For brevity, “staffers” refers to both current and former employees in this story. (Roughly a dozen current and former RTD staffers were interviewed for this story. Virginia is a one-party consent state for recordings, so only one person in a conversation has to agree to being recorded. It’s a blow to the editors who remain, as well as the reporters.” “Ramsey was literally holding this newsroom together,” he said. In the recording, a longtime staffer questioned what the layoffs meant for the future of the paper, saying Ramsey was the best editor in the newsroom, the sentiment of many staffers. “This is a terrible decision, and whoever was in charge of it should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.”
Aside from Coates, Style is keeping the names of journalists on the recording anonymous out of concerns of retribution against them by RTD top brass. “It’s just not true,” a reporter said in an audio recording of the meeting that was provided to Style by multiple staffers. In the April Zoom call, the staff was irate, especially about losing Ramsey.Īnother editor tried to be supportive, saying that after losing people in the past, the paper had always regrouped and come back stronger. Now, it appears that the newsroom is being gutted. Columnist Michael Paul Williams’ commentary about the latter topics earned him a Pulitzer. In 2020, the Metro team’s reporting on the pandemic, the George Floyd protests and the removal of Confederate monuments was considered a high watermark for journalism at the paper.
Since last November, more than a third of the newsroom’s roughly 60 positions had been eliminated through layoffs and attrition.Īnd since the April 14 layoffs, the organization has lost an average of an additional person or two per week, including both of its human resources officers.įor both employees and readers of the RTD, the turnaround has been stunning. In February, the RTD laid off Mark Robinson, one of the newsroom’s star reporters, and two copy editors. Last December, Karri Peifer, an editor who had held various posts at the paper, was let go. The layoffs were a continuation of a trend. John Reid Blackwell, the paper’s lone remaining business reporter, resigned in protest. It was Thursday, April 14, and with barely a month in the executive editor chair, Coates had laid off three editors earlier that day: news editors John Ramsey and Reed Williams and opinion editor Lisa Vernon Sparks. This was a position elimination decision. Three layoffs in the newsroom today,” said Chris Coates, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s executive editor, on the staff call. “I just want to say that today we made some layoff announcements.
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