Results matching “us more job cut”

The American newspaper publisher Gannett plans to get rid of somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 positions, according to an article in today's Wall Street Journal. The job cuts will hit the company's 80 local dailies, rather than USA Today.

Former Gannett editor and reporter Jim Hopkins had previously predicted up to 4,500 slashed jobs on his Gannett Blog. He now says there will likely be 600 actual layoffs as a result of the restructuring, naming July 8 as the axe date.

A lobbying campaign in the UK has called for the government to up the penalties for online filesharing, a practice in which over 7million UK residents regularly partake. The campaign, echoing that of the French government, takes an economical outlook, claiming that illegal filesharing is costing thousands of jobs in the UK and is denting the Kingdom's already slumping GDP. Is this a similar phenomenon to that which is causing UK and Western newspapers to shed staff at an unprecedented rate? Can newspapers, whose bottom line many consider to be suffering from digital content, learn from the plight of the music and entertainment industries affected by filesharing?

Yes and no. 

According to an investigation conducted by Princeton economists Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and Miguel Garrido, print journalists can bask in the knowledge that their work is sill important, the American Journalism Review maintains.  

The spring report, "Do Newspapers Matter? Evidence from the Closure of The Cincinnati Post" found that "even underdogs such as the Post, which had a circulation of just 27,000 when it closed - can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life."  The researchers qualify that the results are "statistically imprecise", but conclude that local newspapers have an important role in the civic life of a community.

The Baltimore Sun reports today that it has cut nearly a third of its newsroom staff as the company reorganizes. Newspapers all over the US have been making cutbacks, and while staff cuts are old news, what is different about the Sun is that it claims its cuts will not only help it survive the economic crisis but succeed in it.

Job cuts occurred in nearly every area of the Sun's newsroom, according to the Newspaper Guild, including top editors, news photographers, critics, columnists, sports reporters, copy editors, page designers, and graphic artists. A spokeswoman says 61 staffers were laid off. The Sun says the layoffs are part of an effort to restructure its newsroom.

In many cases, journalism is one of the most dangerous professions around the world. Hundreds of journalists are arrested, harassed and threatened every year. According to a World Association of Newspapers (WAN) press release, "more than 70 journalists were killed world-wide last year, at least 670 were arrested, and 125 remain in prison." Recently, Iranian-American journalist, Roxanna Saberi has been sentenced to 8 years in prison for doing her job.

The Financial Times has reported that Newsweek magazine is in the midst of a face-lift in a bid to claw back profits and reposition itself as a relevant news source.

Speaking to reporter Kenneth Li from the Newsweek offices in New York, editor Jon Meacham confirmed that a 5year-plan aimed at turning around business had been submitted last November: "You can keep doing what you have been doing all the time and march nobly off a cliff or you can adapt and change," said Meacham.

Johnston Press made a two-year deal with PageSuit, a software development company that creates digital editions of publications, to establish e-editions of all their regional titles.

The move should increase ad revenue and online readership for the company. Digital director for Johnston Press Commercial, Chris Babyode said in a press release from PageSuite that "Local and national advertisers will benefit through direct links to their websites, be able to track ad performance and reader behaviour, plus significantly increase their online audience by targeting readers more effectively." In the last year, Johnston Press underwent 1,110 job cuts and the largest decrease in ad revenue in its history.

Source: journalism.co.uk

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog and the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper Blog, the World Editors Forum is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. This week, we looked at the Tampa Tribune, which has radically revamped its newsroom, and some examples of Editorial Outsourcing, a trend which many news publications have adopted. Below, editors from around the world share their own thoughts about EDITORIAL OUTSOURCING.

AFRICA
Azubuike Ishiekwene, Executive Director, Punch Nigeria
Editorial outsourcing is not an immediate problem for Punch, but we're already looking down the road to that moment. We think that before we reach that bridge, regular and forward-looking review of content (especially print content), and the continuous evaluation of job schedule of journalists across platforms might help us keep cost down and decide how best to apply our resources.

LATIN AMERICA
Marcelo Rech, General Product Director, RBS Group, Brasil
Due to labor laws in Brazil, it's difficult to outsource staffers, but I think the ideal newsroom would be the one with a "hard nucleus", made up of editors, assistant editors, page designers, some videophotographers and some reporters, and a broader staff of reporters, columnists and image producers working under specific tasks. In this way, we could have more diversification, flexibility and cost managing.

In my view, the newsroom looks like a tree: the trunk is the team of editors, the branches are the assistant editors and page designers - those are the structure of the newsroom, and must be very close to the general concepts for the product.

The leaves and fruits are the reporters and columnists. A tree without a healthy and strong trunk would die, but in the end are the fruits what people pay for. 

EASTERN EUROPE
Roman Gallo, Director of Media Strategies, PPF Financial Group
First, newspapers must target their product as specifically as possible. They shouldn't be developing products or writing articles which others could do better. To complement this strategy, newspapers should have a completely integrated newsrooms with skilled and competent staff that can produce material across all platforms. With a staff like this, editorial functions will not have to outsourced.

Newspapers can also tap into the community of Readers for content to supplement that of their newsroom. If the newsroom is looking for extra help, this can be a better means of gathering content than outsourcing because the readers are immediately familiar with the community.

WESTERN EUROPE
Espen Egil Hansen, Editor-in Chief, Verdens Gang Multimedia, Norway
 I don't think the key question should be "How to do more with less", but rather does the new technology and new market situations give us some new opportunities?

