As a former metro reporter for the Daytona Beach News-Journal, I asked its publisher, Michael Redding of Halifax Media the following in an e-mail overnight Tuesday: "I have one question for you regarding your acquisition of 16 New York Times newspapers for $142 million in cash "subject to certain adjustments." WHAT EXACTLY DOES THAT MEAN?
I followed it up by stating: "You can read my blog for my thoughts as someone whose family endured a previous acquisition where 400 employees, give or take, lost their jobs for a $19 million fire sale." I cc'd my question to Robert Christi and Abbe Serphos.
I am curious how Halifax Media is able to accomplish such a monumental acquisition when some 400 News-Journal employees -- give or take -- lost their jobs leading up to the $19 million fire sale of the Daytona Beach News-Journal, which to me, appears to be a shadow of itself. The bureaus were all closed, including the one here on Canal Street in New Smyrna Beach. As for Pulitzers, the News-Journal is not the Gainesville Sun or the Ocala Star Banner or the Sarasota Herald Tribune.
I won quite a few journalism industry awards for the News-Journal, including an honorable mention in 1998, for the James K. Batten Award for Outstanding Public Service. I moved into notorious Spring Hill, the impoverished drug den, telling the story of survival there from the inside looking out. The Miami Herald won the first place award.
That year, I also finished second to the Miami Herald in breaking news for seven straight days of front page coverage of the shooting death of a boy who mistook an elderly man's home for a junkyard office. The Miami Herald was first for its coverage of the capture of Andrew Cunanan in the slaying of fashion designer Gianni Versace. I was the first bureau reporter for the News-Journal to win a journalism award of any kind.
Then I found myself covering police and courts in Daytona Beach and over the next six years winning more than a dozen more journalism awards for breaking news and investigative reporting, including witnessing and reporting on the execution of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, the Trull brothers murder trial, a lawsuit involving NASCAR and one of its independent track owners and a series on murdered children aptly named "Silent Cries."
My family, too was impacted by the sale of the News-Journal to Halifax Media. By that point, I had already moved on to working as a city editor for a small Massachusetts newspaper, where in two years, my staff and I collectively won half a dozen New England press awards and I won a national investigative reporting award.
With the burden of a commute that kept me from my family for weeks at a time, we were able to save our home, but with the strain of finances stretched to the limit and the anger over two lost incomes, our family unit was destroyed. I never wanted my son to grow up in a broken home, but that was our sad reality. I'll leave it at that.
This story has a happy ending, though. My son's mother took a job as a managing editor of a small daily on the other side of the state. With the help of my friend, Peter Mallory, we launched NSBNews.net, Florida's first 24/7 Internet newspaper in April 2008. I have been able to raise my son to adulthood under the same roof and I am happily re-married to a talented and beautiful wife.
To this day, I stand as the only former News-Journal employee still reporting the news in this community. I feel sorry for the 1,700 now-former New York Times employees under the new ownership of the News-Journal, based on the experience of my own family, which suffered greatly.
I have to wonder if the "subject to certain adjustments" means hardworking employees like the several hundred in Daytona Beach being shown the door is the meaning of Redding's convoluted phrase. I seriously doubt this publisher will answer my question directly. He hasn't any of the others I've asked in the nearly four years I've been reporting the news.
