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The Baltimore Sun is laying off nine people in its newsroom after accepting what a union representative said seemed like most or all of the employee buyout applications it received last week. Of those forced to leave, four are editorial assistants, four are two-year interns and one is a reporter, the company told employees in a meeting held Friday morning. The Sun told the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild that nine others in the advertising section and call center are also being laid off. Tanika White, co-chair of the Guild, said Friday afternoon management only informed her of the 18 union jobs...

Call it the Midsummer Massacre. The last two months have seen a bloodbath at some of America's largest newspaper publishers, with substantial job cuts hitting a number of papers, including a high proportion of newsroom positions. The scythe has visited McClatchy, Media General, the Tribune Co., the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, among others. Media General got the scythe swinging in late May with its announcement that 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...

More than 300 Palm Beach Post employees have applied for buyouts and all have been accepted, according to an internal memo obtained by the Pulp. Though the newspaper announced it would cut 300 jobs, there will be additional layoffs. According to the memo: The number of applications was more than expected. However, we received too many in some areas and not enough in others, So we still expect to begin a small number of involuntary separations, or layoffs, the week of Aug. 18 in some departments as needed. Thanks to all who applied. You have greatly reduced the number of...

Media General Inc (MEG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) reported a second-quarter loss on Thursday, hurt by a severance charge and a 17 percent drop in newspaper advertising revenue, and said it would take a writedown of as much as $550 million. The publisher of the Tampa Tribune and Richmond Times-Dispatch posted a second-quarter preliminary loss of $129,000, or a penny a share, compared with net income of $5.1 million, or 22 cents a share, in the second quarter last year. The results do not include the effects of the expected non-cash writedown. Revenue fell to $204.8 million from $228.2...

Greg Osberg, Newsweek’s president and worldwide publisher, is leaving the Washington Post Company, FOLIO: has learned. Osberg told FOLIO: Tuesday that he plans to stay on at Newsweek until early fall. No successor has been named, though Jon Meacham, the magazine’s editor, would figure to be a prime candidate. A Washington Post Company spokesperson said the decision would be made by Newsweek. A spokesperson for Newsweek did not immediately return a request seeking comment. Osberg joined Newsweek in 1990 as associate advertising director, then vice president/associate publisher. He left Newsweek in 1997 to become president of sales and marketing at...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will cut its workforce by 8 percent, some 184 jobs, and eliminate its "geographically targeted news sections" as part of a cost-cutting plan the paper announced Wednesday. "The moves come amid an advertising revenue slump that has ravaged the newspaper industry and has been made worse by rising costs for fuel and newsprint," the paper reported. The paper reported that "job cuts, which will occur between August and October, will mainly affect the news and advertising departments at the company. They will be accomplished through voluntary buyouts, layoffs and job eliminations." The company currently has about 2,300...

Gannett Co. Inc. (GCI) said Wednesday that preliminary second-quarter earnings were $232.7 million, or $1.02 a share, compared to $365.7 million, or $1.56 a share, in the same period a year ago. Earnings from continuing operations were $1.02 compared with $1.24 per share in the second quarter of 2007. The preliminary results, however, do not include non-cash charges to be recorded in the quarter, which have not yet been finalized. The non-cash charges are expected to total in the range of $2.6 billion to $2.9 billion on a pre-tax basis and $2.4 billion to $2.7 billion on an after-tax basis....

Even though at least 34 journalists at The Sun have applied for buyout packages, the paper will still need to lay off employees to achieve its goal of eliminating 60 newsroom jobs by August. According to Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild Co-chair Tanika White, 34 Guild members and a rumored 10 more non-Guild members applied for the buyout by Friday’s deadline. White stressed that some buyout applications could be rejected — that Sun leadership may decide it cannot afford to lose certain skill sets, which would add to the number of layoffs. Judy Berman, senior vice president of marketing for the Baltimore...

Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller resigned today after a 21-month tenure that included the departure of two Times editors and plans for the sharpest staff and production cuts in the newspaper's history amid a continuing slide in advertising revenue. Tribune Co. -- which owns The Times and other media assets, including the Chicago Tribune and KTLA-TV Channel 5, and the Chicago Cubs baseball team -- named no successor to Hiller. Hiller was the third Times publisher named since the newspaper was acquired in 2000 by Chicago-based Tribune. He succeeded Jeffrey M. Johnson, who lost his job after publicly resisting...

PAPER: 150 banks nationwide could potentially fail over next year... Developing...

The shares of seven publicly held newspaper companies on Friday plunged to the lowest point in modern history in what Alan Mutter at his Reflections of a Newsosaur site calls "perhaps the worst single trading day ever for the industry." Here is Mutter's report: --McClatchy (MNI), Lee Enterprises (LEE), and GateHouse Media (GHS) hit all-time lows when their shares skidded respectively to $4.85, $3.11 and $1.55 in the opening hours of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Also hitting new lows today were: --Gannett (GCI) at $17.42, the lowest point since 1990. -- Media General (MEG) at $10.34, the...

As the economy stumbled in the second quarter, magazine ad sales fell more than 8 percent, with the steepest drops in ads for vehicles and for computers and related equipment, according to a report released Thursday. The report, compiled by the Publishers Information Bureau, shows the industry’s troubles growing worse. Ad pages sold in magazines in the United States declined slightly last year, 0.8 percent, then fell 6.4 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the period a year earlier, and 8.2 percent in the second quarter. For the first six months of the year, automotive ad...

RALEIGH - A News & Observer subscriber is suing the newspaper for cutting staff and the size of the paper. Keith Hempstead, a Durham lawyer, filed the suit last month in Wake Superior Court. He says he renewed his subscription in May just before the paper announced on June 16 the layoffs of 70 staff members and cuts in news pages. The paper, he says, is now not worth what he signed up for and therefore the cuts breached the paper's contract with him. "Plaintiff alleges fraud in that the newspaper announced changes in the coverage after procuring renewals from...

New York Times Co. stock Wednesday fell nearly 7%, its biggest one-day drop in recent years, after a Lehman Brothers analyst suggested shares were over-priced and that the publisher will cut its dividend. Times (NYSE: NYT) shares closed at $14.01, off $1.05, or 6.97%. The price matched its 52-week low. Lehman analyst Craig Huber shaved his estimate for 2008 earnings per share (EPS) to 75 cents from 85 cents. He also reduced his 2009 EPS estimate to 65 cents from 78 cents. Huber, who said Times stock is overpriced compared to peers such as The McClatchy Co., added he expects...

SAN DIEGO – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are trying to reach out to human smuggling victims through advertisements featured in major cities, including San Diego. Advertisements posted on billboards and transit shelters with the slogan, “Hidden in Plain Sight” were put on display in June around San Diego county. The goal is to educate the public about the existence of human trafficking in the country and urge them to report such crimes, officials said. “These victims are domestic servants, sweat shop employees, sex workers and others lured here by the promise of prosperity, then forced to work without...

The Chicago Tribune began informing staff Tuesday it will eliminate around 80 of its current 578 newsroom positions by the end of August and reduce the number of pages it publishes by 13 percent to 14 percent each week. There also will be a reduction of jobs in other Chicago Tribune departments, but that number was not immediately available. A paper spokesman declined comment. Because some newsroom jobs have been left unfilled in recent months, the actual number of staffers to exit the paper is expected to be between 55 and 58. "Like many newspapers, we're feeling financial pressures," Hanke...

Some advertisers spooked by bad press over China By Kevin Downey Jul 8, 2008 In just one month, on Aug. 8, NBC will begin airing the Summer Olympics from China, but from the looks of things it's not shaping up all that well for NBC as it attempts to sell its remaining ad inventory. At the least, the Games are looking to be a disappointment for the network, say media buyers. A lot will depend on how viewers and advertisers respond to the Olympic trials now airing. Ad spending will most likely fall short of NBC’s goal of more than...

