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Time Inc. is bracing for another round of cutbacks. Sources say the layoffs will be most severe in the division that includes Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Time and Money, and will be carried out before the Thanksgiving break. Since many of the old-line titles at Time Inc. are covered by union contracts with the Newspaper Guild, the company will likely have to offer voluntary buyout options as part of the downsizing. Time is running out if it hopes to complete the layoffs and write off the costs in the fourth quarter. Ann Moore, CEO of Time Inc., personally took over supervision...

The Ann Arbor News will close in July and will be replaced by a Web-based, media company called AnnArbor.com, Laurel Champion, publisher of The News, announced in a 9 a.m. meeting with staff. "While this is an incredibly difficult decision for us, this is by no means the end of local journalism in Ann Arbor," Champion said. Champion described AnnArbor.com as an innovative, community news and information service. AnnArbor.com also will produce a twice-a-week newspaper, published on Thursday and Sunday and a total-market coverage product once a week. The Ann Arbor News will continue publishing a daily newspaper through July,...

The Tucson Citizen, Arizona’s oldest newspaper, is going to close down by March 21 unless a buyer is found before then. And frankly, nobody’s buying newspapers these days. The Gannett-owned newspaper is run under a joint operating agreement with the Arizona Daily Star and is the first U.S.-Mexico border newspaper to announce its impending demise. Three other newspapers along the border have cut back operations, laid employees off and cut back benefits in an attempt to save themselves. This morning, the San Antonio Express-News announced it’s going to offer employees a one year unpaid leave of absence, institute a hiring...

When newspapers are gone, what will you miss? Years and years after some pundits began predicting the end of newspapers, the newspapers themselves are finally realizing that it's over. Huge debt, high costs, declining subscription rates, plummeting ad base--will the last one out please turn off the lights. On their way out, though, we're hearing a lot of, "you'll miss us when we're gone..." laments. I got to thinking about this. It's never good to watch people lose their livelihoods or have to move on to something new, even if it might be better. I respect and honor the hard...

The Seattle P-I is being put up for sale, and if after 60 days it has not sold, it will either be turned into a Web-only publication with a greatly reduced staff or discontinued entirely. "One thing is clear: at the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print," said Steven Swartz, president of the Hearst Corp.'s newspaper division. Swartz addressed the P-I's newsroom at about noon Friday, flanked by P-I editor and publisher Roger Oglesby and Lincoln Millstein, Hearst's senior vice president for digital media. Swartz said the reason for offering the paper for...

Everyone in power at the Los Angeles Times vowed that 2008 would be the year the paper stopped making news for the wrong reasons — remember how unbelievable 2007 seemed? — and rebuilt its reputation as a top-tier U.S. newspaper. Then Sam Zell came along, followed by yet another change in publisher and editor, the greatest shedding of talent in the paper's history, and more national attention for reasons other than good journalism: one of the most embarrassing retractions ever, the killing of Book Review, Opinion, Real Estate and the Los Angeles Times Poll, waves of emotional farewells, worst in...

New York Times (NYT) management is finally taking the steps necessary to try to save the company. Several years too late? Yes. But better late than never. First, the company announced plans to sell its headquarters, which should bring in $250 million. Then it began actively shopping the Boston Globe and Red Sox stake, which might bring in another $250 million (if it can find anyone to buy them). Now it has filed a shelf registration with the SEC to permit it to issue a variety of different securities when it feels like it. -snip- In our opinion, this plan...

Employees of McClatchy publishing in Iraq were in an unually good mood recently. The occasion was the aftermath of the Iraqi journalist who tossed his shoes at President Bush at a press conference in Baghdad as you can see in these quotes from Inside Iraq, a blog for McClatchy journalists working in that country: Some of the guys were happy and they were talking about the bravery of the journalist who threw his shoes at the American president. When I tried to explain my opinion, I was trying to tell the guys that I don't agree with the way the...

Earlier this month, executives at the New York Times (NYT) warned investors that they had a miserable November. They weren’t kidding. The grim details are here, but I’ll save you some time: * Revenue was down 13.9%, an acceleration from October’s 9.4% drop. * Ad revenue was down 20.9%, an acceleration from October’s 16.2% drop. * The really awful news: Internet ad revenue and overall Internet revenue actually declined in November, down 3.8% and 2.6%, respectively. In the good old days of 2007, the Times could at least say that while print revenue growth was slowing to a halt, Internet...