In VG Multimedia we spend some time and energy studying two companies outside the traditional media business that might inspire some change: Apple and Ryanair.

Can we learn from Steve Jobs and his Iphone?
Not only is the Iphone in itself a great product, in what appears as a stroke of genius Apple opened up, enabling everyone to create applications for the phone. Teenagers, programmers, and creative people around the globe develop great products for the Iphone - without pay. With no cost for Apple there has been added more than 15 000 applications to the company's Appstore   and they have already been downloaded more than 500 million times! For every new application and for every new download the value of the Iphone rises for the end users. And best of all, from Apple's perspective, since the company controls the distribution of these applications it gets a cut of every sale.

In Norway the 15 year old Knut Ørland has outperformed media companies developing the most popular TV-guide for Iphones. From his boy's room in a little city on the west coast of Norway he launches Iphone applications and earns a profit most teenagers can only dream about. For every sale through the Appstore he gets to keep 70%. The boy is of course happy, Apple is happy because it gets to keep the 30% and the end user is happy because the product is great. By the way - there is no need to buy a newspaper or go online to check what's on TV right now. Not all Iphone applications turn into a success, but if it does, Apple is guaranteed its share. Smart!

Media's approach to product developing has by contrast always been this: We want to do everything ourselves. If we are to make a new product - let's say a new travel section in the Sunday paper - our approach is always more journalists and more purchased freelance material. Smart?

Electronic media is by nature communication and cooperation. If we don't start to understand this we will be forced to ask the same question over and over in the years to come: How can we do more with less?

Can we learn from Ryanair?
While most airlines focus on how to charge as much as possible for each ticket, the low cost airline Ryanair has great success with going the opposite way: How can we charge less? The company compensates lower fares by turning what used to be costs, into new revenue streams. While the tickets are cheap you have to pay extra for food, baggage or boarding the plane early to pick your favorite seat. Together with a long range of cost cuts and commission based products like care rental and hotels, Ryanair has used this approach to become one the most profitable airlines in Europe.

The question newspapers should be asking themselves is: Are there costs in our company we can turn into revenue?


NORTH AMERICA
Ed Greenspon, Editor-in-Chief, Globe and Mail, Canada
We have not experimented, at least not yet, with very much in the way of editorial outsourcing of layouts I a major way.  We remain very interested in the experiences of others but a bit wary.
Of course, to some extent, we have always outsourced.  We tap the talents of a large number of freelance contributors, some of them highly-specialized.  We also have a few standardized pages, such as our comics and puzzles page and our stock listings, produced outside the newsroom. But we haven't ventured into outsourcing the kind of dynamically designed, valued added and pages that speak to our brand message on a given day.
In the opinion field, we tend to go outside in order to compliment our own columnists with more specialized contributors. In other areas, such as multi-media, we tend to use agencies for more commoditized news, thus freeing up staff journalists to focus on the value added material that distinguishes and differentiates us. Thus we have a small Globe Docs unit, which works with our staff to produce high quality video companion pieces to major print features, and sometimes vice versa. Our award-winning Talking to the Taliban is one such example.

Terry Eberle, Executive Editor and Vice President, Fort Myers News Press, Florida
We are using more freelancers and are partnering with other newspapers for certain sports coverage we once produced ourselves. We also are talking about partnerships with television stations to see what makes sense there. As we look for ways to cover more with fewer resources we must keep in mind that the quality of our information can not decline. We must guard against taking shortcuts that hurt readers and our image.

To mark the relaunch of the Editors Weblog, the World Editors Forum is running a special series entitled "Doing More with Less." The series highlights major trends that editors-in-chief are using to steer their newsrooms through the difficult economic climate. The fifth in the series takes a look recently revamped Tampa outlets the Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and WFLA 8. 

Media General's Tampa news outlets have been leaders on the path towards integrated newsrooms for years. Now, as the financial situation at American newspapers weakens, the Tampa Tribune, TBO.com and television station WFLA 8 have used essential cuts in staff numbers and resources as an opportunity to go a step further in creating a completely converged newsroom. On November 10 last year, the 'Interactive Newsroom' went into operation, in which all three platforms, print, online and TV, were further combined.  

It is unclear exactly how many staff have been let go, but senior editor Dennis Joyce told the Editors Weblog that so many empty desks were being removed that there was "plenty of room to play football in our newsroom." He described the staff cuts as a "sad development", but as audience editor Susan Newman commented, there is not much time to dwell on missing colleagues as staff still have to get their product out each day.  And Joyce stressed that the developments were "far more" than just a cost-cutting measure: they would have been "a good idea anyway."

Change happened fast. Joyce said that he had "never seen the likes of it", and estimated that the newsroom had been transformed in about 30-45 days. The physical layout has changed, and many staff have been assigned different responsibilities.  Two floors of the news centre are being used for newsgathering, with print editors and television reporters sitting next to each other.

Separation and elimination

The crucial principle underlying the changes is the separation of content generation and distribution within the newsroom structure, while eliminating duplication in both reporting and delivery of news.

Reporters and editors have been divided into 5 work groups known as "circles" that include people from across disciplines and platforms. The 5 circles are:

1. Deadline (the largest)
2. Grassroots
3. Personal Journalism
4. Watchdog
5. Data (the smallest)

Part of the Deadline circle is the "Live Desk", which is the 'air traffic control centre' for the whole newsroom; it knows where all reporters and crews are at all times and what they are working on, so that it can reallocate resources accordingly. The smaller the team, the better, Joyce explained: whenever possible one or two staffers produce content for all platforms. For instance, photo and video operations have been completely converged and all staff now carry "both weapons".  Sometimes print-based reporters are also sent off with a camera too. 

