My sincere condolences.
Here's what to expect, if Gatehouse acts anything like Liberty did when it purchased the Pekin Daily Times in 2000 when I was the editor there.
Management will put out a statement that says nothing has changed, and they value the fine work force and the journalistic traditions at the paper, etc. These are lies, and the same kind of happy talk that's said every time a newspaper is sold.
You will all be asked to re-apply for your own job. Some of you will not be rehired. You may have the option of applying for work at remaining Copley properties, but this will require uprooting your family and moving.
Gatehouse staff very familiar with how to handle this process will come in all smiles and glad-handing and "we're willing to work with you in this transition" while searching ruthlessly for staff and services to cut. The first thing staff will notice is that your co-pay for your health insurance will skyrocket while the number of services available to you and your family members plummets. Hopefully the union will protect against some of this.
After a lull, expect sharp decreases in funds for syndicated features, wire services, and other newsroom budgeted items such as training, equipment, etc. Second-rate substitutes will be offered. There will be a lot of talk about synergy and content sharing among the papers in the group and how this benefits classified advertising sales. Expect to hear a lot about the benefits of sharing of feature stories between the newspapers in the group, but there will be little added news value involved.
The newsroom staff will now be expected to regularly crank out "special sections" that are nothing but love letters to local advertisers. No actual news will be permitted in these special sections.
Any staff that leaves or retires will not be replaced, and a hiring freeze will be put in place.
I hope like hell I'm wrong about all this, and that Gatehouse is different than Liberty, but I'm very much afraid that this is a very sad day not just for news consumers and democratic society in Peoria, but in all the giant swath of central Illinois now solely controlled by a giant monopoly.