The Seattle Times is asking 500 managers and non-union workers to take a week off without pay. The McClatchy Co. has a 49.5 percent stake in the Times. In a story on the Times’ Web site, company spokeswoman Jill Mackie says workers can take the time off in a weeklong chunk or a day at a time between now and February, adding that she didn’t know how much money the move would save. In November, The Times announced plans to cut its staff by 130 to 150 workers, another grim reminder of the daily newspaper’s financial struggles. “As difficult as...

In a move that was not wholly unexpected, the financially struggling Seattle Times said Sunday, Dec. 7, that to cut expenses it plans to immediately shrink its current four daily newspaper sections to three, eliminating a number of daily features, including the New York Times crossword puzzle and daily television listings. “I am in the truth-telling business,” Executive Editor David Boardman said in a signed column in the Times. “We are making these changes because we are reducing our two biggest newsroom expenses: staff and newsprint.” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer echoed the move by also downsizing today to three sections to...

Tribune Co. is preparing for a possible bankruptcy-protection filing as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter, opening a new front of trouble for the newspaper industry. As Tribune continues discussions with its lenders to rework its debt load, the newspaper-and-television concern in recent days ...

Call it the big shrink. Citing the effects of a recession that's prompting marketers to trim budgets and the number of media outlets they work with, media companies are shedding jobs at a furious rate. But the deep cuts they're making are as much about these conglomerates shedding their old media models as they are about the economy. Viacom and NBC Universal swung the ax last week, eliminating 850 and 500 jobs, or 7% and 3% of their work forces, respectively. Add that to 600 job cuts at Time Inc., 1,500 at Yahoo, 1,800 at Gannett, hundreds at CBS's radio...

Paper Chase: Newspaper Revs Down 18.1% In 3Q Newspaper revenues dropped by almost one-fifth in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, according to the Newspaper Association of America, which posted the disastrous quarterly results on its Web site last week. These grim tidings hint that an even worse fourth quarter may be on the way, making 2008 the worst year for newspapers in decades. Total print and online ad revenues fell 18.1% to $8.94 billion. Print revenues continued their long, accelerating decline--tumbling 19.3% to $8.19 billion. Online ad revenues experienced their second quarterly decline in a...

The Washington=Baltimore Newspaper Guild, which represents workers at The Baltimore Sun, reported today that the company will be announcing more layoffs in the near future.

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CHICAGO (AP) — The Tribune Company, owner of newspapers including The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, along with the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field, said Monday that it lost $121.6 million in the third quarter as newspaper advertising revenue fell. The company, which is privately held, had net income in the comparable quarter a year earlier of $152.8 million. Revenue fell 10.5 percent, to $1.04 billion, from $1.16 billion a year ago, the company said.

The New York Times Co. has increased its estimates for how much The Boston Globe and other New England newspapers it owns have declined in value because of reductions in advertising. The Times took a $166 million accounting charge in the third quarter and said any adjustments to that estimate will come in the current quarter. In releasing preliminary third-quarter results last month, the Times estimated the charge at $100 million to $150 million. With the change and related tax adjustments, the Times had a net loss of $106 million, or 74 cents a share, in the third quarter, compared...

The Star-Telegram used to be a special business. For decades, the Fort Worth newspaper had some of the strongest numbers anywhere, stoked by a fast-growth market and big-city competition. With almost 400 journalists at its peak, it staffed one of the largest newsrooms for a paper its size and had a fat news hole for stories. Profit margins sometimes hit 30 percent, justifying the large head count and making the Star-Telegram a cash-generating machine. That’s all yesterday’s news. Newspapers across the nation are facing their own economic crisis, and they’ve cut more than 24,000 jobs in the past year. The...

The New York Times Company's 10Q (NYT) contains more details on the company's cash crunch. Specifically, the company must deliver $400 million to lenders in May of 2009, six months from now. The company has only $46 million of cash on hand, and its operations will likely begin consuming this meager balance this quarter or next. The company has been shut out of the commercial paper market, but has a $366 million short-term credit line remaining that it entered into several years ago, when the industry was strong. It has not yet drawn this cash down, and given the current...

