Journalists of Color Hit in Tribune Layoffs (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

The Chicago Tribune laid off more than 40 newsroom employees on Friday, including a disproportionate number of journalists of color, according to newsroom employees there.

"Coupled with last week's voluntary exit of more than 30 journalists," the additional cutback "means the paper has cut 80 people from its editorial staff as part of cost-cutting campaign at all of parent Tribune Co.'s newspapers," Phil Rosenthal wrote on the Tribune's Web site.

Among those called in Friday and told their jobs were eliminated was Ray Quintanilla, a 14-year Tribune veteran. "It's sad because if you look at the list, it's heavily minority. It looks bad," he told Journal-isms. He said his marching orders came a day after he challenged a powerful white Tribune columnist who for the fifth time had hired a white assistant, asking the columnist if he had considered any people of color. He recalled that owner Sam Zell had told employees to question authority.

Quintanilla said the columnist publicly challenged him to a fight, and said he has filed a complaint with the Tribune's human relations department.

The reporter said he could not prove his layoff was related to the Thursday incident, but said, "It just smells bad to me."

Neither the columnist nor Tribune editor Gerould W. Kern could be reached for comment.

Other departing journalists of color included Norman O. Unger, an assistant editor; Mark Hinojosa, assistant managing editor for multimedia; Paul Iwanaga, a photo editor; Michael Martinez, Los Angeles correspondent; Gentry Sleets, graphic artist; and editors Donna Pierce, Emeri B. O'Brien and Jeffrey Williams, among others, according to a list compiled by religion writer Manya Brachear and other newsroom sources.

Hinojosa's exit follows the departure earlier this year of another high-ranking Latino at the newspaper, George de Lama, the Tribune's managing editor for news.

"I was looking forward to earning my 20-year pin in about 6 months, but alas: POOOOOFFFFFF. . . and he's gone with lots of great memories," Unger said in a note to colleagues.

"To all my friends," read the subject line in an e-mail from Williams. "Who have been family for nearly 20 years," his message began, "especially those on the copy desk and in the DuPage bureau, take care. And remember who you are: the world’s greatest journalists and the finest human beings I’ve ever known."

"'Endings are never easy,' Tribune editor Gerould W. Kern said in a note to staff, adding that 'with the departure of 80 individuals through today, the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune stands at 480, the largest news organization in Chicago by a wide margin and one of the largest and most accomplished in the United States,'" Rosenthal's story continued. "'While painful, these staff reductions are necessary to establish the foundation for a sustainable future.'

"The latest round of cutbacks is the paper's fourth since late 2005, when the newsroom was said to have had 670 positions. Other departments at the paper have been making cuts, as well.'

Quintanilla, 46, said he expected more from the paper after he returned from covering Iraq in the early days of the war, which began in 2003. "The Tribune is where minority reporters can go to die. They get lost in the bureaucracy and they're ignored," he told Journal-isms.

Incredible. The liberal managed mutual funds must be keeping the fishwraps afloat.

Morningstar: Battered Newspaper Shares Still The ‘Market’s Most Overvalued Stocks’

By Mark Fitzgerald

Published: August 18, 2008 11:28 AM ET

CHICAGO Shares of nearly all publicly traded newspaper companies have lost as much as 80% of their value in the last year — but they haven’t hit bottom yet, says a blistering report on the sector released Monday by Morningstar.

The Chicago-based independent research firm calls newspapers “the market’s most overvalued stocks.”

“Such sharp price declines (including a 52% drop for Gannett, an 82% dive for McClatchy, and a 94% loss for rural/suburban publisher GateHouse), coupled with what may be perceived as currently cheap valuation ratios, could be tempting to value-minded investors, but we say, ‘Look out below!,’” says the report by Matthew Coffina, with contributions from analyst Tom Corbett.

“We think the stocks have further room to fall, as declining revenues and negative operating leverage combine to create a downward spiral for this moribund industry,” Morningstar added.

Morningstar offers the usual reason for its pessimism about newspapers: high fixed costs with “steadily” shrinking revenues are squeezing profits as the Internet steals readership and ad share “at an accelerating pace.”

“We don’t anticipate these trends to reverse and consider the newspaper industry unattractive as a whole,” the report concludes.

Morningstar singles out five newspaper stocks that it says are trading at “significant premiums” to its estimates of their fair value.

Morningstar assigned Gannett a fair value of $1.61 a share. Monday morning, Gannett (NYSE: GCI) was trading at $19.99, off 66 cents, or 3.2% from the opening. Morningstar said it expects the nation’s largest newspaper company’s revenues to fall at 5% annually over the next five years, with operating income declines averaging 14% annually.

The New York Times Company was given a fair value estimate of $1.27 a share. Monday morning its stock (NYSE:NYT) was trading at $13.94, up 2 cents, or 0.14% from the open.

Lee Enterprises (NYSE: LEE) was trading early Monday at $3.56, down 11 cents, or 3.26%. Morningstar’s fair value estimate: $1.63 a share.

Morningstar said The McClatchy Co. stock has a fair value of just $1.95, but Monday its shares (NYSE: MNI) were trading at $4.26, up 7 cents, or 1.67%, from the opening.

“McClatchy doubled down its bet on the future of newspapers with the $4.6 billion acquisition of Knight Ridder in 2006,” Morningstar wrote. “The $2.5 billion in extra debt assumed in the deal only exacerbated McClatchy’s shaky financial footing. Barely a year passed before McClatchy had to write down $3 billion of the acquisition’s purchase price. Another problem in the current environment is McClatchy’s outsize exposure to California and Florida, with their floundering housing markets. We expect McClatchy to see 4.7% annual revenue declines over the next five years and only irregular profitability.”

Morningstar repeated its judgment that the GateHouse Media Inc. (NYSE: GHS) is essentially worthless, assigning it a fair value of zero. Monday morning it was trading at 69 cents, down 2 cents, or 2.82%.

Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is E&P’s editor-at-large.

Massive Layoffs At Newspaper. Useless Morons Hardest Hit.

Now that's the way it oughta be! Or perhaps "morons, those who slacked off the most, and those previously, artificially advantaged beyond anything resembling their actual usefulness, hardest hit."

We dare not leave it to corporations in any laissez-faire way to even begin to threaten Ms. heads of household, paycheck-to-paycheck ticket puncher and her hardscrabble family of four so, do we? No, mean, nasty corporations' "feet must be held to the fire" anytime their actions could possibly be characterized as racist, bigotted, discriminatory, or homophobic. That's why we want the Leftist press to hound them unmercilessly, right?

On that basis, Clinton's minions had our heart-strings twanging in 1995 via the on-camera government workers gushing about their tough situations during the "Republican Government Shutdown," until it was pointed out to a few that those workers had yet to miss single paycheck, such that there could not possibly have been any real hardship due to being out of work. Ultimately, they all got paid every cent, as if they'd simply been given extra vacation time. The government prints the money, after all.

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