The axe begins to fall at the mighty Mezz

I happened to see Dan Hall Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at the Canandaigua YMCA. Dan Hall was the editorial-page editor at the mighty Mezz.
Actually he laid out both the editorial and op-ed pages that included letters and guest-essays as well as edits (and columns).
Dan announced he had been laid off, an action of the new owners of the newspaper: Gatehouse Publications.
I never thought that highly of Dan Hall. I guess he was a good writer, but not very organized.
He’d chair the weekly meetings of the editorial committee under the skylight — the so-called “furtive meetings” — where edits would be decided and assigned.
Queeny and the all-powerful Tim Belknap might write about local issues, and K-man and/or boss-man about national issues. Others might get roped in too, like Dan, but mostly Dan chose the edits, columns, letters and guest-essays.
Even local columnists had to be rewritten to make them say what they meant; particularly REPUBLICANS. The tub-thumpers often misspelled too, which would inflame Granny.
Apparently others have been laid off too, but the only name I caught was “cheese-head,” Dean Lichterman, a sports-guy — although I never called him “cheese-head” to his face, for fear of getting my head bit off. (“Cheese-head” because he was a Packers fan.)
Dean was a bit weird, but a good reporter. He did a weekly column on sports other than what’s in the news; e.g. gymnastics and taekwon-do.
The Ewing family sold to Gatehouse primarily because Gatehouse promised they wouldn’t do anything.
But that is never what happens.
As soon as the new buyer takes over, heads roll.
“Who’s left to mind the store?” I asked Dan.
“Not very many.” he said.
Gatehouse primarily publishes ad-circulars — although it has a few newspapers in the Southern Tier.
My fear is the mighty Mezz will be come an ad-circular: lots of ad-salesmen, but few news-people.
They lay off Queeny and Belknap and K-man and boss-man, and it’s no longer worth getting.
Dan is 62 and owes $80,000 on his mortgage.
He was a bit technically-challenged, but the only one that used my super-macro, which I installed on all the editor’s machines.
The super-macro turned OCR-scanned letters, e-mails, whatever, into usable text that flowed onto the page for printing. Dan used it, but others mostly retyped; prior experience, no matter how slow.
Of course, the whole reason I wrote the super-macro was because I couldn’t type due to the stroke.

The so-called “mighty Mezz” is the Daily Messenger newspaper in Canandaigua, N.Y., where I once worked.

The Southern Tier is the southern counties of Western New York — more like Indiana than New York City.