A judge has tossed a lawsuit filed last year by a Connecticut Post reporter who claimed the newspaper was trying to “rid itself of its older reporters.”
The reporter, Anne Amato, long a fixture in the lower Naugatuck Valley, said in the lawsuit that she and a handful of other long-serving reporters were put on “personal improvement plans” and threatened with termination.
At the time Amato’s lawyer contrasted the predicament of those reporters with younger, recent hires who he said received preferential treatment — including a 25-year-old reporter who was allowed to go on a globe-trotting sabbatical, an unusual move in the age of newspaper downsizing and dwindling readership.
In an 8‑page ruling issued May 8, Judge Matthew Frechette ruled Amato had not shown she had been harmed enough to proceed with the lawsuit.
The judge granted a motion filed by the Hearst Corp. to strike Amato’s complaint.
“Because the plaintiff has not alleged that she suffered any adverse employment action … the plaintiff has not pleaded the elements of a prima facie case of age discrimination,” Judge Frechette wrote.
Amato declined to comment on the case Friday (May 24), referring questions to her lawyer, John R. Williams of New Haven.
Williams said Friday that he’ll either reword the lawsuit and file it again or appeal Judge Frechette’s ruling.
“Whether it’s possible to rewrite it in such a way that it meets his objections, I don’t know, but I’m going to try my hand at it,” Williams said.
Article continues after Frechette’s ruling.
Amato had claimed she was placed on a personal improvement plan — along with several other older staffers — in an attempt to drive her from the company.
Her lawyer said he disagrees with the judge’s reasoning.
“I know there are cases that have held a PIP (personal improvement plan) is not adverse employment action, but there are other cases where if you read them you’d have to say it is,” Williams said. “I think it’s a question of which line of cases you follow.”
“The general rule is an adverse employment action is something an average employee would consider to be adverse,” Williams said. “Most of us, if we got something like this, we’d have a couple of sleepless nights.”
Amato sued Hearst last October, after receiving a “release of jurisdiction” from an age discrimination complaint she had filed with the state’s Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities.
No one from the management of the Connecticut Post or Hearst’s Connecticut newspapers have returned messages from the Valley Indy seeking comment on the matter since last April.
The Valley Indy left a message Friday morning with Barbara Roessner, executive editor for Hearst Media Services, Connecticut.
When news of Amato’s lawsuit broke last December, Roessner told media reporter Jim Romenesko via e‑mail that “Hearst does not discriminate on any basis.”
The lawsuit comes at a time of continued pain within the journalism industry, as advertising revenues and circulation numbers continue to drop at newspapers nationwide.
And as newspapers lay off employees in an effort to maintain profitability, the question of whether those laid off should sue has become an increasingly common topic of conversation.
And it’s not just traditional newspapers experiencing pain.
The Daily Voice, for instance, a network of hyperlocal news sites in the Northeast, shuttered 11 of its properties in Massachusetts in March and implemented widespread layoffs at its Connecticut and New York sites.
Daily Voice’s Chairman, Carll Tucker, was criticized at the time for sending a company-wide e‑mail promising “good news” before the layoffs were announced days later.
The company filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month. Tucker blamed the move on three former reporters — or as he called them, “mad dog predators” — who are suing his company for allegedly not paying them overtime.
Patch, a network of hundreds of hyperlocal news sites owned by AOL, also cut back on staff in 2012 and 2013 in an effort to further the company’s stated goal of improving “the lives of people in local communities by 25 percent.”