Content then moves to the six "audience editors", new positions created during the last round of reorganisation. The audience editors are comprised of two print experts, two online experts and two television experts. Susan Newman, one of the six who has 22 years of television experience, defined their role as "managing the content and process in the systems to make sure that all of the platforms are publishing content that is relevant for the audience." The group studies audience metrics and "anything else that measures how content is moving online," to establish how people want different types of information at that moment. Assigning resources to stories and deciding on follow-ups is all part of audience editor responsibility, and they make sure that content is not duplicated unnecessarily from platform to platform.

The new audience editors "make sure that all of the platforms are publishing content that is relevant to the audience"

 
Finally, the three platform specific groups of 'finishers' are in charge of taking the content produced by the five circles and allocated by the audience editors, and preparing it for distribution on to the various platforms. As Newman put it, they are "those who have to get the product to the place it needs to be" (copy desk, designers, online producers, TV producers and anchors). Finishing groups must also collaborate to ensure that relevant content is available to other groups in an accessible format. For example, the television group would take a broadcast piece and extract quotes and stills to send to the print group. 

The organisation of the newsroom's day has also been modified, with a new, cross-platform content meeting taking place at 7am each day, at the time when a "huge contingent" of reporters arrive. During this meeting, editors produce outlines of content that will be in the print edition the following day and on television that evening, and make sure they are taking advantage of their online audience during the key 7am-4pm period. Previously, this outline evolved gradually during the morning. The last editorial meeting of the day is at 3.30pm, when the focus truly switches to the following day's work.
 
Newman emphasised the greater efficiency within the newsroom as levels of senior management have been eliminated. "When you do want to make a change you can make it happen so much more quickly than before because there are fewer people who need to sign off on decision making." The audience editors report directly to the news leadership group, who are the three managing editors for print, online and television.

Increasingly local focus

In conjunction with reforming management of content, the focus of content has also come under scrutiny. Local news coverage is on the up. Joyce explained, "Local is pretty much where we believe our future is. The unique content that will make us valuable to our audience increasingly appears to be local news, as the audience will not get that anywhere else. That is definitely our focus." Newman added that if they do cover national news, they find the "local spin on it." She mentioned the special community pages on TBO.com for which they do "micro-reporting" in different Tampa communities and encourage user-generated content. The website allows comments on every story, and reporters sometimes use information conveyed in comments to spark further story development.

"Local is pretty much where we believe our future is, as the audience will not get that anywhere else."

Enthusisastic staff response

Reactions from staff have been generally positive, Joyce explained. "Had it been an undertaking done outside these economic times we probably would have had more angst. But when you consider the amount of staff reductions and layoffs that we have had recently, a news centre reorganization is seen in an entirely different light, people are now happy to have jobs." When it comes to integration, the group is already "way ahead" when it comes to accepting that breaking news online is essential, and people have been trained for years to learn the skills needed for working on other platforms. Newman added that people are adapting well: "There isn't a journalist who works for this company who doesn't understand that it's not about being platform specific anymore."

Success?

The obvious question that springs to mind is: is this new system going to work? Can a newsroom compensate for staff cuts and diminishing resources by reorganising? Other local newspapers are undoubtedly watching closely to see whether they should follow suit. According to Newman, "we are doing better content now, and we are not missing things," stressing that the newsroom is "giving the audience the content in the way that it will be able to consume it." However, the Tampa outlets are in a relatively "unique" situation, Joyce emphasised, as they consist of the number one local newspaper in the area, and the number one local television station. So compared with a print publication which is frantically trying to train staff to produce video for its website, they already have access to top videographers from the television side.  In light of current financial problems across the industry, maximising on available resources and avoiding overlap definitely makes sense.

One potential problem could be that the generalised nature of content gathering risks eliminating any possibility of the three publications having a unique voice. But if the finishers are good enough this should not be a problem. It is too early to offer any kind of verdict on the Tampa outlets' forward-thinking approach, but their willingness to innovate and make the necessary changes to make the best use of what they have shows that they have sufficient ambition and determination to survive.  As Executive Editor Janet Coats put it, "we are here to stay."

According to a report published by the Pew Research Center, the Internet overtook print newspapers as a news source this year in the United States.

The report found that Internet usage surged from 24% to 40% in a year, overtaking the 35% who rely on newspapers, the Guardian reports.

The New York Times reports that the change "does not represent a decline in the popularity of newspapers," but rather a "near-doubling" of the number of people that name the Internet as their primary news source.  Newspapers actually gained a percentage point in popularity over the last year.

According to Press Gazette, under a deal signed today, the Independent titles are relocating to share offices with the publishers of the Daily Mail in the early part of 2009.  The Independent titles will share back office functions with the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, Metro and Evening Standard.

A statement released by IN&M stated that, "The two groups' editorial, management and commercial operations will remain entirely separate. The Independent and Independent on Sunday will remain under the full ownership of INM."

Following on from Part 1 of our interview with the Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Science Monitor, John Yemma - where we looked at why the CSM is pursing a digital future and how it prepared its readership base - we now look at what is happening inside the CSM itself. Yemma and his team are restructuring the newsroom, its mindset and the technology powering it. This is the cutting edge of news distribution, and Yemma talks us through how it is preparing itself for uncharted territory.

