Posted on 12/21/2004 3:27:07 PM PST by BurbankKarl
Seattle Times losing $12M in '04, layoffs planned
The Seattle Times will lose more than $12 million in 2004 -- a record -- and plans layoffs and other cost-cutting measures, according to a memo to Times employees from president Carolyn Kelly.
"Our immediate objective is survival," Kelly wrote.
Staff reductions by early February are inevitable, and Times publisher Frank Blethen has signed off on downsizing recommendations, the memo said.
Kelly wrote the company has not made decisions on how many staff members will be affected and who will lose their jobs. The Times will freeze hiring for selected open staff positions.
The newspaper plans news space reductions, cutting back in the Sports, Ticket, NW Weekend and Wine sections, and eliminating movie listings three days per week.
Over the next year, the company will reduce the Sunday section by 130 pages, according to the memo. The Times also will cut back on travel coverage, shrink use of syndicated material and color, and reduce the number of pages in the TV book.
Other reductions listed in the memo include reducing market research projects, sponsorships, and United Way and other corporate giving. The paper will cut back on in-paper employment ads, reduce front-desk staffing, and scale back discretionary spending on meals, travel and conferences.
The Times has lost money for five straight years. Four years ago, revenue fell by $50 million in one year, and the company has never recovered, Kelly wrote.
A spokesperson for the Times, Kerry Coughlin, said the cuts reflect the new fiscal "reality" of the current newspaper industry and are aimed at "getting the company realigned with the new financial picture.
Both Papers Suck,Both Papers need to die!
Perhaps if they would just add a wee bit of liberal slant to their reporting, things would straighten out.... </ sarcasm off>
I couldn't even continue my subscription with the Times for my dog to poop on!
Hey Kelly, I've got a great idea.
DROP THE POLITICAL AGENDA! Try fair and balanced journalism and see what happens. I mean, it seems a better path than laying off 20 people who make $36K a year and expecting that to offset $12 MILLION in losses.
LOL
You can be sure if it was the government running short of money the Seattle Times would endorse raising taxes, shouldn't they follow that advise and just raise the price of their newspaper until they are prosperous?
LOVE-IT! Die, you lib-dem bastards!
On August 21, 2004, the Seattle Times made the claim that "The new ad by the Republican-backed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth depicts..."
Yet the Seattle Times never substantiated that claim. The paper was unable to support its claim that the official Republican Party was backing Swift Boat ads.
Nor has the Seattle Times apologized for publishing that lie.
Cant wait to see the headline "CBS bankrupt" No I dont mean morally bankrupt, they are already that.
Gee whiz, there won't be enough left of this fishwrap newspaper to wrap fish in.
I know a reporter from another message board who works for the Seattle Times. She mentioned this the other day and said it was because of the terrible economy. This is a woman who lived for a while in Berkeley and, of course, now Seattle, so that should give you a good idea of how incredibly liberal she is. She blames everything on Bush, of course. She's hopeless. And she drives me insane.
Oh the humanity.
Hey Seattle Times, I'm sure the unions will plan a strike in order to help put the final nail in your coffin. They helped your business so much a couple of years ago.
Make that three papers that need to turn belly up.
I just read they want to tax visitor to pay for year another rebuilding of Key Arena!!!
Hundreds of millions in handouts.
Thanks for letting me know all of that! I'm from Illinois and pretty unfamiliar with what's going on in Washington, aside from Gregoire and the election. If she mentions the layoffs again, I'll have to bring those things up.
When the need for pure entertainment strikes, many Hollywood moguls go back to the tried and true. They know that some movies are just so bad...that watching them becomes funny, rip roaring funny. Suddenly, you aren't laughing because the actress told a joke or because an actor hit his buddy on the head with a frying pan, but rather, you start laughing at the movie itself. We laugh at the fishing line that we can see holding up the hub cap that is pretending to be a spaceship in Plan Nine From Outer Space. We laugh at tomatoes chasing down and "attacking" people. We laugh at Jennifer Lopez playing a lesbian gangster in love with a man named Gigli. This sort of notoriously bad entertainment even spawned its own hilarious television series, MST3000. Some things are just so bad that they become funny...pause... When they're mocked.
