On Friday, October 23, The Blade in Toledo filed its WARN notice with Ohio. 13abc reported that the notice lists 116 affected employees, all permanent, with no bumping or reemployment rights. The paper stops publishing on December 31.
Nobody should be surprised by it. On September 8, owner Block Communications told staff the paper would close at year-end unless a buyer turned up, with no edition on January 1, per Cleveland19. A local outlet put the headcount then at 119. Six weeks later the filing says 116, and no report names a buyer.
What the owner said, and what the union said
Block’s president and COO, Jodi Miehls, framed the closure as money. Years of losses, and a family that would no longer fund them. In the account Cleveland19 carried, AI does not appear.
It appears in the contract fight. The Toledo NewsGuild says Block’s proposal would have halved severance, allowed Guild work to be outsourced, and let AI create or edit content without telling readers. Members rejected it in late August. The Columbia Journalism Review adds that a July two-year offer would also have scrapped seniority, and that members believed the company planned to cut about a third of the bargaining unit. Guild bargaining chair Lillian King said Block chose to close the paper rather than work with the Guild.
All of that is the union’s account, and Block has not publicly answered the contract terms. So the line we draw is narrow. AI is in the contract the company proposed. AI is not in the reason the company gave for closing. We are not joining the two.
Against the cohort
This is the third newspaper story in our October file, and each paper stands in a different place on AI. On the same day, the Telegraph opened consultation on up to 100 roles under a memo that makes AI the destination and not the cause. On October 9, Ebra’s regional dailies struck over up to 400 exits and automated page layout. The Blade is the third pattern: AI in the contract, losses in the closure.
On size, 116 is small. The BBC’s June cut of about 2,000 is more than 17 times larger. But the BBC is shrinking and the Blade is ending. CJR notes the newsroom alone had 145 journalists in 2005. Today the whole operation, newsroom, ad sales, circulation and production, is around 116 to 119 people.
Block’s other daily offers the only precedent. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was set to end publication in May and was then sold to the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, per 13abc. When the Blade’s notice went in, no comparable buyer had been named.
The career read
The 116 are not broken out by role. The bargaining unit covered more than reporters: ad sales and circulation staff sat in it too, according to CJR. For those jobs the cause in the record is revenue. Advertising and subscriptions no longer carry the payroll, and no AI system is named as the replacement.
The rejected contract is still worth reading as a document. It shows what an employer asks for before any tool has displaced anyone: the right to have AI generate and edit copy, without disclosure, outside the union’s reach. A clause like that does not wait for the technology to be good. For anyone weighing a media employer, the AI, outsourcing and seniority language is now part of the offer.
Three things to watch. Whether a buyer appears before December 31. Whether Block answers the contract terms in public. And the date: GoLayoffs, relaying Ohio’s list, shows the layoffs effective December 17, two weeks before the last edition. We could not open the state’s own page, so check that date against the filing.