Restructuring the newsroom - rebuilding the engine

The next big step for this revolutionary new "newspaper" model was in the newsroom itself. How does a traditional daily newspaper restructure its newsroom team to prepare itself for the uncharted digital waters ahead? Yemma is overwhelming positive about undertaking the task of remodelling the newsroom, saying, "We essentially get to sit here and take our car engine apart and put it back together. It was an automobile engine that was built for the print world and now we get to take it apart and rebuild it for the web-first world. That is a tremendously exciting prospect because that means instead of having to serve the print master, which has its own production schedule and arbitrary deadline, we free ourselves, and we are therefore able to be much more immediate and relevant online."

Currently the CSM has one staff orientated to producing the print CSM and a small online staff who repurpose the print content for the online edition. Yemma tells the Weblog that the team is organising itself into a "three pronged operation" with a common editorial model - under the editor, managing editor and includes the national, international and photo editors, and foreign and domestic correspondents, made up of about 70 to 80 people - feeding two smaller divisions. These two smaller divisions are the weekly print desk and the website desk, in each case they will have a small production staff. This differentiation between the magazine and the web is vital, "as print has its own needs to produce a good and valuable product" so it needs a minimal but dedicated staff. In the same way, the web has to have a focused staff to keep the site running and up to date. Yemma reports they will have about 10 people each devoted to the web and weekly. For the weekly this involves a team that will build a coherent weekly magazine - working on articles that will need to have a longer shelf life - and the overall look and feel. Similarly the website staffers will have a dedicated team of technical producers who will work on the entry page to optimise it for web traffic.

Yemma says that it has not been necessary to radically change the shape and layout of the newsroom to push through this change as the common editorial pool will be driving content and this remain largely intact. There will likely be some moving of desks to put the weekly staff together and so forth, but nothing radically different.

New technology to aid the change - democratising the web

The CSM is introducing new content management systems to facilitate this move, a print CMS and a new web CMS. This new system will allow the common editorial pool to directly feed both operations and allow the editorial staff to have much more influence over the website. CSM are using K4 CMS for the print edition and is currently closing the deal for a new CMS for the web edition. The new web system according to Yemma will, "democratises the whole operation of the web so non-technical assignment editors with the common editorial pool can update the website directly." Therefore, the majority of the content will feed from the editorial pool but the focused web team will work on the homepage itself.

Retraining for the digital future

This new business model will not only result in a rebuilding of the newsroom, but a rebuilding of staffers. The CSM has already trained its team for multi-media publications and now it is undertaking a programme for its new future. The team are being trained for the new CMS platforms; however, the new system does not require extensive training, as it is a very user-friendly system. CSM is continually training staffers for the web, as "the future is the web. Everybody knows that."  On the weekly, the assignment editors will have to rethink content to make it move "evergreen" and thus hold up for much longer on the shop shelf, and the content will have to be prepared multiple weeks in advance. The CSM is an analytical newspaper so it is already somewhat prepared for this new style of content, but Yemma says, "it is more rethinking than retraining, a magazine mindset is different to a daily mindset."

Managing staffers through uncertain times

It is exciting times at the CSM, but how do you manage staff through these uncertain times. Yemma says, "Be as open as possible about what you are doing. While things are still being developed and you don't want staff to prematurely publicise, you must be careful about you say, as anything you say in a newsroom can get outside of the newsroom. In fact, I would be disappointed if it didn't; being good gossips is part of their job. I would sometimes say things like "If theoretically we were going to have a weekly and no more daily....", the team would laugh, but I can't really say it as I do not want it to show up on a blog or something. I also tried to give them all the information. I tell you, it is much easier to remember your story when you are honest than when you make things up!"

Yemma reports that he worked with the University of Southern California and the Knight Media Digital Centre, and they performed an anonymous survey of staff. As a result, the staff were able to freely express their opinions about the changes without fear of it damaging their career. The team at USC and Knight compiled all the results and gave this to management, so they could see exactly how their staff were feeling. Yemma reports that the feedback was, "appropriately sceptical, but not overly. Again, I would be disappointed in journalists if they weren't sceptical. I would not expect everyone to be completely on board, but they appear to be largely on board."

Yemma says that that the combination of the town hall meetings, sitting down and talking with the different departments, and the anonymous survey are all necessary when managing a team through change.

Staff sackings

Yemma admits that, like many US newspapers, the CSM will be forced to let staff go. Yemma expects to reduce staffing levels by between 10% and 15%, which translates to 10 to 15 people.

Yemma told the Weblog that the staff cuts will take place in summer of next year and the time between now and then Yemma is publicising these staff cuts to the team so that hopefully levels may be reduced organically with people naturally looking for other jobs on hearing this news. Yemma admits that this will only get them part of the way there with the economy being what it is currently. Yemma is also working closely with the Human Resources department and they plan to offer a redundancy package, outplacement assistance and counselling.

The future

Looking at the radical change that the CSM is pursuing, one cannot help but feel that this type of radical restructuring is exactly the type of thinking what will pull the news industry out of its current slump. The media needs newspapers like the CSM to pursue these new strategies, as the industry has evolved very little in the past 100 years and it needs to start taking some radical risks to ready itself for a radically different future. Whether this model will prove successful, time and the market will only tell; but it is undoubtedly a brave and exciting undertaking.
 

