Results matching “us more job cut”

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

As the Figaro readies the launch of its own in-house video studio (still fully under construction when visited), Bertrand Gié, head of new media for the paper, agreed to give us a few words about the role of video within the quality daily.

2008 will bring even more changes to the newspaper industry, according to Phil Rosenthal of chicagotribune.com. Revenue declines and the costs of investing in traditional media and competing on the Web will probably mean more job and resource cuts at news outlets in 2008.