Posted on 07/02/2008 7:05:40 AM PDT by abb
Journal Sentinel Inc., publisher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, will cut 10% of its work force by the end of the year because of declining advertising revenue and rising costs, the company said today.
The company employs the equivalent of about 1,300 full-time workers. It said in a news release that it would reduce its staff through buyouts, layoffs and attrition.
In addition to lower ad revenue, the newspaper has been hit by higher prices for fuel and newsprint, said Elizabeth "Betsy" Brenner, president and chief operating officer of Journal Publishing Group.
The cuts mirror those at many metropolitan news organizations, which have been hurt by the slumping economy as they work to build online sites that can attract readers who are getting news and other information on the Internet.
"As a local news organization, we reach 83 percent of our market every week through our print and online products," Brenner said. "Our challenge continues to be operating as efficiently as possible."
More.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jul/01/tribune-wfla-trim-news-staffing/
Tribune, WFLA To Trim News Staffing
Tha Tampa Tribune
Published: July 1, 2008
The Tampa Tribune said Tuesday that it will lay off 11 newsroom staffers this week with another 10 news jobs to be eliminated by early fall.
The newsroom will lose a total of 50 employees under the cost-cutting effort, with 29 either accepting a voluntary buyout offer or resigning for other reasons. The Tribune newsroom will have about 200 employees after the staff reductions.
The moves are part of a previously-announced streamlining by the Florida Communications Group, which operates the newspaper, WFLA, Channel 8 and TBO.com, among other media properties. FCG is part of Media General of Richmond, Va., which has been hard hit like other media companies by a soft advertising climate and a weak economy.
WFLA said it will have eliminated 10 news positions by the end of the year.
Tribune publisher and president Denise Palmer said newspapers’ traditional advertising base is being upended by the economic malaise and the impact of the Internet.
“You never want to have good people go away,” Palmer said. “But I also know you have to work within the revenue you bring in.”
ping
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2008/07/deeper-staff-cuts-likely-at-newspapers.html
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Deeper staff cuts likely at newspapers
Tens of thousands of additional jobs may have to be eliminated at newspapers because the staff reductions that have taken place to date have not kept pace with the accelerating erosion of advertising.
Even though 48.7% of the 102,120 jobs eliminated in the newspaper industry since 1990 were lost in the last three years, publishers since 2006 have failed to reduce headcount as aggressively as they did during prior downturns, according to an analysis of the industry’s historic performance.
To trim headcount enough to sustain traditional profit margins, publishers would have to eliminate far more jobs in the near future than they did in the last two years. How many more? That’s hard to say, because it is impossible to predict how much lower industry sales will fall.
snip
In addition, the Journal’s IT department was informed a couple weeks ago that they are being outsourced in a few months time.
The Liberal media seems incapable of understanding an incredibly simple truth: their anti-business, socialist agenda has completely turned off their advertisers — who are, after all, businesspeople.
Ignorance and stupidity in dogged defense of an agenda that went bankrupt 30 years ago. And they wonder why they fail.
Just to expand a bit on my earlier point, I was having a discussion with a friend of mine the other night about these aging hippies and their younger acolytes trying to force their 40-year old agenda on the rest of us. We marveled that this is like someone in 1950, at the dawn of the space age, after two world wars and incredible changes and advances in every field of human endeavor, trying their damndest to get the world to spin back to the “good old days” of 1910.
Like raving old codgers in the attic, these ‘60s people are completely irrelevant. It’s only their incessant raucous braying and a complicit media that makes it seem as if they matter anymore.
These cuts only affect the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The JS was the last division of Journal Communications that hadn’t seen big staff cuts. TV and radio cut expensive on air talent last year and other divisions had cuts in 2006.
LIMBAUGH SIGNS $400M DEAL
How's the Liberal Newspaper Business working out?
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jul/01/milstead-media-meltdown-tests-two-newspaper-town/
Rocky Mountain (Spotted) News
Media meltdown tests two-newspaper town
By David Milstead
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
It’s been a wonderful run, Denver, but it’s time to admit that we can no longer be a two-newspaper town.
It was just eight years ago that The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News hung up the gloves and went to the federal government for permission to combine business operations. The resulting “joint operating agreement,” which ended competition in advertising and subscription prices, was intended to restore the papers to financial health and preserve two distinct editorial voices.
The papers never succeeded in making significant price increases stick, whether because of Colorado’s recession of 2002 to 2004, or because the people of Denver had been conditioned to newspaper bargains. Then the American newspaper industry began a swift and shockingly rapid decline.
Today, the Denver papers are in all likelihood losing money, when the depreciation of their new printing plant, opened in 2007, is considered. (We don’t know for sure, because Rocky owner E.W. Scripps and Post owner MediaNews Group have consistently cut back on the amount of financial information they release about Denver.)
In essence, all the financial promise of the JOA is gone. The best way to make Denver a profitable market for the two companies is to close one of the newspapers.
snip
Goldman Sachs: Newprint Price to Jump 30%, Take Hit On Newspaper Earnings
By Mark Fitzgerald
Published: July 02, 2008 10:36 AM ET
CHICAGO Newsprint prices will jump 30% in the second half of 2008, shaving the earnings-per-share (EPS) of public newspaper companies an average 2.1% — but clobbering A.H. Belo Corp.’s EPS, Goldman Sachs predicts in a report released Wednesday.
Newsprint companies — which traditionally have lowered prices when, as now, newspapers reduce consumption in slow times — will be able to make these prices stick, the Goldman Sachs Paper & Forest Products research team predicts.
“Who said the tough environment facing publishers couldn’t get tougher?” wrote analysts Peter P. Appert and Peter M. Salkowski. “Historically, newsprint prices have fallen during periods of weak ad demand, providing a bit of a cushion to publishers’ earnings. The current cycle is proving different based on consolidation within the newsprint industry, which is allowing producers to sharply reduce output, meaningfully increasing the pricing power of producers. Unfortunately for publishers, this new pricing dynamic is likely to remain in place through 2009.”
Goldman Sachs says the companies whose earnings will be most impacted by higher newsprint prices include The McClatchy Co.; The New York Times Co.; Gannett Co. Inc. — who, along with the now-private Tribune, combined buy about 25% of North American newsprint production.
Heading the list of companies who will lose EPS because of higher prices is A.H. Belo, publisher of The Dallas Morning News. Goldman Sachs estimates newsprint will shave 10 cents of its EPS — taking it down by 112.2%.
Newsprint’s negative impact on McClatchy’s EPS could be 4.2%, Goldman Sachs said. Other predicted impacts include Lee Enterprises Inc., down 3.8%; New York Times, down 3.4%; Gannett, down -1.7%; Media General Inc., down 1.7%; Journal Communications Co., down 1.4%; E.W. Scripps, down 0.4%; and The Washington Post Co., down 0.2%.
The average impact for the sector, excluding A.H. Belo, is estimated by Goldman Sachs to be down 2.1%.
Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is E&P’s editor-at-large.
Links referenced within this article
mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/mailto:
Find this article at:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003823212
Here’s an idea — maybe these papers can publish a tally of jobs lost in their dying industry, similar to the running count of soldiers lost in Iraq?
Maybe even erect a monument with the names of the “fallen” reporters?
Think that's Palmer's philosophy on government?
Holy cr@p! That's another direct hit to the hull.
it’s a start!
Below the waterline, even.
My Empire for a spot on a life boat.
Please!
For the love of God, man!
At least my wife and children!
Glug, glug, glug.
RIP.
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