Traditional media outlets are dying and savvy conservative politicians have taken to ignoring them -- or hastening their demise. Instead of subjecting themselves to heavy-handed interviews and biased coverage, Republicans are finding other ways to reach the public with their campaign messages. It's an approach the McCain-Palin ticket may have adopted too late. McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis asked, "Why would we want to throw Sarah Palin into a cycle of piranhas called the news media that have nothing better to ask questions about than her personal life and her children?" In McCain's Arizona, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio recently...

With DVR penetration knocking on 30%, much of America now views the ability to skip ads on TV as something approaching a birthright. While they haven't had much choice in the matter, the broadcast networks say they're OK with this, that DVR users watch more TV and disproportionately more shows from ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS, which can't be bad, right? But the networks haven't given up on the dream of a world of must-see advertising and are quietly attempting to take back that right -- let's call it a privilege -- on the next generation of digital platforms. Already,...

The Washington Post Co. today reported an 86 percent decline in third-quarter earnings compared with the same period last year, as a significant loss at the flagship newspaper offset gains at the company's education and cable divisions. For the quarter, The Post Co. had net income of $10.3 million ($1.08 per share) on $1.1 billion in revenue, compared with net income of $72.5 million ($7.60) on $1 billion in revenue in 2007. The company's newspaper division -- which includes The Post, the Everett (Wash.) Herald and several community papers -- reported an operating loss of $82.7 million for the quarter,...

The Washington Post Co. today reported an 86 percent decline in third-quarter earnings compared to the same period last year, as a significant loss at the flagship newspaper offset gains at the company's education and cable divisions. For the quarter, The Post Co. had net income of $10.3 million ($1.08 per share) on $1.1 billion in revenue, compared to net income of $72.5 million ($7.60) on $1 billion in revenue in 2007. The company's newspaper division -- which includes The Post, the Everett (Wash.) Herald and several community papers -- reported an operating loss of $82.7 million for the quarter,...

Time Inc., the world’s largest magazine company, is set to announce a revamping that will result in job cuts of 6 percent — more than 600 positions — and a reorganization that could radically alter the culture at the venerable publishing house. The company plans to reveal the overhaul in a memorandum Tuesday evening from Ann S. Moore, Time Inc.’s chairman and chief executive, and the layoffs will begin in about two weeks. No magazines are scheduled to close, but some are likely to be severely cut back. Ms. Moore was already planning an overhaul because of the upheavals in...

With ad pages down across the magazine industry, Rolling Stone publisher Wenner Media has become the latest publishing company to swing the ax. Sources said the company let go at least seven employees over the past few days, including a handful of people in the corporate marketing department. The cuts represent a little less than 2 percent of the company’s 400 full-timers. Wenner follows Hearst Magazines, Time Inc.’s Southern Progress Corp. unit and Mansueto Ventures, which also have cut staff in recent weeks. The cuts at Wenner come as Rolling Stone faces a 18.3 percent decline in ad pages to...

Standard & Poor's on Thursday slashed its ratings on the New York Times Co (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) into junk territory and cited concerns about the newspaper publisher's revenue outlook, after it posted a third-quarter loss. Moody's Investors Service also said it may follow the move, adding the publisher faces risks in refinancing its debt. The New York Times posted a quarterly loss from continuing operations on Thursday and said advertising revenue at its news media group dropped 16 percent for the quarter. For details, see [ID:nN23398087]

The New York Times Co. reported a steep drop in third-quarter profits on Thursday, the latest gloomy earnings report in an industry battered by online competition and falling print advertising revenue. The New York Times Co. said net profit fell by 51.4 percent in the third quarter to 6.5 million dollars, or five cents per share, from 13.4 million dollars, or nine cents per share, in the same period a year ago. The company, which owns About.com, The Boston Globe, International Herald Tribune and 16 other daily newspapers besides the flagship The New York Times, said overall advertising revenue fell...

NEW YORK, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Standard & Poor's on Thursday slashed its ratings on the New York Times Co (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) into junk territory and cited concerns about the newspaper publisher's revenue outlook, after it posted a third-quarter loss. ...SNIP... It cut the Times' rating three notches to "BB-minus," three levels below investment grade, from "BBB-minus." The outlook is negative, indicating an additional cut may be likely over the next one-to-two years.

Can't Rush and Sean afford to buy them now?