At the Cuny School of Journalism presentations on New Business Models, the Daily Telegraph's Digital Director, Edward Roussel, quoted Management Guru Tom Peters saying "Do what you do best, and outsource the rest."

Roussel believes that outsourcing is not an issue and that newspapers now need to target their resources better, ie, newspapers need to invest in their premium products and make cut backs in the less specialised areas.

Looking at the structure in the newsroom, Roussel identifies three strands:

* Original content - the premium product.
* Repurposed content - rewritten wire stories.
* AP copy and so forth.

Roussel called for more investment in original content, to make their premium product even better, but calls for the rewriting and AP area to be outsourced. Roussel said outsourcing is not an issue, using the example of recent work that the Daily Telegraph has done with the UK TV news organisation ITN for its online videos, he points out that ITN are frankly better at it. This is another one of Roussel's key points, he believes that outsourcing organisations frequently do the job a lot better than newspapers - as with ITN and video content - as well as cheaper.

Roussel looked at the expense of running newspapers, and sites the figure that 60% of newspaper costs are in production and calls for a cuts in costs here, but not in the "premium product."

Roussel also said, people want to lift the revenue to reach the old level achieved by newspapers but said, "you probably can't"

A number of US newspapers have submitted cancellation notices to the Associated Press (AP), announcing that they are dropping their contracts with the news service. Reasons range from the recent changes that the AP has made to its fee structure to its diversion from regional news. The Wenatchee World of Wenatchee, Washington, The Yakima Herald-Republic of Yakima, Washington, The Spokesman Review of in Spokane, Washington and The Post Register of Idaho Falls, Idaho, spoke to the Editors Weblog about their decision to cut back on AP content and future plans that they have.

The AP's new fee structure

The new pricing structure, approved by AP's board last year, includes state, national and international breaking news and allows newspapers to buy individual articles and other services, as opposed to its old structure of one bulk membership fee. The AP claims this will cause fee increases for only 10% of its subscribers,

But the Post Register's editor and publisher Roger Plothow refers to the new fee structure as "too rigid" and "too expensive", pointing out that the AP hasn't adapted too well to the changing newspaper industry.

Spokesman-Review editor Steve Smith mentions that he had to lay off 16 of the papers staff in December 2007 and choosing to unsubscribe from the AP ("even considering the cost of replacement services") would save the paper nearly USD$300,000 and permit it to keep 10 to 15 jobs.

"The AP's declining content contribution?" or "Focus on Local News"
 
"They do far less for us than ever before. This year, we would have had to pay extra for basic Olympics coverage once included in the basic rate. And the AP staff in Olympia, the state capitol, told us they were unable to provide statewide coverage of last month's primary election. That is simply not acceptable, not considering how much we pay," says Smith.
 
The Wenatchee World, apart from financial concerns, dropped the AP for similar reasons. It wishes to pay more attention to regional news and the AP's regional reports have "gone by the wayside," says the paper's editor and publisher Rufus Woods.
 
"We've started a free story-sharing service with other papers in our region to enhance our regional report. We do it for free and it works great for everyone," says Woods.
 
"I believe that successful news organizations are gonna be the ones that will have the strongest local content and the challenge for us is that it's more expensive to provide local content than anything else," says Jenkins.
 
Plothow predicts that smaller and medium-sized regional papers will rely less on the AP for content since most of it may be obtained through other sources or be less relevant to readers of papers like the Register. He says that in two years time, the Register will be 80-90% regional and local, with only the most important national and international news articles.

"We will take our savings and invest it into local reporting resources. For newspapers like ours, local is the only future," says Plothow.

Smith reflects a similar idea: that while his paper has international and national coverage, its focus is primarily on local and regional events. For this, the Review cannot rely on the AP, he says. Perhaps it is due to the news outlet's job cuts or the "restructuring and emphasis online and in multi-media." He also mentions that dropping the AP's online service, like audio and broadcast coverage, made no change to the Review's site traffic.

"The big question is what kind of news report resonates with readers. Given changing reader habits, it may be that an all-local paper is in our future. Or perhaps just a slimmed-down national/international report," says Woods.

Newspapers defecting to AP competitors?

The Register is replacing the AP with other services such as Thomson Reuters, the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times-The Washington Post, European Pressphoto Agency, sports providers like PA Sports Ticker and a  "reconfigured coalition of regional newspapers that share content," according to Plothow.

The Review is adapting a similar technique. It may also make use of McClatchy-Tribune's proposed network that would be set up "under their auspices" and would pay the paper for any Review content that it would use.

Tim Brettingen, the AP's chief revenue officer, said that an AP contract is "one of the great bargains in the industry," in an interview with PaidContent.org.

But Spokesman Review's Smith countered that opinion, saying, "Frankly, I think it's highway robbery. And obviously, I am not alone. I have heard from several dozen editors who have dropped or soon will drop the service for most of the same reasons. Most of the major papers in our region are opting out."
 
Jenkins says that submitting a two-year cancellation notice gives the paper time to look at alternatives "that are available now" and those that "are being developed".

"When you look back two years, so many more sources would have become available in that period that it's hard to tell what will be available two years from now," Jenkins adds.

The effects of AP's pricing structure on the US newspaper industry

"The industry's going through dramatic change and we have to be open to radically new ways of doing business to stay in business. AP assumes they are a necessity but more newspapers are viewing it as a luxury and are weary of the "corporate" approach of the organization. If AP wants to partner with members in this evolution, great. If not, so be it," Woods says.
 