On the heels of announcing steep layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, Tribune Co. said Thursday it had arranged a $300 million bank loan with Barclays Bank, most of which would be used to pay off part of an existing loan. The Barclays transaction was described as an “asset-backed commercial paper facility,” meaning it’s backed by accounts receivable money that Tribune is owed. The arrangement with Barclays allows Tribune to get a cash infusion pronto without having to wait for those bills to come due. Still, it’s a sign of the cash crunch at the debt-laden Chicago-based newspaper and TV...

The Davidson family owned the Daytona Beach News-Journal in Florida when I worked there in the early 1990s. The newspaper's masthead included the name of the editor of the family's defunct afternoon newspaper, the Evening News. The man would come to work every day, go to his office and close the door behind him. Like everyone else on staff, he presumably was paid a salary; and, as editor of a newspaper regardless of whether it existed or not, he was probably paid more than the reporters and lower-level editors. Every now and then he would drift into the newsroom. If...

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...

KTLA-TV Channel 5 laid off a veteran reporter and one of its weekend anchors Monday, part of a handful of cuts at the local station that also included several executives. Weekend anchor Walter Richards and reporter Willa Sandmeyer were let go along with reporter Janet Choi, executive editor of planning Joseph M. Russin and morning news executive producer John Hensley. KTLA, like the Los Angeles Times, is owned by Tribune Co., which is struggling financially because of major shifts in the media business and the softening economy. John Moczulski, vice president of programming and marketing at KTLA, said the cuts...

Star Tribune Co. declined to make a quarterly interest payment Monday to the holders of $96 million in second-tier debt that Avista Capital Partners raised to finance its acquisition of the news company last spring. But Chris Harte, chief executive of the Star Tribune, said in an interview that a lending consortium that holds senior debt of nearly $400 million was paid Monday. The Star Tribune has sufficient cash to make the payment to the "second-lien" debt holders, Harte said, but chose not to as the company works to complete a debt-restructuring plan with its senior creditors and works internally...

The Re-Envisioned, Slimmed-Down Courant Will Focus On Delivering A Smarter Package Of News With Passion And Purpose It's been a hellish week for employees of The Courant, especially those of us who camp in the news department. It's nothing new — shrinking revenue, shrinking staff, shrinking number of newspaper pages devoted to the journalism we hold dear. But man, when the company tells us we've got to cut our staff and newsprint by 25 percent just to stay in business, it's scary — and not only because we might lose our paychecks. What really scares us is that we might...

Gannett Co. Inc. said Friday it is reorganizing its U.S. Community Publishing division, reducing the number of regional groups by one to four and seeing off two retiring top executives. Under the new structure, five regional groups have been reorganized into four: East, South, Interstate and West. Interstate will be headed by Senior Group President Barbara A. Henry until Aug. 1, when she is retiring, Gannett said. Henry, 55, has also been president and publisher of The Indianapolis Star since 2000. She began her career at Gannett as a reporter at the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal in 1974, and later became...

Bay Area News Group East Bay undertook company-wide job cuts Friday, affecting every department, including the newsroom, advertising, circulation and production. Separately, Bay Area News Group-East Bay said it will notify a local labor union that it intends to reduce the newsroom rank-and-file workforce by nearly 13 percent. BANG-East Bay operates numerous papers in the East Bay and San Mateo County. BANG-East Bay would not specify the total number of job reductions across the company. The company also said it plans to lay off 29 out of 226 employees in a newsroom operation whose journalists voted this month to be...

The Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram are eliminating 31 jobs and closing their four news bureaus in response to a continuing decline in advertising revenues, their publisher said Thursday. The cuts come more than three months after The Seattle Times Co. said it was seeking to sell the Portland newspapers, along with the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and the Morning Sentinel in Waterville. The Portland newspapers have had two earlier rounds of job cuts this year aimed at offsetting rising costs and declining revenues. In the latest cuts, 25 employees accepted voluntary severance packages and six were laid...