Yada, yada, yada. ~~snip~~ The growing power of rumor is part of a much larger transformation in the way that voters receive information about politics. The old model was a vertical one, where professional journalists delivered their reports to a largely passive audience through television or newspapers. The new model is horizontal, where folks get information from each other and actively pass it on, through e-mail, text messages and viral videos. Everyone is a potential broadcaster. This "democratization of information" has many benefits - more sources, more perspectives, more choices. In a forum Steve moderated for The International Journal of...

Perhaps it is time for the remaining Miami Herald employees to break out the Santeria rooster once again. Just three months after announcing job cutbacks in June, the Miami Herald has just announced that it is axing another 119 employees (emphasis mine): Three months after announcing plans to trim 250 jobs, the Miami Herald Media Co. said Tuesday it is cutting another 119 positions, or about 10 percent of the remaining workforce.Eighty full- and part-time employees will leave the company, while other, vacant jobs will be eliminated, Miami Herald President and Publisher David Landsberg said.

Miami Herald Publisher David Landsberg announced in an email to employees this afternoon that the newspaper is cutting 119 jobs in what amounts to the third round of buyouts, according to two newsroom sources. The cuts are being made across the McClatchy Company, which in total is slashing 1150 positions across the chain. Landsberg's explanation to employees, issued today at about 4:30 p.m., was dictated to the Pulp by one reporter. "Today we are announcing plans to reduce our worforce by 119 full-time equivalents, or about 10 percent of all employees," Landsberg wrote. "About 80 full-time and part-time employees will...

Washington Post Co. (WPO) Chief Executive Don Graham on Tuesday reported the sale of $2.9 million in company stock. According to a regulatory filing, 4,664 shares of Class B stock were sold through trusts of Graham's siblings. snip

"2008 Centennial/Dedication Schedule at a Glance" Thursday, Sept. 11...

NY Times Tale of the Investigative Tape: John Edwards: Ten months Sarah Palin: Five days The Grey Journalistic Bag LadyIt all boils down to what you're interested in investigating. ITEM: It took the New York Times ten months to muster the willpower to look into the John Edwards affair, scandal and ongoing cover-up. It took the Grey Shady only five days to swing into action on Sarah Palin. ITEM: Today, it was also reported that the NY Times lost another 30,000+ subscribers. Are the two items related? The Times' investigative sleuths better go back to Dirt Digging 101: the dirt...

<p>EXCLUSIVE: After weeks of checking out rumor after rumor, I'm finally able to pin down details of the long-overdue shakeup that's ahead for NBC when this fall's primetime schedule shapes up to be an unmitigated disaster. Someone has to shoulder the responsibility, and both Ben Silverman and the Reveille development exec he brought with him to NBC, Teri Weinberg, now deservedly have big fat targets on their foreheads. Staying in charge will be Marc Graboff and Katherine Pope who both have been trying to keep NBC up and running while Weinberg continually f***s up and Silverman regularly goes AWOL. For instance, last Thursday was Ben's first day in the office all month after attending the Beijing Olympics and guesting aboard Elisabeth Murdoch's yacht. (Elisabeth's Shine Group bought Ben's Reveille productions which put $60+ million directly into his pocket). But a pressing issue has been Silverman's partying ways, especially his excessive off-hours drinking and drug-taking, which has not only been visible to but also prompted complaints from Hollywood's TV community. "When he's around, he is totally engaged and focused and not in an altered state of consciousness. But that's when he's around. Literally, he has not been around from August 1st until August 28th, and you can't run a network programming group and not be around for the month of August," an insider tells me. So NBC is faced with two personnel problems simultaneously: Weinberg and Silverman.</p>

The Bee offered voluntary buyouts to the majority of its full-time employees today and hinted that another round of layoffs is possible as well. The buyouts represent the latest round of cost cutting at The Bee, which is facing a big slump in advertising revenue. Two months ago the newspaper eliminated 86 jobs as part of an across-the-board layoff ordered by its parent, The McClatchy Co. of Sacramento. McClatchy imposed a companywide wage freeze two weeks ago. But Bee executives said today they needed to make more cuts. The economic downturn has deepened and The Bee, like the rest of...

From: Kern, Gerould W. Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 1:02 PM To: zzCTC.ALLEDITORIAL Subject: Today's Chicago Tribune newsroom staff departures To the staff: Today is a difficult day in the Chicago Tribune newsroom as we are completing the second part of our reduction in force. Colleagues who are leaving today gave many years of service to this newspaper and forged lasting friendships and associations here. Endings are never easy. We thank them for their dedication and contributions to the success of the Chicago Tribune over their careers. We wish them only the best in the future. On July 25, Bob...