Seattle got its own firsthand taste of this sort of "entertainment" from the editors of the Seattle Times on Friday, August 27th. In what may very well come to be regarded as the worst editorial ever published in American history, the editors of the Seattle Times managed to neglect facts, omit details, and self-contradict their own logic in why they endorsed Senator John Kerry for the Presidency in 2004.
Now in all fairness, Senator Kerry may have some good points, it's just that the Seattle Times couldn't figure out what they were. The editors opened up their "endorsement" by first saying "Four years ago, this page endorsed George W. Bush for president. We cannot do so again - because of an ill-conceived war..."
Now this is truly funny. Senator Kerry and President Bush have *both* said that knowing today what they didn't know in 2003, that they would both still authorize an invasion to stop Saddam Hussein from funding the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, shooting at UN authorized aircraft patrolling Iraq's no fly zones, as well as harboring such terrorists as Abu Nidal, Abu Abas, and someone colloquially known as "al-Zarqawi."
So the Seattle Times' editors are essentially saying that even though *both* candidates hold the same position on invading Iraq, that they can't endorse President Bush for that position...again.
Oh, and that whole "again" thing isn't even accurate. Most people still believe that the Seattle Times originally endorsed VP Gore in 2000, but were overruled by the owners to endorse then-Governor Bush, for personal business reasons.
But wait, it gets better (or worse). Next, the Seattle Times' editors said "A less-belligerent, more-intelligent foreign policy should cause less anger to be directed at the United States." Apparently, our policy of being nice and "intelligent" prior to 9/11/2001 was a real winner, yes?!
Then there is this kicker: "Admittedly, Kerry's campaign rhetoric is even worse on trade. But for the previous 20 years, Kerry had a strong record in support of trade, and we have learned that the best guide to what politicians do is what they have done in the past, not what they say."
Wow! Senator Kerry's rhetoric is worse on trade, but the editors at the Seattle Times simply choose to not believe him, and this is their ENDORSEMENT of him!
Sadly, their endorsement editorial dives into some areas that aren't even funny. For one thing, the editors write "We also agree with Sen. Kerry that Social Security should not offer private accounts."
Anyone who doesn't want to privatize Social Security is one of two things: racist or uninformed. Black men average dying by age 62. Unprivatized Social Security benefits don't begin in full until age 65. If you want Black men to be able to pass their retirement benefits on to their heirs, then you have to privatize Social Security. As it stands, payments stop when you die. That's simply not acceptable, especially with Black men passing away, on average, before they receive their first payment.
The editors also display an ignorance of stem cells. They printed that "We disagree also with Bush's ban on federal money for research using any new lines of stem cells."
Except, President Bush's ban places no restrictions on animal stem cells (quick, call PETA!), just some restrictions on the abuse of human embryos and stem cells. This is entirely in line with where such early stage scientific research should be concentrating, anyway. If something promising can be shown with animal stem cells, then one can attempt to make the case for human research...not the other way around as the Seattle Times does in their comedic editorial on Friday.
The editors at the Seattle Times also didn't bother with full disclosure. Their President and COO Carolyn Kelly is a recent financial contributor to Patty ("Osama builds daycare centers") Murray. OK, now that *is* funny. However, anyone who can be taken in by either Osama Bin Laden or Patty Murray is hardly qualified to be giving fair minded Presidential endorsements in editorials.
For one thing, the Seattle Times doesn't point out Senator Kerry's strong points. His two decades of recent and current Senate service are essentially unmentioned in their endorsement editorial. Why? Surely they are proud of Senator Kerry's legislative accomplishments and Senate Intelligence committee attendance, right?!
For another thing, the editors didn't have the courage to list the positive accomplishments of Mr. Bush's Presidency, such as his delivering on his campaign promises of deploying our national missile defenses, cutting our taxes, giving raises to our military, paying for prescription drugs for senior citizens, as well as later disarming Libya of its WMD programs without further bloodshed in the Middle-East.
Nor did the editors at the Seattle Times focus on the direct campaign promises of Bush and Kerry for the future after this election. Omitted are President Bush's plans to offer private school choice scholarships for inner city minority children to get them out of failing schools. Missing is Senator Kerry's promise to Teamsters' President Hoffa to drill for oil in every inch of Alaska.