As the economic pressure on newspapers intensifies, the Associated Press, a 162-year-old newsgathering cooperative for the industry, is beginning to fracture. Long a newspaper-centric organization, the AP has shifted its focus in recent years. With readers and advertisers migrating away from news on printed paper and toward cable TV and the Web, the AP is devoting more of its resources to producing content for other news outlets. These include the very Web portals that pose the greatest competition for newspapers, such as Yahoo and Google, which are now among the AP's biggest customers. For some editors, the AP's strategy, coupled...

Date/Time: 6/25/2008 3:20:34 PM Title: Baltimore Sun announces downsizing plans Posted By: Jim Romenesko Memo from Baltimore Sun publisher Tim Ryan Sent: 6/25/2008 3:00 PM Subject: Organizational Update Dear Employees / Owners, The two key factors that will sustain our company for the future are customer satisfaction and financial stability. Achieving both goals is challenging in the very best of market conditions. In the face of today’s tough economy, adapting to consumer trends while maintaining our fiscal strength is proving to be even more difficult – yet even more critical. Our long-term strategy of going on offense and creating growth...

Palm Beach Newspapers Inc. said today it will cut 300 workers from its payroll of 1,350. "A prolonged slump in our advertising revenues, increased competition from the Internet and an overall difficult economic environment have combined to make this type of cost reduction necessary," Palm Beach Post Publisher Doug Franklin said. Palm Beach Newspapers Inc., which owns The Palm Beach Post, the Palm Beach Daily News, the Florida Pennysaver and La Palma, hopes to make the cuts through voluntary buyouts offered to all employees who have worked for the company for more than five years, Franklin said. PBNI is just...

Boston’s two major daily newspapers are going through another round of painful cost-cutting measures. Boston Globe unions have been asked by management to take an across-the-board 10 percent pay cut to help trim costs, while the newspaper also looks at consolidating its printing plants, according to several union members. The Globe has just completed a round of buyouts that led to the departure of several high-profile staffers, and a top union official vowed yesterday to fight the proposed pay cut. “The Boston Newspaper Guild has given enough in the name of company equity,” said Dan Totten, president of the Guild,...

In an effort to cut costs, the partnership that oversees the joint business and advertising operations of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News is seeking 150 volunteers to accept buyouts by July 18. The 150 positions represent about 7 percent of the total staff of the two publications and the partnership. The Detroit Media Partnership also will halt publication of the 11 Free Press weekly community sections and Twist, the Free Press Sunday supplement aimed at women, by early August, said Susie Ellwood, the partnership’s executive vice president and general manager. “The environment in which newspapers operate continues...

AS the cable channels that populate the television dial conclude their advance advertising sales, they have something to celebrate: they made much greater gains than the broadcast networks. Preliminary figures for advance sales indicate that the cable channels will collectively sell about $8 billion in airtime to advertisers this season, up 7 to 8 percent from last year’s total. By contrast, the broadcast networks sold about $9.1 billion to $9.2 billion, up about 1 percent over last season. The shift in advertising dollars from broadcast to cable is not new, but it is particularly pronounced this year. There are several...

Date/Time: 6/23/2008 1:28:20 PM Title: Daytona Beach News-Journal prepares to be sold Posted By: Jim Romenesko Statement to Daytona Beach News-Journal employees from Georgia M. Kaney As you know, the company is being prepared for sale. These preparations are occurring during a major downturn for the US newspaper business, a downturn we are feeling in our market. As part of the sales process, Cox Enterprises and News-Journal Corporation hired a sales broker and a consultant to help us prepare the company for sale. It is their recommendation that some major changes need to be made now to make the company...

The Orlando Sentinel landed on newsstands Sunday with a new layout featuring more graphics, quick-read digests of top news, blog summaries and other changes aimed at making the newspaper more appealing to harried readers. Orlando is a proving ground for Sam Zell's effort to reinvent floundering Tribune Co., owner of a string of television stations and newspapers, including the Sentinel, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Between now and the end of September, Tribune plans to roll out redesigns at its papers. Accompanying the makeovers will be scaled-back page counts and further paring of employees. snip It remains...

