Like a number of other Gannett newspapers, The Tennessean of Nashville is asking employees to re-apply for their jobs as part of a major restructuring that is meant to create a “bold new structure” for the newsroom, as executive editor Stefanie Murray described it.
The path to that bold future is a winding one. With one month left to go in the restructuring process—employees leaving and arriving, and some declining to apply for any job at all—The Tennessean is, at the moment, short of enough reporters to put out the paper. To fill the staffing gap, Gannett is asking reporters in other newsrooms in the chain to head to Nashville for a few weeks to report for The Tennessean on a temporary basis.
“We are leaning on our sister Gannett publications to send us a few reporters to help out while some of our new hires relocate to Nashville,” Murray wrote in an email to CJR. “And we are very thankful for that support!” (Jim Romenesko received a very similar email this afternoon.)
Despite rumors moving through Gannett newsrooms in other cities, The Tennessean is not using temp workers, and Murray said it is “not true” that an unexpectedly large number of employees had left the paper. But, she said, “We do [have] several open jobs at this moment as folks come and go, and that’s been apparent by the 20+ job postings that have been on the Gannett careers website for the past month.”
When those new hires do get in place, they will fill a newsroom that is both reconfigured and somewhat smaller. The restructuring calls for additional columnists, a new reporting slot covering University of Tennessee sports, two reporters on Nashville retail, and another reporting on tourism. The plans call for a four-person investigation team, and staff members focused entirely on community engagement. According to Poynter, while the reporting staff will grow from 37 to 43, management positions will drop from 17 to 10. In total, Nashville Public Radio has reported, the newsroom will shrink from 89 to 76 positions.
One of the journalists departing the paper is popular music columnist Peter Cooper, who has taken a job with the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and will leave next month, though Cooper told me in an email that the move “is not due to any changes at The Tennessean.” The paper published the news of Cooper’s leave-taking today, a little more than a week after it listed him as part of a nine-member columnist team; today’s story said The Tennessean “will be recruiting for a significant new talent in this role.”
Cooper said that the restructuring is unfolding in a year with a great deal of talent transition at the Nashville paper.
“The Tennessean seems to be a testing ground for new ideas about work flow, metrics, and staffing,” he said. “I also think it’s worth noting that some remarkable journalists (I’m not including myself in that category!) have left the building this year, the same year that the great John Seigenthaler died.”
Seigenthaler was the longtime editor and publisher of The Tennessean, as well as a key figure at USA Today, who died in July.
Among those who have reportedly exited The Tennessean during the restructuring period are Brian Haas, the police cops and courts reporter; Josh Cooper, who covered the Nashville Predators; metro reporter Michael Cass; photo editor Tom Stanford; high school sports reporters Chip Cirillo and Maurice Patton; travel and society reporter Rusty Terry; and photographer/videographer Steve Harman.* Walter F. Roche, who wrote an acclaimed series on abuses by court-appointed conservators, quit the paper in June.
At the same time, the paper has recently rehired a couple of its former employees, including food critic Jim Myers as a restaurant columnist and Brad Schmitt as the “Inside Nashville” columnist.
* Corrections: This sentence originally included the name of a journalist who remains employed at The Tennessean. In addition, Steve Harman’s name was misspelled.
Anna Clark is a journalist in Detroit. Her writing has appeared in ELLE Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Next City, and other publications. Anna edited A Detroit Anthology, a Michigan Notable Book, and she was a 2017 Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy, published by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt. She is online at www.annaclark.net and on Twitter @annaleighclark.