Posted on 09/18/2007 4:13:44 PM PDT by Milhous
The San Jose Mercury News is reducing expenses due to an accounting error which may lead to fewer journalists and cuts in other expenses.
This newest round of cuts was announced at a meeting in the newsroom about a week ago, on Friday September 7.
Several sources have said the error in the budget was close to $4 million. Of that $3 million may come from the newsroom. If this is the case the impact is likely to be dramatic.
None of these sources was willing to go on the record for fear of retribution.
No layoffs have been announced in response to this newest round of cuts. But it is hard for me to see how expenses can be cut by $3 million without further staffing reductions. $3 million is a big number and a big percent of the total newsroom budget.
Here is my speculation on how the math works.
There are about 200 people left in the Mercury News newsroom with a total budget for salaries and benefits of $20 million, give or take a couple of hundred thousand dollars. It is hard for me to get a good fix on the newsroom operating budget (all expense items other than salaries and benefits). If the operating budget is another $10 million (which I think would be a lot) that makes a total budget of $30 million. That would make a $3 million cut 10%. If the total budget is $25 million the $3 million is obviously 12%.
Regardless of the percentage, finding another $3 million to cut out of the budget will not be easy considering how much has already been cut.
I am being told that the people behind well-known bylines who do general assignment reporting and investigative work will be assigned to more mundane beats in business and metro. If this happens there is a danger these talented people will move on to places where they can do more than cover beats like City Hall.
These reassignments will save money in the long run since replacements will not have to be hired for beat reporters who resign.
Some of the non-staffing related changes being considered are further reducing the news hole, combining sections and cutting some of the comics.
Combining sections probably has a minimal impact on the newsroom budget. But it does result in a much different editorial product. Combining sections could reduce newsprint costs and might be a way to eliminate a second pressrun many days.
There are a number of four and six page sections in the paper now which could be combined. For instance, on Saturday the Home and Garden section could be combined with Arts and Entertainment. Also, some of the free standing classified sections could be combined.
Depending on how this is done the late afternoon/early evening press run that is now used to print the feature sections and classified could be eliminated. This would save personnel costs in the pressroom and substantial transportation expenses.
There are big downsides to a move like this.
Second, the paper would be less reader friendly. Combined sections on Saturday would mean it would no longer be possible for one person to read about the latest video games while someone else read about gardening.
Third, it may be harder to meet advertisers’ requests for placement of their ads inside of a desired section.
Some of the changes may already have started.
Just this past Monday the Mercury News dropped Cathy and Piranha Club and replaced them with Secret Asian Man and Get Fuzzy. I thought Cathy and Piranha Club were repetitive, tired and terribly out of date. I am warming to Secret Asian Man and reserving judgment on Get Fuzzy. I do not know if these changes were part of the cost cutting or an attempt to make the comic pages more contemporary.
Also, the Drive section on Friday was changed from a newsroom section edited by Matt Nauman to a section edited by the marketing staff in advertising. This was another change that may have been made to save a few bucks. On the other hand the Drive section is about 15 years old. The SJMN share of auto advertising has dropped in recent years as car dealers make more use of the web to sell cars. Changing the Drive section is a reasonable response to this.
Regardless Matt did a great job on the Drive section from its start until now. The Mercury News has benefited from his knowledge, ability and the contacts he has developed in the auto industry. I am told he will be covering environment/green issues.
Over the last couple of days I have struggled with the issue of how an error like this could have happened.
There is a part of me that wants to say “off with their heads” about the people/department who made this error.
I have never worked with the MediaNews budget system. But one of the basics of a budget system is a series of balancing steps that compare a variety of factors to prevent errors of this magnitude. It is hard to believe that someone did not see the error, either in the budget department or in the newsroom.
At the same time, the Mercury News has been in so much turmoil—and is now part of such a complex organization—that I am inclined to be a bit more charitable. Expenses have been cut so much versus the previous year that year over year comparisons are probably useless. Also, the co-ordination among the various MediaNews properties means that knowing exactly how much is going to be spent at any property to cover the Warriors (to pick an example out of the air) is probably pretty tough.
Still, a $3 or $4 million error is very hard to get my mind around.
