Hatchet Man
Cutting jobs with a meat cleaver
Posted on 10/30/2008 7:13:32 AM PDT by My Favorite Headache
Newspapers are seeing red in newsrooms nationwide. On Tuesday, Gannett said it would be laying off 3,000 employees, or roughly 10% of its total work force of about 32,000. Not only are big companies like McClatchy and Tribune cutting, but their smaller competitors are also swinging the axe with abandon.
Although Gannett declined to give specific figures, Robert Dickey, the president of Gannett's beleaguered newspaper division, explained that "the fiscal crisis is deepening and the economy is getting worse. Gannett's revenues continue to be severely impacted by this downturn, and our local operations are suffering."
The current Gannett cuts follow the elimination of 1,000 jobs in August through layoffs and buyouts; between the two rounds of cuts, the company will have shed about 12% of its workforce in under three months. The two most recent rounds came on top of a rolling series of cuts around the company earlier this year.
While a total number is unavailable, hundreds of jobs were affected, including 50 at USA Today, 55 layoffs at four newspapers in New Jersey, 150 buyouts at the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News (about 7.5% of the total 2,000) and an unspecified number of graphic-design positions company-wide. In July, The Honolulu Advertiser said it would lay off 54 employees or 8% of its workforce, and 50 or more positions were cut at the Arizona Republic.
Gannett Broadcasting also cut an unspecified number of positions.
Nor is Gannett alone in implementing multiple layoffs in 2008.
In September, McClatchy said it would be shedding 10% of its work force, or about 1,150 full-time employees, leaving it with approximately 10,350. This announcement followed the announcement in mid-June that it was cutting about 1,400 jobs, and an earlier restructuring plan that shed 2,000 jobs from 2006-2008, achieved largely through voluntary buyouts and attrition. The company will have shed over 30% of its workforce in three years, when the third round of cuts is complete.
At the Tribune Co., Sam Zell's new management team has also made several sweeping rounds of cuts. The Los Angeles Times was hit especially hard on Oct. 27--when it announced it was cutting 75 positions, following an earlier round this summer that cut 250 jobs, including 150 positions in the newsroom. This summer, the Chicago Tribune cut 80 newsroom positions--or about 14% of the total 578--and an unspecified number of jobs in other divisions, like ad sales and production.
The Baltimore Sun cut 100 positions across its various divisions. Several of Tribune's smaller papers were hit especially hard: The Hartford Courant lost 57 and The Orlando Sentinel cut 50 from its newsroom, with an unspecified number elsewhere--large numbers, given the papers' relatively small size.
Advance Publications cut about 40% of the newsroom staff at the Star-Ledger, based in Newark, New Jersey--or a little under 150 positions, as well as jobs in production and distribution--after a highly public struggle with the unionized workers at the paper. At one point, publisher George Arwady said he would be forced to close or sell the newspaper if the unions didn't make some concessions on job cuts.
Amid a legal dispute with minority owner Cox Enterprises, the Daytona Beach News-Journal eliminated 99 positions in June. Also in June, The Palm Beach Post--owned by Cox Newspapers--said it was cutting 300 positions, or about 22% of the total 1,350, including 130 from its newsroom.
In May, Media General said it would cut 810 positions across its properties in the Southeast, with the vast majority falling on its publishing business; just 65 of the positions were in broadcasting or corporate. As part of the reductions, The Tampa Tribune (along with its sister broadcast station WFLA-Channel 8) is losing about 110 positions, or about 8% of the total 1,326, including at least 50 in the newsroom.
Also in May, The Washington Post cut 100 newsroom positions--or about 12% of the total 800--through a combination of voluntary buyouts and attrition, meaning that no layoffs were required. An unspecified number of employees in other divisions also accepted the buyout offer. This followed two earlier rounds of buyouts in 2003 and 2006.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, also owned by Cox Newspapers, cut 189 jobs--or roughly 8% of the total workforce--through voluntary buyouts, attrition and layoffs. The cuts, to be completed by October, came as the paper eliminated its "geographically targeted news sections" devoted to various parts of the Atlanta metro area.
This summer, The Wall Street Journal, recently acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., cut 50 jobs as part of a consolidation of certain functions. In effect, this meant the elimination of its global news, global copy, global pagination, Monitor, and the stand-alone WSJ.com editing desks.