The editor of the Chicago Tribune issued a memo Thursday to prepare her reporters and editors for drastic changes in content and painful reductions in staff. The memo from Editor Ann Marie Lipinski set out timetables for decisions leading to a "rethought and redesigned" Tribune promised in mid-September. Internal committees, she said, will evaluate which editorial matter to keep as the paper downsizes and, by mid-August, will recommend staffing levels. The paper is carrying out a directive from Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell to reduce costs. Declining revenues threaten Zell's ability to pay debt he took on for his leveraged...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution eliminated 21 jobs in its information technology department, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, which added the June 18 cuts were part of a restructuring. AJC spokesperson Jennifer Morrow told the paper that 30 full-time positions were eliminated but nine of them were open, resulting in 21 employees cut. The job cuts come less than two months after the paper announced a restructuring of its circulation department, cutting 62 positions and reducing distribution operations down to 49 counties. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the paper saw a daily circulation drop of 8.5% to 326,907, in...

The Register-Guard newspaper is cutting 30 jobs because of what its publisher describes as an unprecedented shortfall in revenue. Publisher Tony Baker said Wednesday that newspaper revenues have been $300,000 to $400,000 below budget projections each month this year because of the weak economy and a rise in newsprint prices. Baker said 13 vacant positions will not be filled, and the newspaper is offering buyout and early retirement incentives. If the company does not meet its payroll reduction target through those options, layoffs will be necessary. The Register-Guard currently has about 260 full-time employees. The cuts at the Eugene newspaper...

Commentary: New York Times Co., Gannett report discouraging results NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The New York Times Co., looking like a company poised to be regarded as takeover bait, reported discouraging news on Wednesday. Already reeling from a prolonged advertising slump, the Times (NYT) said it had an 11.9% decline in ad sales, overshadowing a slight increase in its circulation revenue. Meanwhile, Gannett (GCI) , the publisher of USA Today, said its May ad revenue had dropped 14% from a year ago. Its classified ad figure fell 19% for the month, underscoring the impact of online services. The Times has...

It's hurricane season for Florida's newspaper industry. Florida, with its track record of booming growth and a strong consumer economy, has long been a haven for journalistic excellence and huge profits for newspapers. But now a miserable economy, fueled by the collapse in the housing market, is gripping the state. Newspaper advertising revenues in Florida have fallen more than in most other places, even as the industry wrestles with the bigger and longer-term structural upheaval ushered in by the Internet. That is leading to layoffs at newspaper companies around the state. On Monday, The Miami Herald unveiled plans to cut...

Journalists at Le Monde, France’s newspaper of reference, face an unenviable choice this summer: kiss goodbye either to one-quarter of their colleagues or to their cherished independence. The centre-left daily has been plunged into the worst crisis since it was established in 1944 on the orders of Charles de Gaulle. It is haemorrhaging €2m ($3.1m, £1.6m) a month and has accumulated losses of €167m since 2001. Le Monde, the newspaper of choice for the French elite, is a journalistic and cultural icon. But its editorial independence, a defining feature in an industry all too often marred by proprietorial interference, is...

The 1,400 McClatchy Co. employees targeted for layoffs can blame their job loss on the faltering newspaper economy in general, their company's specific concentration of papers in California and Florida where the housing collapse has been most acute -- and a forward-looking strategy once hailed as a way to avoid precisely this kind of pain. When McClatchy borrowed heavily to buy Knight Ridder Inc. in 2006, it was following a strategy that Wall Street and other industry observers said made perfect sense for newspaper chains: grow top-line revenue through acquisitions funded by cheap credit. McClatchy added its own spin --...

(Crain’s) — Sun-Times Media Group Inc. shareholders and employees should brace for more cost-cutting efforts, as declining advertising revenue and circulation continue to constrict profits. That’s the message Cyrus Freidheim Jr., president and CEO of the Chicago-based publisher, delivered Tuesday morning during the company’s annual meeting held at the East Bank Club. “Almost all analysts are painting a bleak future (for the newspaper industry),” he said. “The critics are right about one thing: The market is miserable.” Mr. Freidheim would not discuss possible cost-cutting moves, nor provide an update on efforts to find a buyer for the company. Raymond Seitz,...