Updated at 11:44 a.m. ET on Aug. 14: The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., is among the first newspapers reporting layoffs on Thursday. Earlier: A Maryland publisher told employees late Wednesday afternoon that Gannett is eliminating 1,000 newspaper jobs, or about 3% of the troubled newspaper division's workforce -- and that about 600 employees are being laid off, a Gannett Blog reader says. The reader provided a copy of a memo that Daily Times Publisher Rick Jensen e-mailed about 4 p.m. today at the paper in Salisbury. "Across Gannett’s Community Publishing division, about 1,000 positions will be eliminated -- about 3%...

New York Times Co. shares slumped Tuesday after an analyst suggested in a media report that the company may need to cut its dividend to avoid a "junk" credit rating. The newspaper publisher's stock dropped 72 cents, or 5 percent, to $13.37 in afternoon trading. In the past year it has ranged from $12.08 to $22.95. Last year, the company raised its quarterly dividend 31 percent to 23 cents, which costs it more than $100 million a year in payments to shareholders. New York Times Co. has seen revenue contract in recent quarters, which crimps cash available for operations and...

The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram announced Wednesday that several employees have been laid off and that there will be changes to the layout of the paper in an effort to cut costs. Out of about 400 employees, two union employees lost their jobs, as did an undisclosed number of managers, company officials said. The number of layoffs was far less than initially expected because of employees who volunteered to take time off without pay. "We were able to save a number of positions," said Charles Cochrane, president of Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc., which publishes the Press Herald/Telegram and two...

Eight months after becoming the only local daily in the city, Gannett Co.'s Cincinnati Enquirer is seeking to buy out 50 staffers. In an e-mail to employees Monday, Publisher Margaret Buchanan said the paper is looking to make the reductions among non-union employees. "If this voluntary offer doesn't result in a sufficient number of volunteers, or if in the future, economic conditions worsen, it may be necessary to consider layoffs," Buchanan wrote. On offer is two weeks of salary for every year of service plus health benefits for a period of up to 52 weeks. The offer expires Aug. 15,...

In another blow to the local newspaper industry, the San Francisco Chronicle just announced 125 employees will be cut through voluntary buyouts. The buyouts, which will effect all departments and include management, will be officially offered on Monday, August 4. The buyout packages will be similar to those offered to employees last year. They include two weeks pay per year of service, with a minimum of 4 weeks and a maximum of 52 weeks. Last year, the Chronicle laid off about 100 employees of which about 70 were members of the Northern California Media Workers Guild. "They're cutting deep into...

A. H. Belo Corporation said Monday it would cut 14 percent of its workforce, reduce other costs and explore selling some of its real estate, as the Dallas-based newspaper company announced its second quarterly loss in a row. The company will make voluntary severance offers this week to employees at three of its daily newspapers, including The Dallas Morning News , with the goal of completing the process by mid-September. The company aims to shed 500 full-time equivalent positions, and will make involuntary layoffs if it does not reach that goal. Those cuts and others are expected to lower costs...

CNN’s chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, reporting on Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin on Thursday’s “The Situation Room,” expressed her shock that the European crowd didn’t seem to have the same mania for the Democrat that the media has: “I did ask some people as they were leaving what they thought. Everybody said good, good. But I was surprised that there wasn't this sort of euphoria afterwards, given how many people had come to listen and how much it had been anticipated.” She later stated in the segment that one unnamed political analyst talked about how “people [in Europe] want...

Pinch Sulzberger has taken perhaps the most recognizable media brand in the country and run it into the ground. Can the Gray Lady be saved?

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...

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...

Tribune Tower is in play. Tribune Co. Chairman Sam Zell told staff today the company is in discussions with "a number of real estate firms" to determine how to generate the most value from the neo-Gothic Michigan Avenue home of the flagship Chicago Tribune, an iconic bookend of the city's Magnificent Mile. The company is also weighing its strategic options concerning the Los Angeles Times' downtown Times Mirror Square complex, another high-profile real estate asset. "When we started this adventure together, I made a point of saying we would challenge traditional thinking, that there would be no sacred cows, and...