Month: April 2017

Employees in The Commercial Appeal’s advertising department have been asked to re-apply for their jobs, according to a source with the Memphis Newspaper Guild.

Daniel Connolly, president of the Guild, said no other departments at the Memphis daily newspaper have been affected, only advertising. He said the process is ongoing and that the deadline for employees to turn in resumes for those jobs was earlier this week.

“The Guild filed a grievance (formal complaint) about this process last week and requested information,” Connolly said. “We’ve received some information back from the company and we’re reviewing the issue.”

The move comes a little more than a week after Gannett Co., Inc., the company which has owned the paper for about a year, cut 20 employees from the CA’s newsroom.

Firing employees and asking them to re-apply for jobs inside the company is a total Gannett move. In 2014, Gannett instituted its “Newsroom of the Future” in five newspapers, including The Tennessean. Staffers were fired and were made to re-apply for new jobs with new job titles in the newsroom.

Many newsroom staffers were cut. But pay was not expected to drop for those employees who won those new jobs, at least that’s what Tennessean vice president and executive editor Stefanie Murray told The Poynter Institute at the time.

A call to Gannett for comment on the situation in Memphis was not immediately answered.

For the third year in a row, Clean Memphis, a grassroots organization that pursues a cleaner city, has organized 30 days of cleaning throughout the city to celebrate Earth Day.

This year’s Earth Day 30 Days Straight initiative, which began on April 1 and will continue until the end of the month, includes community clean-ups, environmental education, and recycling and beautification events held across the city in various neighborhoods.

The month kicked off with clean-up efforts in Orange Mound and Soulsville USA, and will continue with cleaning near Chelsea Avenue, Cordova, Covington Pike, Whitehaven, and other neighborhoods during the month of April.

There are over 20 local corporations and nearly 15 churches signed up tackle cleaning projects in particulars neighborhood this month. The number of participating teams has nearly doubled since Earth Day 30 Days Straight began in April of 2014.

Clean Memphis decided it would be a good idea to clean for 30 days during the month of April after the organization received a number of requests to hold Earth Day clean-ups.

Struggling to meet everyone’s request in just one day, the group decided to use the whole month of April for spring cleaning in the city.

The cleaning efforts are a part of the Greater Memphis Chamber’s Memphis Clean by 2019 initiative, which aims to make Memphis the cleanest city in the country by the bicentennial of the city, 2019.

“We are just trying to get people to be more aware of being cleaner, greener, and more environmentally sustainable,” said Janet Boscarino, executive director of Clean Memphis.

Wiseacre Brewing will not move into the Mid-South Coliseum (at least for now) and a local grassroots group said the move won’t stop “the momentum to reopen the landmark.”

City officials announced Monday that the company said it was not ready to move into the long-vacant building but will still consider it an option.

Last year, the Memphis brewery was given an option to lease the building from the city government. Memphis City Council members approved a lease on the building for the company and gave Wiseacre officials six months to determine whether or not the Coliseum fit its expansion needs.

“At the conclusion of its period of exclusive study late last week, Wiseacre Brewing Company informed us that it is not positioned to move forward with a lease of the Mid-South Coliseum,” Doug McGowen, the city’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “Wiseacre has not eliminated it as an option, but all parties now understand that the exclusive period has passed. We thank Wiseacre for its interest and we continue to encourage its growth in our city.”

The grassroots Coliseum Coalition, too, thanked Wiseacre “for the love and attention they brought” to the Coliseum.

“Although many of us are disappointed that they won’t be expanding their operations in the building, Wiseacre’s efforts show that the Coliseum is a building of the future,” Coliation president Roy Barnes. “We won’t lose the energy and imagination that this great company has put into this great building as we move forward to that future.”

McGowan said the next steps for the building will be to convene stakeholders of the Mid-South Fairgrounds around the Urban Land Use Institute study from 2015. He said the group will work to submit a Tourism Development Zone (TDZ) application to state officials by this fall.

“Our group will view the entire Fairgrounds and surrounding area and will include for consideration all of the previous public input and development ideas that were gathered in earlier discussions,” McGowen said.

Charles “Chooch” Pickard, the Coalition’s vice president, the Coliseum “is in excellent shape” and can meet the necessary challenges to re-open it. But Pickard said any process to re-open the Coliseum must be done with with patience and in public.

“We cannot afford a first-come, first-serve approach to these great public spaces,” Pickard said. The Fairgrounds and Coliseum deserve the best. Memphis deserves that.”

Last month, Wiseacre officials said they are simply out of space to brew any more beer at their Broad Avenue brewery and taproom.