NEW BEDFORD – Dow Jones Local Media Group, the News Corp. division that publishes newspapers including The Standard-Times, announced yesterday that it will consolidate all its advertising services departments in New Bedford, the newspaper reported today.
Standard-Times publisher Mary Harrington said the new department, which will be located at the paper’s Elm Street headquarters, will employ a total of 46 full-time equivalents, some of whom will be part-timers.
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A key reason the company decided to move operations to New Bedford was the city’s proximity to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Harrington said in a interview with The Standard-Times. “Locating here gives the unit access to a ready pool of quality design students and graduates,” she said.
Middletown, N.Y.-based Dow Jones Local Media Group, which was known as Ottaway Newspapers Inc. until last month, was purchased by Dow Jones & Co., The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, in 1970. It became part of News Corp. in late 2007 when the Rupert Murdoch-led media company purchased Dow Jones.
The division operates eight daily newspapers, 15 weeklies and a number of magazines and Web sites in six states. Dow Jones Local Media Group had about 1,200 employees nationwide as of June.
The ad services departments at Dow Jones Local Media’s other papers, from New Hampshire to California, will be closed and jobs there will be eliminated. Executives said the changes would cut costs and maintain quality.
Harrington said the consolidation is expected to result in about 40 additional positions at The Standard-Times, some of whom will be new hires replacing employees from the other papers who opt not to relocate to New Bedford.
“The Elm Street building has some space from earlier job losses,” Harrington told her newspaper. “This will fill us to capacity and that is something that makes our enterprise strong.”
The consolidation is expected to begin in October and be completed by February, The Standard-Times reported.
The new unit will be led by Kevin Wright, advertising services manager at The Cape Cod Times, which is also owned by Dow Jones Local Media.