Smith, referring to the way in which the American media landscape is evolving, said "If more regional papers begin to share their content between themselves (as has begun in South Florida), the change to our industry will be seismic. AP has been the backbone service for more than 100 years. That could change in the next few years with AP becoming less of a provider and more of a competitor in the race to survive the new information revolution." He continued, " The mere fact that once competing news organizations -- The Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Palm Beach Post for one example; a growing Northwest coalition for another -- will now collaborate signals a huge and unprecedented shift in the news landscape. And any sort of mass shift is going to boost the growth of fledgling content providers such as PA/SportsTicker. There will be some entrepreneurs who will make their fortunes with these changes. And new partnerships will grow between unlikely parties such as CNN and MLB.com."
 
The Post Register's Plothow predicted, "The AP will likely become a service for large newspapers. In the U.S. 1,200 of the 1,400 daily newspapers are under 50,000 circulation - these are the papers that will begin leaving the AP en masse over the next year or so." He concluded, "This will likely only improve local journalism, and national and international journalism is rapidly moving onto the Web. Whether that's a good thing remains to be seen."

Circulation:

Wenatchee World: 22,579 daily, 24,414 Sunday
Yakima Herald-Republic: 38,000 daily
Spokesman Review: 89,000 daily, 113,000 Sunday
Post Register: 25,500
(last audit, June 2005)

Clark Fredricksen of Crosscut writes, "Today, a newspaper without a posse of blogs is so passé."

Sprouting up across the US Pacific Northwest, bloggers -- often reincarnates of the newspaper political reporters of old -- are leading today's political discussion.

Chris Mulick's Olympia Dispatch, "might be the best Washington political blog you've never heard of," writes Fredricksen, of the blogger who delivers "legislative scoops"  with plenty of humor.

Mapes on Politics, authored by blogger Jeff Mapes, has got Oregon's Legislature pegged. According to Seattle Times chief political reporter David Postman, Mapes has "deeper and better understanding of Oregon politics than almost anyone."

"What Mapes is to The Oregonian," writes Fredricksen, "David Postman is to The Seattle Times -- and more." Postman on Politics has the advantage focusing solely on blogging.

"I realize I'm lucky in having the blog as my primary job, while others still have to write for the paper as well," Postman said. "I have the luxury of being able to cover issues and people statewide, and don't have to worry about writing for the paper."

Source: Crosscut

Mark Potts, of the Recovering Journalist blog, has recently tried to put a total on the severity of recent cut backs in the newspaper industry. "Over the past few days, I've built a database of the cuts over the past year at the nation's 100 largest newspapers."

Some key findings:

-Some 6,300 employees at the 100 largest newspapers have lost jobs in the last year (and more than half of these cut backs have come since the beginning of June)

-Nearly two-thirds of the top 100 papers have cut staff in the last year, including all but four of the top 34.

-28 of the top 100 have cut more than 100 jobs, 7 have cut more than 200 (in the past year)

-Virtually all cuts have been to the print side of papers. Few, if any, have cut online staffers

Potts collected his (admittedly, unscientific) data through Romenesko posts. If you want to "see the gory details" - as he calls them - a PDF of the data is downloadable from Recovering Journalist.

Source: Recovering Journalist

Dubbed "the Midsummer Massacre," in the past two months nearly 4,000 jobs have been lost in the US newspaper industry.

Whether Honolulu or Hollywood, Washington or Wall Street, layoffs are sweeping newsrooms across the country.

The Washington Post has cut newsroom staff by more than 12 per cent of the total - more than 100 jobs. USA Today cut 50 jobs, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News laid off 150. The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch's latest acquisition, is cutting 50 jobs to consolidate news and feature departments.

Even the New York Times has not escaped. It's estimated the company will cut around 100 newsroom positions by the end of the year.

Small papers have also suffered. At the Honolulu Advertiser last week 54 of the staff were laid off and the Hartford Courant and Orlando Sentinel saw 57 and 50 job losses, respectively.

At some papers the job cuts have led to protest. "At the Baltimore Sun - where 100 employees have been laid off - some staff took to the streets in protest, wearing black clothing as they marched outside the paper's offices," reported Press Gazette.

Source: pressgazette.co.uk

By Labour Day, the Los Angeles Times expects to have cut 250 jobs, including 150 of the 876 print and Web editorial positions, as well as decrease the number pf pages published weekly by 15 %, Editor and Publisher reported.

"Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we have less money," said Russ Stanton, Times editor.

David Hiller, Times publisher, said that the paper is aiming to get where it "needs to be for the long term", at a size that is "sustainable."

This tendency towards shorter papers and less staff in order to adapt to economic realities has been seen all over the US newspaper industry, including within papers like the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant.

Source: Editor and Publisher

See also:

US: More newspaper job layoffs
US: LA Times  publisher looks towards future, promises changes

SFN Blog:
LA Times to cut 250 jobs

Nytimes.com blogger Timothy Egan points to an interesting paradox about newspapers: how can we be talking about the death knell for newspapers when readership for many publications has never been higher?

We have all seen the stories of 1,000 jobs being cut in the American newspaper industry, just this week the LA Times announced 150 editorial layoffs. However, Egan points out, "all of this bad news is coming at a time when the audience and reach of many newspapers has never been greater."

Although the Internet may have damaged the traditional newspaper, it has also "increased the readership of some newspapers ten-fold."