The Boston Herald cut 130-160 employees, focusing on the production staff, according to Herald President and Publisher Patrick J. Purcell, who announced the decision in a meeting with union leaders in late June. Purcell said printing will be outsourced to presses in nearby Chicopee and Norwood, Mass.; the Chicopee facility is owned by Dow Jones, the Norwood facility by Boston Offset.
In February The New York Times said it would cut 100 newsroom positions by the end of the year, preferably through buyouts and attrition--but also with layoffs, if necessary. Overall, the NYTCO has seen its workforce shrink by about 3.8% since last year, according to executives.
With the news business going through continual layoffs and cutbacks in news coverage, where are we going to get our liberal worldview from?
There last best hope is the Obama bailout.
This is nothing. We are headed for a recession similar to the 70’s and early 80’s.
If they are already laying off, it’s clear most of these companies won’t survive.
Print ad response rates are pathetic. They are first thing to go out the window in most marketing depts.
As long as they keep up their liberalism, they are going down. First: conservatives can read and we don't like what you are saying. Second: your liberals are just too ignorant to be able to decipher what you are dishing out, others never read anything only follow the bouncing ball, just give them a bone.
When you keep doing the same thing over and over and get no profit, it's time to rethink or go down the tubes.
Exactly. How long before we start seeing an outcry that, say, the New York Times is too important to fail? I only skimmed the article, but the Times Company's bonds were recently downgraded to junk, and my money guy estimates their one year target price per share is $8. They were at $45 in 2004.
Meanwhile, Associated Press is losing a lot of papers, especially heartland papers, thanks to its combination of new all-advocacy journalism (a slant in every story!) and new pricing.
In a very amusing twist, the LA Times layoffs fell heavily on underperforming affirmative-action hires. Sorry about that... no. Not really.
I don't know if the article mentioned the Christian Science Monitor -- a once noble paper, collapsed in a seething cauldron of Boston liberalism over the last forty years, beginning with a one-sided slant on gun rights -- completely ceased publication and has gone web-only. (Yes, I really should have read TFA more carefully).
Of course, the sad part of this is along with the newsroom staff, who are all effete liberals, the collapse of the industry puts a lot of good decent production folks out of work. Most Freepers would probably really like and get along with the pressroom staff and the techno-geeks -- the former tend to be conservative (lots of vets) and the latter libertarian. The newsrooms, well, that's where you go if four years of state college English went to your head.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Printing anything for distribution is becoming obsolete. Going the way of buggy whips. Within ten years it will be all network. The new White Space broadband proposal will hasten the end.
Burn baby burn — Cancel all your subscriptions to everything, bring it on faster. Save the trees — Have you ever wondered why the enviro-whackos never go after that angle?
For a while at least, you will still have CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and MSNBC.
Well, I do declare Happy Days Are here Again......
When they cater to their elites, bias all the time, refuse to dig out the real news and ignore us conservatives, what can I say? We buy maybe two papers a year and then for the coupons and discounts. Our local, family, fair and balanced,weekly newspaper is not included in this.
Good news. Do all you can do to facilitate it.
and under ‘bama’s plan, those job cuts will spread everywhere.
we need to email our “regulars” and tell them:
“We’d win a lot more of the 40% that “don’t pay taxes but would get a check’ if we said: “they’re going to need that check because, under ‘bama’s plan, their jobs will be the first to go when small businesses have to start cutting back.”
Right now, all they hear is that they will “get a check” = that encourages them to vote for ‘bama.
WAKE UP! Remind them that it’s Small Business that have provided 100% of the jobs in the past few years.
If they get punished with higher taxes, they will have to lay off and not hire. That means the famous “40%” will be the first to see their jobs disappear. A small check won’t make up for no paycheck.
In addition, for those who DO manage to keep their jobs, the chance to advance and make more money over the years will shrink as less jobs means they tread water at the level they’re at now.
So, do they want a job security and the opportunity to advance or a frozen job to no job in exchange for ‘a small check’?”
Right now, our mantra is “40% will get a CHECK!” That’s a great incentive for most of them to vote for ‘bama. DUH!
I just sent the above to:
and the McC/Sarah campaign at:
info@McCainPalinVictory2008.com
and deputy campaign manager
and copy/paste to Huck at:
http://www.mikehuckabee.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=SignUp.Home
Remember the formula of the networks: The office people that screen the emails only pass them on when they get X-amount on a given subject.
Be sure to add your name and town and email - or they won’t read them.