<p>Gannett Co.'s (GCI) total advertising revenue fell 14.3% to $347.1 million in May from $404.9 million in May 2007, the media company said late Tuesday.</p>

Hammered by the same financial problems facing newspapers across the country, The Miami Herald announced it plans to reduce its workforce by 250 full-time employees -- 17 percent of its staff. Publisher David Landsberg said the reduction includes 190 full-time and part-time employees being laid off, plus the elimination of other open positions, because of dramatic reductions in revenue. ''This is a painful but necessary step,'' Landsberg wrote in an e-mail to employees. ``We're operating in a time of great change and challenge for our operations.'' The Herald is owned by McClatchy, the third-largest newspaper company in the country. The...

The McClatchy Co., publisher of the Charlotte Observer and 29 other daily papers, said Monday that it plans to eliminate 1,400 positions, about 10 percent of its workforce, as it faces declining advertising revenue and increased competition from the Internet. Observer publisher Ann Caulkins told employees today that the paper will eliminate 123 positions, or 11.1 percent of its staff. The cuts will be made through voluntary and involuntary buyouts. The Observer newsroom is expected to lose 22 jobs. Caulkins said previous efforts to trim costs, including an earlier round of buyouts, reduced use of newsprint and the outsourcing of...

Released: 06/16/2008 SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 16 -- The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI) announced today that it plans to reduce its workforce by about 10% as the company accelerates efforts to manage through today's difficult advertising market and position itself for future success in an increasingly competitive environment. "We have been transitioning steadily and successfully from a traditional newspaper company to an integrated multimedia company for some time," said McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt. "The effects of the current national economic downturn -- particularly in real estate, auto and employment advertising -- make it essential that we move faster now to realign...

Broadcast networks are starting to experiment in giving makegood inventory in digital streaming episodes in lieu of traditional TV commercial time. This past season, a handful of advertisers took makegood inventory from ABC on its ABC.com video player during episodes of specific shows. Mike Shaw, president of advertising sales for ABC, would not name those marketers, but noted that in many cases digital inventory was more valuable than on the traditional network. For instance, Shaw said advertisers got the benefit of higher price, cost-per-thousand viewers (CPM) digital episodes--prices that can be anywhere from one-quarter to one-third higher on network's respective...

Print advertising sales by American newspapers fell the most on record in the first quarter, tumbling 14 percent as the real estate and job markets shrank and business was lost to the Internet. Advertisers spent $8.43 billion on newspaper ads in the first three months of 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America, the eighth drop in a row. Real estate and recruitment ads each fell 35 percent. Many of the industry’s biggest advertisers in real estate, automotive and employment are cutting spending and shifting advertising to their own Web sites, said Kip Cassino, research director at Borrell Associates,...

Struggling Media General sheds 250-260 jobs at Tampa Tribune, other Florida properties TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- An estimated 250 to 260 jobs are being eliminated by The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV and other Media General Inc. properties in Florida, the company said. About 200 of the cuts have already taken place or are pending completion of the company's voluntary buyout program, said John Schueler, president of the Florida Communications Group, which oversees the properties. Schueler said Wednesday another 50 to 60 positions still need to be cut through layoffs. About 120 positions were eliminated earlier this year through attrition and layoffs,...

A flurry of big-name layoffs marks the reinvention of the local TV news business. By Deborah Potter Deborah Potter (potter@newslab.org) is executive director of NewsLab, a broadcast training and research center, and a former network correspondent. Anyone who's been in the television news business for a decade or more has seen it before. A tough economy always means cutbacks, so it wasn't a surprise when the ax fell at stations across the country this spring. But the buyouts and layoffs this time around signal something more than a predictable reaction to a looming recession. Prominence and longevity — and the...