US Newspaper websites attracted more than 66 million unique visitors in the first quarter of 2008 -- a record, and a 12 percent increase on a year ago, according to Nielsen Online analysis. Forty percent of all Internet users visit a newspaper site.

"A visitor, it should be noted, is different from a reader, but it's the measurement of choice. The Web is the future," writes Egan.

However, online advertising accounts for only around 10 percent of total ad revenue for newspapers. In its present form, the Web format does not generate enough revenue to support a full reporting team at a national newspaper. This is an area that newspapers need to focus on, and currently only a few newspapers are doing successfully.

Egan also discusses another interesting business model for the future; could newspapers go down the route of non-profit national broadcasters such as the BBC, CBC and National Public Radio? He discusses the possibility of a quality, independent media no longer driven by the search for ad revenues.

However, this system arguably couldn't support a nationwide competitive media, but it's something worth considering, even if it is an option with limitations.

Egan's blog puts a new slant on the debate about the future of newspapers and exposes the weakness in the argument that newspapers are in their last days. Egan's research demostrates that there is much vitality in the industry and that newspapers need to adapt to a changing media environment.

Source: New York Times

With tough times for the newspaper industry - today alone, the Baltimore Sun announced it will cut about 100 jobs, Palm Beach Newspapers Inc., which owns both The Palm Beach Post and the Palm Beach Daily News, plans to cut 300 workers from its 1,350-person payroll, and The Hartford (Conn.) Courant announced they will be cutting both news pages and staff positions by 25% - more and more journalists are making the move to public relations.

"We are starting to see students that would rather study PR [than journalism], because they feel the opportunities will be better for them based on what's happening with print newspapers and other [media], that [journalism] might not be as feasible of a career for them right now," Monica Roberts, director of career development at Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School of Communications, was quoted as saying in the latest edition of PR Week. "I also have a lot of young alumni who have been out [of college] for two to three years who have been switching as well."

In the same PR Week article, Diane Lore, a former journalist, who is now in PR, explained, "The money is not there, and because of the constant filing for the online presence now, the pressure is so much higher." She continued, "No one goes into journalism for the money, but you do expect it to be fun. So if you're not having fun and not making money, then why do it?"

Lore has also started a "second life club" for journalists making the transition; the group has 50 to 60 people on their e-mail list and about 20 regulars at the "second life" meetings.

Will Shanley, who left his position as a business reporter at The Denver Post last summer to take a job in PR, said it's a career move he's seen a number of his former journalism colleagues make.

"Looking long-term," he explained, "[They] want to take some of those [journalism] skills and transfer them to a sector that might be growing instead of contracting."

Sources: Editor & Publisher, PR Week

Unrest at Le Monde continues as one of its staffers leaked an internal document, in which Le Monde outlined its plans for reorganization, to other French daily Libération, which published a summary yesterday.

To our readers, this document can be of great interest as it maps out a major daily's strategy when forced to reduce costs.

After analyzing Le Monde's financial situation - €20 million in losses in 2007 - the management aims to cut 1,000 pages in a year, the equivalent of about three per day. The daily had previously announced it would cut 129 jobs, leading to strikes in April.

Cutting Pages

The Culture section is trimmed down to two pages, the 'And You' service section will fit in one page. Le Monde's book review supplement is sharply cut down, from 12 to eight pages - "then to 4," according to the document.

"In rethinking its content and reducing the number of pages, the newspaper must concentrate on what's essential and original," explains the management in the document.

Understandably, this phrasing is a cause of concern for readers and editors (see also the case of the St. Petersburg Times' 'redesign').

Newsroom Organization

Some desks will be merged or grouped together, more or less logically: op-ed columnists and journalists from the 'Debate' pages will be together, which makes sense, but the staffers from the 'And You' section will be merged with those of sports.

All staffers for the daily will now be requires to write for Le Monde 2, a weekly magazine published by the Le Monde group. "The stakes of Le Monde 2 are high. Its editorial success will depend both on a significant growth of Saturday circulation and advertising revenues," read the document.

Management's objective is to "offer a newspaper that's shorter and denser during the week, and toughened up during weekends." In other words, Le Monde is edging towards more of a weekly structure.

Layoffs

The 129 job cuts are detailed section by section: the Culture desk will lose six journalists and four freelancers. The merger of 'And You' and Sports will lead to seven layoffs.

Two staffers will be cut from the Business section, two journalists and an assistant from the literary supplement, and more. Foreign correspondents will also be affected.

In the newspaper's administrative positions, 40 layoffs are expected. Management expects to save €9.4 million thanks to these job cuts.

Other Changes

Management is also considering the outsourcing of its call center and to raise the daily's cover price. It also evokes the possibility of moving into cheaper premises.

What do you think of these 'solutions'?

Source: Libération.fr

The 2008 Newsroom Barometer gathered the answers of more than 700 editors and senior news executives from 120 countries, and was conducted online in March 2008.

This was a relatively big increase from the 435 senior news executives who answered the Newsroom Barometer last year.

The goal is to conduct a Newsroom Barometer every year, in order to compare and contrast the newspaper industry's trends over a longer period of time.

Here's a quick view of this year's respondents:

Job Title / others:

A near majority of the 713 respondents were editors-in-chief (320), and there were 120 managing editors. All respondents were senior news executives, there were neither journalists nor managers, as was the case in 2006.