IMPORTANT when emailing. they won’t read mass emails - SO,
put just one email add in the “to” line then click on BBC at the end of that line. a BCC line will open just above subject line. copy paste the rest of the addresses in there and each recipient will see ONLY their name - and in the subject line make reference to “about that 40%” or something that includes the 40%
The Newspaper industry is in a Depression as the economy weeds out excess capacity. They have left at least 50% of their readers (conservative) in the dust by gutting all objectivity and going ultra left. In shrinking the font or print size legible only with the aid of a magnifying glass they are doing their best to remove 65% of their readers (60 years plus). No other industry has done more to shrink their audience. Add alternative sources and the outcome is obvious.
That’s what happens when media outlets are obsessed with one sided stories. They lose at least half their audience.
The only value these papers have now is their ability to distribute advertising. When companies like Target, Best Buy, KMart, Sears and other retailers figure out how to get their flyers to people cheaper than the papers, there will be virtually no revenue coming into them.
One of these days, you’ll see one of the big chains move from a hard copy distribution to an electronic distribution. When they start collecting email addresses at their stores, you’ll know the end is near for newspapers.
Local newspapers will still exist for local stories, obits, sports, and other specialty stories. But that will only be available online- and it might even be a subscription service, as advertisers continue to look elsewhere.
Articles like this give me a tingle up my leg.
Thanks for the thrill.
Cutting jobs with a meat cleaver
NYT Chart at Yahoo.com (and I see their analyst is now saying $8, too). You ought to read this just for the joy of it. And here's Reuters this week tut-tutting over Standard and Poor's decision to downgrade NYT paper to junk. ("The outlook is negative," too, which means more downgrades are probably coming... NYT.N is already three notches below investment grade, and they have to pay hundreds of thousands in insurance now to issue bonds). What's Doctor Raoul's old saying? Is he still around? I'll ping him.
The CSM throws in the towel. Their story. Bonus: The Washington Post says this could be the first of many. From their pages to God's eyes!
The paper was founded by a weird pseudochristian cult which rejects medical science -- they're in the news from time to time when they force their kids to die of appendicitis or flu instead of get treatment. Gun control has been a signature issue for the doomed newspaper since the 1960s... any book on the subject, the antigun position has numerous footnotes to the CSM. Here's one example from 2003: "Surely the right to keep and bear arms, outside a militia, shouldn't include Uzis, AK-47s, and similar assault weapons."
On the LA Times affirmative-action purge, best source (as always on LAT) is LA Observed. The article cited is only one of many on these richly deserved layoffs... not that there aren't staffers remaining (white staffers!) who deserved the chop much more. Actually, the Times purge seems to have gone to the demographic ends of the newsroom, retiring both young (unproductive) novices and old (highly-paid and unproductive for the money) geezers.
What do you call a newpaperman in LA?
..."Waiter!" Heh.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Yep. It's a really, really stupid business move to alienate half (or more) of your potential customers.
Here's a great example from Gannett last year -- an Alabama paper so cash-strapped that they had to disinvite three summer interns in a minority journalism program, who were already on the way, at the very last minute. See here. The Montgomery (AL) Advertiser is a paper with a hard-left editorial stance (staffers angling for those disappearing jobs in New York and LA without regard to their readership, apparently). Naturally they endorsed Saint Hussein this year, and Kerry in 2004. Also naturally, their ABC circulation is lower in 2008 than it was when they couldn't support their promise to three college kids in 2007, when it was lower than it was in 2004.
Hot tip, people: Outside of newsrooms, Alabama is not a hotbed of liberalism. Black or white, Alabamans tend to be family-values patriots.
Our local, family, fair and balanced,weekly newspaper is not included in this
Local papers have the best chance at surviving -- with local contant and advertising. But many things threaten even them. What dooms many small papers is being bought by a Gannett or McClatchy. Editorial and business people from the same old cities and same old schools breeze in and "improve" the paper to blandness.
Apart from bias, the newspaper industry is being rocked by other things:
But, there's an important difference. Those three things are out of a paper's management's control. Bias is not. But they would rather stay biased than survive. Even if they are the Montgomery Advertiser showering the good folk of Alabama with Greenwich Village values like a drunk urinating on his fellows in a homeless shelter.
There are good people in the industry. They do not have their hands on the tiller, and so their only choice is to man the lifeboats or hit the rocks.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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