chain of papers for readers and ads. But that was before Gannett bought the O & E.
Gannett now controls not only the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, but the O & E.
With the CFPs, Gannett is competing with itself for ad revenue.
Oh, the perils of monopoly!
If this story line is correct, Free Press readers and advertisers in Oakland and western Wayne counties would see the last of a classy alternative to the dull O & E. In fact, latest word has it that the CFPs — all 11 of them — could be dumped in as little as two weeks.
We also hear DMP may move some O & E staffers from the burbs into the News & Free Press headquarters building in Detroit. If true. the O & E newbies might want to bring their own stock of toilet paper. DMP has (again, so we are told), closed several — maybe as many as nine — restrooms in the Lafayette Street building.
Apparently, recent buyouts left the company short on janitors to clean the johns.
Let’s hope these reports are unfounded. We like the CFPs, and we hope they stick around.
And we’d like to think the hard-working journalists who blew the whistle on Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s courtroom double-talk aren’t heading for an outhouse every time nature calls.
Contact us at joelthurtell(a)gmail.com