Three quarters of respondents were male, underlining a still existent gender gap among top newspaper editorial positions. Circulation at 28% of the surveyed newspapers decreased last year, compared to 39% whose circulation increased. These numbers are both reassuring at a time of widespread doom and gloom reports, but they also reveal the transition print newspapers are going through.

Age:

There were more younger respondents (23.5% under 40) than in 2006, although senior editors (age above 50) still constituted 42% of all respondents. The split is representative of the age range of newsroom editors throughout the world.

Type of newspaper:

Compared to 2006, this year's newspapers were more representative of the industry as a whole, as two thirds of respondents came from regional or local papers, compared to a third from national or international titles.

Print circulation:

Many editors from smaller newspapers participated in this year's survey. Nearly half of respondents worked for papers with a print circulation of less than 50,000 copies. 19% of respondents worked for papers with a circulation superior to 200,000 copies.

Website traffic:

For 66% of respondents, their daily website traffic was below 200,000 unique visitors per day, which is also representative of the world press on the whole. 6% still didn't have a website, compared to 9% last year.

More about methodology

The Newsroom Barometer is a purely online survey through the Zogby website (www.zogby.com). The poll was accessible by invitation only and was conducted in eight languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Russian and Japanese). To avoid answers from people who were not senior news executives, a tailored email was sent to editors-in-chief using the World Editors Forum database (www.worldeditorsforum.org), which counts 7,000 senior news executives' emails.

Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results

Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine blogger, writes about the new ecosystem of news: a press-sphere, in which the press may be involved, but "any of many sources can, thanks to links, add up a story and to fulfilling the need or desire for news and information." Newspapers aren't just news anymore, according to Jarvis, they are more complex with endless sources and handlers.

People do not just receive their news directly from the press anymore; they may have found the news through their peers "who tell us it's news." The definition of news has changed as well, from a story with text and photos to incorporating background information, commentary that may add perspective, and data. "A story never begins and it never ends," writes Jarvis. "[The story] - in whatever medium -- is merely a blip on the line, a stage in a process, for that process continues after publication."

According to Jarvis, the public should replace news as the center of the press-sphere, surrounded by all news sources: the press, peers, non-press media  (e.g., Jon Stewart), search, links, original sources, companies, the government. "It's all information and we curate it and interact with it with the tools available," writes Jarvis. Even readers themselves can be sources now.

One of the commenters on Jarvis' blog didn't agree with "the idea that we can continue to maintain a story alive indefinitely when in fact the story has died or it is no longer relevant..." According to the reader, "Even if [it] was relevant, we would be looking from 20/20 hindsight, which by definition, would put the story in historical context and not within the journalistic purview."

The newsroom has already evolved with the emergence of online. "In print, the process leads to a product. Online, the process is the product," writes Jarvis. Thus, whereas newsrooms were arranged by sections (sports, business, etc) and job descriptions (reporter, editor, photographer, etc.), now there is a print newsdesk and online newsdesk. With the new model, Jarvis believes newsrooms should be organized around topics, tags, or stories "because the notion of a section is as out of date as the Dewey Decimal System." 

Other changes that Jarvis notes, in his own words,:
- The separation of content from presentation on web pages means that design, navigation, brand, and medium can change and are not necessarily controlled by an editor's design.
- Feeds also have an impact on -- and can reduce the value of -- packaging and prioritization (also known as editing).
- Live reports from witnesses also reduce the opportunity to package and edit.
- The ecology of links motivates us to do what we do best and link to the rest. It fosters collaboration. It changes the essential structure of a story (background or source material can be a link away).
- Links also turn our readers into our distributors.
- Links turn our readers into editors.
- Aggregation, curation, and peer links become our new newsstand.
- Search and SEO motivate us to create repositories of expertise (topic pages) and make news stories more permanent.
- Search reduces the power of the brand.
- We see ourselves not as owners of content or distribution but as members of networks.
- These networks can be about content, trust, interest, or advertising relationships or all of the above.

Jarvis concludes that "When we rethink this ecology of news, we'll be in a better position to plan for what's next."
 
Source: Buzzmachine.com through IFRA Executive News Service

Tribune Co. Chairman and CEO Sam Zell had stated that newspapers "have a great future" but are in need for rapid change. He is now giving pep talks around the US to encourage Tribune employees to be more creative or risk losing their jobs.

Zell not only wants to cut bureaucracy, but is also attempting to enforce quicker decision-making and more collaboration among newspapers, TV, and the Internet.

Some of his employees are criticizing Zell for swearing in his speeches as well as failing to clarify his goals.

"We see how newsrooms are shrinking," said Julie Cart, 25-year metro reporter at the Los Angeles Times. "Zell makes a lot of noise but he hasn't articulated the new model other than saying we're doing it wrong.''

Zell's defense is that he wants to create a sense of urgency, especially since Tribune's debt increased in December when Zell took the company private.

Source: Bloomberg

Tribune Co. is to cut 500 jobs, about 2% of its nationwide workforce. 100 to 150 layoffs will affect the Los Angeles Times.

About 40-50 of these will be editorial jobs in the newsroom and the cuts will take place "through a combination of attrition, voluntary buyouts and, if necessary, layoffs," said publisher David Hiller in an interview with the Times.

"The job cuts are focused on the corporate staff and the company's nine newspapers, including, besides The Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday in New York, the Orlando Sentinel, the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant,” reported the paper.

Apparently the job cuts won’t affect Tribune’s broadcast division.

Source: Editor & Publisher