If their editorial endorsement had been a movie, one would have had no trouble finding holes in the plot. The people of Seattle deserve better Presidential evaluations...
...but at least they can mock the Seattle Times for having penned an editorial that finally makes "Swept Away" appear intellectually intriguing, by contrast.
I'm right w/you. They can't even tempt me with the free newspaper offers. Sometimes it's all I can do to stop myself from beating a poor newspaper box to death over some biased headline when I'm at the bus stop.
However, here's a serious question for anyone w/some extensive e-commerce experence. How much is it costing these newspapers to go online and how much (if any) revenue are they generating from their online sites?
What I'm getting at is, how much of these losses can we attibute to new technologies eating up profits and not contributing to revenue and how much to people just refusing to buy liberal lies? (not that that's a bad thing)
Where is Willie Green??? He usually posts this type of info..
Liberals abandon giving to the needy, but they'll keep the Wine section.
-PJ
Excellent point!
Or whacking newspapers boxes at bus stops! I think you're on to something. Whether you're in the car or on the bus w/a walkman (I listen to talk, others may be listening to music), you spend a lot of time commuting in Seattle.
I bet few people have time to just sit w/the paper before they leave or when they come home. It's a quick glance and out of the door. And when you come home, there's tons of other stuff to do (like FReeping) besides read the paper. If customers don't catch an advertiser on the radio or tv, they don't catch it at all.
My last reason for getting the paper was for the Sunday food coupons. Now that I shop online, I can't use them (there are other ways of getting discounts), so byebye newspaper.
WOW, Just in time for Christmas!!!
I wonder if this is what it was like when buggy whips went out of style.
They used to call us all of the time. My husband took great pleasure in having long conversations with them about why he would never consider spending money on their newspaper.
I only hope that the Post Intelligencer (or the "PI," as it is termed) is in equal or worse shape.
See ya later, socialist paper.
You rip off the paper from your ex?
Actually, if you actually need any news, just snake the sports section at Starbucks.
Why yes ... I'm sure it's just that their message isn't getting out.
Congrats to all those who canceled their subscription. It works.
I canceled my subscription to the Orlando Sentinel (a Tribune company) when they endorsed Scumbag in 1996. That was eight years ago and have not read a page from that liberal rag since.
Here is hoping more people follow suit. Boycott radical Marxist publications, shows and their sponsors.
Actually, knowing that employees are over there right now - even as I type this - talking and worried about losing their jobs puts a big smile on my face.
I can only hope that the PI is in the same financial straights.
The Times prints and publishes both papers; the P-I provides content for that paper. The P-I has been fighting to continue the JOA. I think this spells the end of the P-I.
The Times went to mornings to try to get rid of the P-I. Let them both crash.
guppy wrap?
The Times -- they are a'changin'!! Now if we could just get the LA Times, the NY Times, etc. to go belly-up!!
So the next headline should read
Conservative Climate in America Depletes Corporate Coffers
Bush Blamed
The LA Times is in bad straights too....I noticed that they no longer to their ads before movies, as they have done for twenty years....
Fred reed nails this at fredoneverything.net:
Read Your Newspaper
While You Still Can
December 13, 2004
Whither the competition between the mainstream media and the Internet? It sharpens. The big papers still rule the roost, but they hemorrhage readers and credibility, perhaps more than they know or understand. People move to the web, spend more time online, hold the usual media in decreasing regard. The bright and the young switch effortlessly.
Until recently the paper press, in a display of self-satisfied unalert lordliness, pretty much ignored the web. Imagination has never been newspapering’s strong suit. Ah, but we now have competing snobberies: The established press still looks uneasily down on the Web as mere bloggery. Meanwhile the web, brash and assertive and seeing the brass ring within reach, ignores the media, or perhaps more precisely fails to take them seriously while outmaneuvering them. The trend line does not favor newspapers.
Why are print publications in trouble?
To start with, you can’t delete a newspaper. Suppose that in a fit of madness I bought the Washington Post—the daily or, worse yet, the Sunday edition. I would begin (and frequently did begin) by throwing out the bundles of advertising flyers. Then the sports pages. Then, probably, the business section, not because business bores me but because it is so badly done in the Post. Next, the Style pages would hit the trash, being cutesy, saccharine, badly written political correctness. Then the classifieds. Then the Metro section, since I don’t care about car crashes in Montgomery County or heartwarming but pointless things done by hopelessly correct welfare mothers.
