Turmoil at The Blade

[BillyLP]

If any of you follow Nick Piotrowicz on Twitter, you've seen that the ownership at the Toledo Blade has been making some inexplicable decisions around their operations, particularly sports coverage. They ended U of M and OSU coverage and laid off some folks and Nick P made a point of explaining why it was such a bad decision. They retaliated this week by removing him from BG sports coverage and placing him on general local news. The union is filing a grievance, but I'd be surprised if he stuck around. Nick was the 2019 sports journalist of the year in Ohio, and has provided great coverage during his time on the beat. It's a big loss for the human interest stories within BG athletics.

[mbenecke]

This is complete garbage, but not surprising at all coming from The Blade. What an awful, awful place to work - terrible ownership with no idea how to run a media outlet in 2021. Just complete incompetence.

Love Nick. Hope he finds success in whatever is next.

[MarkL]

Nick P really found his voice when writing an article after the collapse at the end of the 2019 season tracing the sources of the current state of BG football. Sidelining him would be an utter shame.

[Schadenfreude]

Nick is very good at what he does and I really hope they put him back on the BGSU beat.

[hammb]

Nick is very good at what he does and is willing to speak his mind. For that reason he'll be moved out of sports entirely and the Blocks will hope he quits and moves elsewhere.

That family is beyond incompetent, they're just awful humans (and awful business people). Newspaper is a tough gig these days, but the only successful business they have is the monopoly they've built and maintained with Buckeye.

I suspect that not only will we be losing Nick from the beat, but that we likely won't even get a replacement. It's the Blade way.

[MacGuy]

The Block's also own a number of TV stations. They're doing the same thing at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the dominant paper in steel town.