The local newspaper for Indianapolis, IN is shrinking it’s office footprint. The IndyStar, owned by top newspaper publisher Gannett, is putting the third floor of their building up for sublease. This is a 50,000 square foot floor above the newspaper’s newsroom. The paper reports that the floor has been empty since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Employees are currently working from home.
“We’re still going to have a presence downtown, and still be a vibrant part of the community,” said David Hakanson, IndyStar vice president of sales. The IndyStar has published in the downtown area for over 118 years. It was founded by Muncie, IN industrialist George McCulloch.
Tribune Publishing Cut Office Space Over The Past Year
Gannett isn’t the only legacy media company right sizing their office space. Tribune Publishing announced in January that is was moving out of the Prudential Plaza high-rise in Chicago. The Chicago Tribune and its parent company moved to its Freedom Center printing facility along the Chicago River. Freedom Center houses the massive printing plant that prints the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers each day. Open House Chicago says the newspaper was originally printed in the Tribune Tower off Michigan Avenue until Freedom Center opened in 1981.
Tribune had already moved out of their long time home, Tribune Tower, after 93 years.
Tribune closed the Hartford Courant’s newsroom in December 2020. The publisher told employees it hold no plans to find new offices. The Courant’s publisher and editor-in-chief remarked that the closing of the physical newsroom was “a decision about real estate needs amid a difficult and challenging time on both the public health and economic fronts.”
Tribune also shut down the newsrooms of The New York Daily News; The Morning Call in Allentown, PA; The Orlando Sentinel; The Carroll County Times in Westminster, MD and The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, PA.
Many newspaper office spaces were built for larger staffs. A walk through a newspaper company’s offices now conjures the proverbial ghost town. Gannett’s McLean, VA headquarters once filled 21 floors across two towers. Today, the newspaper publisher occupies parts of two floors, with plenty of room to spare. That’s due to outsourcing, staff reductions and reconfiguring to open floor plans. Communication tools like Zoom, Slack and Teams make it easier to collaborate remotely.
New Media Is Shifting As Well
Legacy media aren’t the only sector making the move to remote work. Spotify introduced their “Working From Anywhere” imitative in February 2021.
Spotify’s work beliefs are:
- Work isn’t something you come to the office for, it’s something you do
- Effectiveness can’t be measured by the number of hours people spend in an office – instead, giving people the freedom to choose where they work will boost effectiveness
- Giving our people more flexibility will support better work-life balance and help tap into new talent pools while keeping our existing band members
- Operating as a distributed organisation will produce better and more efficient ways of working through more intentional use of communication and collaboration practices, processes and tools.
Spotify will allow a mix of working from home and office, starting this Summer. Job postings show that some positions require employees to be in the same time zone, for example.