I would end with the A section, in which I would read perhaps two stories and none of the columnists, who are tiresome, predictable, and correct. That’s a buck fifty (I think) for two stories, and then I have to carry the refuse to the dumpster. How much sense does that make?
And newspapers wonder why they lose circulation.
Now, it is important to distinguish between the paper-and-ink version and the online version. The Washington City Paper recently reported that the Post was losing 4,000 subscribers a month--subscribers, not readers: they were switching to the online version. The young, accustomed to the web, decreasingly subscribe at all. What are the economics of a readership tipping more and more to the web? We are about to find out.
Crucially, newspapers have lost control of the means of distribution. Before the web, you pretty much had to use the classified ads in the paper to sell your broken lawnmower, the personal ads to find someone to divorce, and the real-estate section to look for a burdensome mortgage. Now eBay is the national classifieds. Online dating services offer unlimited space for photos, text; online reality sites can carry far more information than a paper. These are important revenue streams. No revenue, no newspaper.
Nowadays papers face a new kind of competition. Before, you read your local paper or, at best, one of a very few. You had no choice. Today people bookmark papers across the globe. What does this do to ad revenue? I’m not going to buy lettuce on special as advertised in The Jerusalem Post.
But the greatest weakness of the American press is moral. Our media are relentlessly, grindingly, hermetically controlled or, as we say, politically correct. Everyone with the brains of an aspirin tablet is aware of it. Newspaper do not so much report the news as avoid it. The taboos are endless and rigid. What reporters know, they do not write; what they write, they do not believe. We all understand exactly what the media can say, can’t say, and will say. Sheer dishonesty rubs shoulders with poor content. For example, the coverage of the war in Iraq amounts to crafted acquiescence in lying. Why bother?
The media can’t change. They are too close to being part of the government they purport to cover, too steeped in the artificial egalitarianism of the newsroom, too afraid of each other, of advertisers, of being racist or sexist, too big and smug and ossified. They cannot report anything that might disturb blacks, women, homosexuals, Jews, Latinos, or mental defectives. Although the rosy-fingered dawn may now be penetrating the hitherto intractable darkness, too many journalists live in the past. Like IBM when it thought that the personal computer was a funny little typewriter, they stare into the tiger’s maw and think that it’s a closet. They would probably invest in slide rules.
How are these hobbled organs going to compete with the wild west of the web, with its limitless well-argued sites espousing or denouncing every imaginable point of view? Compete with people who document things that the majors can’t even talk about? A conceit of the usual media is that the web consists of inaccurate vanity sites run by teenage bloggers in garages. These exist. So do very researched sites by people who know their fields and are not afraid to talk about them. The difference is stark. The intelligent know it.
Moreover, newspapers cannot specialize. The web can. This isn’t critical, but it is another of the countless nibbles of the web at the sagging flesh of newspapers. If you care about planetary exploration, for example, why read a newspaper when you can go to the sites of NASA, the European Space Agency, and Astrobiology magazine? Newspapers by deliberate policy provide dimwitted coverage. A reader invariably finds that he knows more than the reporter about anything that interests him. (Well, sometimes. Often reporters know a lot, but they have to write for the eighth grade. The effect is the same.)
It isn’t just information. Newspapers have to pander to the dull political center. Web sites don’t. If you want a libertarian view of things, there is LewRockwell.com; left-wing, Counterpunch.org; against the war, Antiwar.com. Many of these sites link to the established media, but only to stories that suit them. Thus the majors do the work, and the blog reaps the benefits.
Finally, websites are not the only competitors facing papers. There are list-serves. For example, I am interested in what is sometimes called human biodiversity, taboo in the media. Invariably the papers peddle the notion, obviously wrong as a matter of daily observation, that people and races are equally intelligent, the sexes identical in their capacities.
The field is fascinating, important, virtually illegal, and studied by exceedingly bright people. Their work is available on the net in the form of list-serves, often by invitation only. These amount to global discussions, by researchers across the whole earth, of what is actually known. Many such lists exist, dealing with everything from weird lapdogs to cryptography.
Newspapers? Why?
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