Interns Lose Slots at Gannett Paper
The Gannett Co. newspaper in Montgomery, Ala., was forced to make quick and drastic budget cuts last week, editor Wanda Lloyd told Journal-isms on Monday, leaving three interns suddenly without summer jobs. Similar cuts could be coming at other Gannett properties.
The displaced interns were instantly picked up by Schurz Communications, a South Bend, Ind., media company that owns 15 dailies and five weeklies. Charles V. Pittman, the company’s senior vice president-newspapers, had just addressed the interns Friday at the Freedom Forum’s Diversity Institute in Nashville, and said he could not let “these young people have their internship pulled out from under them.”
The three students will be going to the Herald Times in Bloomington, Ind. Schurz is taking a total of 13 interns, all of them trained in a joint multimedia program of Black College Wire and the Diversity Institute.
“I would not have done this if I had any other choice,” Lloyd, editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, told Journal-isms. She said that after a recent meeting of Gannett publishers, she was told by her publisher, Scott Brown, that the newspaper would be asked to take a look at possible cuts for the rest of 2007. She was on vacation last week attending a high-school reunion.
Media of Birmingham 