A couple of other things:
John Armstrong, publisher in Contra Costa, wrote an interesting column a while back, explaining what is happening to newspapers to his readers. The link is below.
Editor and Publisher posted a column a couple of weeks ago (linked below) that included some interesting commentary on the issue of non-compete agreements in Knight Ridder. For the record I remember attending a KRI meeting in Miami at which all the senior ad execs in Knight Ridder were asked to sign non-competes on the spot. We were also asked to take copies back to our home newspapers so that our sales managers could also sign them.
I refused to sign one and would not take them home for signature. Non-competes are pretty hard to enforce in California and I did not want to ask people to sign a document I knew was mostly worthless.
The Eastbay Express opines (linked below) about MediaNews plans to eliminate The Guild at the Mercury News. I am sure Dean Singleton and his minions would love to have a non-union front office in San Jose. But there is a mountain more money to be saved by eliminating the Teamsters, press operators and any other back shop unions left at 750 Ridder Park Drive. The Guild is in for tough times but they are probably not number one on the hit parade.
READERS, WE HEAR YOU
With your support, Times will stay strong in face of challengesDEAR READER, we need to talk.
Times editors and I have been receiving letters and e-mail messages from a few of you — some have been published in the paper –expressing displeasure with changes in the Times, and that makes none of us happy.
“You and the Times have really hit an all time low,” wrote a reader from Antioch, scribbling his comments across the face of a front-page advertisement cut from our East County edition.
A Clayton reader e-mailed to protest not only the acceptance of front-page ads but also the move of Sunday’s Perspective section to the back of the Nation & World section. “Newspapers have a role in terms of facilitating discussion of issues,” he noted. “Don’t abandon that role.”
A Dublin correspondent weighed in on the Perspective change: “It is sad when your newspaper eliminates a once a week ‘intelligent section’ and devotes 12 PAGES daily to SPORTS!! Sick!”
And then there are the sticky advertising notes that sometimes are appended to the main section. Nobody seems to be a fan of those.
Yes, we need to talk.
From Editor and Publisher online
By Jennifer Saba
Published: September 04, 2007
Those following the tribulations at American newspapers certainly witnessed a strange summer. In the Dow Jones auction, for example, the loony waffling of the Bancroft family was even enough to inspire sympathy for that devil Rupert Murdoch. Amidst the swapping of properties, the layoffs, and the dismal ad results was the saga that played out in a St. Paul, Minn., courtroom (detailed elsewhere in this issue).
What gained the most attention was Par Ridder, the publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, admitting that when he crossed the Mississippi to take the same post at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis he bogarted a whole slew of documents, charts, and templates on his laptop and other such proprietary information and delivered the goods to the CFO of the Star Tribune. E&P obtained the transcripts from the trial, and after poring over them found that one of the more bizarre aspects to this case — and trust me, there were many — related to another issue: Ridder’s noncompete agreement, which existed when he was publisher of the Pioneer Press.
From the East Bay Express
By Robert Gammon
Published: September 5, 2007Less than a week after the East Bay garbage lockout ended, The Contra Costa Times ran a scathing editorial that criticized trash hauler Waste Management, calling its actions “unnecessary” and “disgraceful.” The paper urged Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and other cities to examine ways to terminate their garbage contracts, saying the company should “pay a steep price” for locking out the Teamsters’ union.
Ten days later, Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group, majority owner of the CoCo Times, the Oakland Tribune, and other East Bay dailies, made Waste Management look downright union-friendly. The chain told officials from the Northern California Media Workers Guild — which represents reporters, photographers, and copy editors at the Trib — that it would no longer recognize the union.
MediaNews officials claimed the guild no longer represented a majority of newsroom employees following the merger of the nonunion Times and former Hills newspapers (including the Montclarion and Alameda Journal) with the unionized Trib and sister papers, a group then known as ANG Newspapers.
Guild officials immediately filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board. They claimed that the company had purposely downsized ANG’s staff to ensure it would be dwarfed by nonunion staff from the other papers once the merger became official.
ping
Their accounting methods sound like the cook-the-books numbers at NASA and NOAA to prop up the failing Global Warming hoax.
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